 At our own volition, we'll just volunteer ourselves to some of our largest filers. On these visits, we tend not to get too involved in hardware issues and installing equipment, but we do look at the attorney's computer settings and configurations, particularly if they're having connections or performance problems. Now, this is a new and growing customer service we're providing. And I must say it's been very well received by the bar. In fact, it's helped catapult our participation rate to well over 50% of the practicing bankruptcy bar in the area here. That's tremendous, Mark. Thanks so much. We have Gary Drake on the line now, and I know Gary that the Northern District of Georgia is very, very active in CMECF, one of those courts that jumped on the bandwagon. So early in the game. But I would like you to focus on something else, because I know that you've developed a bankruptcy-related program for probation and pretrial services officers. Explain a little bit about why you did that. We did create a PowerPoint presentation that we have presented to probation pretrial services in the Northern District of Georgia, and it is based directly on the bankruptcy basics public information series published by the administrative office. I was approached by one of the deputy chief probation officers about making this presentation because they were seeing in their work a growing number of defendants with a bankruptcy history, and they were uncertain of the bankruptcy process or even what the different chapters represented. The presentation was very well received by the probation pretrial officers there, and I suspect we'll be making this in the future as they bring additional officers on board. This is a presentation that will be appropriate for any other court, the unit, as well as any other government agency, and we'll be making that available to those people within our area here. And additionally, I did have the opportunity to make this same presentation to two high school banking and finance classes over the past year, a little bit beyond the reach of our normal customer in the bankruptcy court, but any education of the public is useful. I think it's exciting to hear about some of these programs, and that sounds like a wonderful program. We'd love to have a copy of your agenda, Gary. Let's turn our attention now to other assistance given, that is, to other groups, and let's start with debtor education. This is kind of a hot topic, especially with the possibility of bankruptcy reform legislation. I'm going to call on John Ceretto again to just take one minute, if you will, to explain your court's debtor assistance program. How does that work, John? Which ranges between 30 and 40% of our filings, depending on the year. So clearly, that's a number that can't be ignored or wished away. And with regards to what we've done in our court, we have a dual track approach, which is a directed public information outreach program and some pro bono programs that we have implemented with our local bar. Now, with regards to the information outreach, we're probably similar to other courts in that we provide bankruptcy education materials. And we also provide forms packages for both Chapter 7 and 13. We also, we provide both those in English and in Spanish. Now, of course, the objective is not to encourage filings, but to increase the likelihood that the courts will receive properly completed legal documents and save time. But a program that we're very proud with, that we've developed in conjunction with our local bar association, is a pro bono program which addresses reaffirmation agreements and 523 dischargeability actions. Basically, the program is quite simple, that the attorneys are required to provide in their notices a notice of legal representation availability to low income debtors who are pro se via the debtor assistance program. And here again, that's sponsored using our local public council, which is our local legal clinic. And essentially, for example, with regards to the reaffirmation agreements, the judges within a particular division, and we have five divisions and 21 judges, will schedule all the reaffirmation agreements for a single day. And then they'll rotate and a single judge will hear all those reaffirmation agreements. And prior to the hearing, we will have a volunteer attorney, which will come from the local bar and basically explain to the pro se debtor on these reaffirmation agreements what their rights are prior to walking into the hearing. Now, in this particular case, the attorneys do not represent the litigant, but they provide a lot of information, which makes the judge's job a lot easier with regards to these reaffirmation agreements. And we have a similar program, as I said, with regards to non-dischargeability. Now, one thing on these programs I think is very important is that they don't really happen by themselves. The judges really have to get behind it and work with the local bar and make it happen, even if the bar is very supportive, it really requires the judicial initiative there. John, thank you so much. I want to turn back to Mark Hatcher. And Mark, I believe you've developed a program with Washington Western, and do I understand that you have classes for debtors conducted right immediately after the 341 meeting? The judges here in this district believe debtor education is a legitimate function for the court and that debtor should be provided. Some financial planning tools to hopefully avoid bankruptcy in the future. Our court has taken what I'd describe as a gentle approach in this regard. We use education materials, including videos that have been developed by Visa, and we provide a room in the same building as the 341 meetings for debtors to simply come down after their 341 meeting and view the videos and take the materials if they choose to. The materials are free. They're surprisingly non-promotional as to Visa, and attendance at the classes is voluntary. We've actually had debtors express their appreciation for the information and actually had some lament that they wish they would have had that sort of information available to them years earlier. That's great, Mark. Let's move on to Pro-Safe Filers. Kathleen, I know in your court you have a number of efforts, including a handbook for Pro-Safe Filers, and so we'll talk a little bit about that. We do. Before I get into that, I would like to talk a little bit about, in order to help the staff understand the Pro-Safe Filer, we conducted some programs. We had a law professor come in and do a profile of a typical debtor, and I think everyone was a little surprised how close they really were to bankruptcy themselves and sort of gave it a personal perspective. We had an attorney come in to sort of explain the interview with his client and how he comes to the decision that he will file for bankruptcy for that so that they have an understanding of the people that they're dealing with when they do come into the counter. We have a court services coordinator right at the anti-counter to assist the Pro-Safe Filers through the initial filing. We'll not give legal advice, but we'll give procedural advice. We have handbooks for intake, just a little pamphlet to sort of explain what that is. We have, as is referred to before, the survival guide to the records room so that people know how to get information. The handbook is rather extensive, so the court service coordinator will direct them to the appropriate section of that. We hope to have that available on our website very shortly in a searchable format so it can be of use to people for free and it's got all the forms in it and it's got some simple explanations of the different chapters and how to file a motion, how to file an appeal. So it doesn't just deal with the Pro-Safe debtor, it deals with Pro-Safe creditors as well. And this is going on the web? Hopefully it will be on the web soon, yes. I believe we have Ken Gardner, clerk of court from Illinois Northern on our Push to Talk line, as well as Chief Judge Susan Sonderby and I want to thank the judge for being available now and I want to backtrack just a little bit before I ask Ken a question. Judge Sonderby, you have the Kmart case and how do you use the web to keep interested parties including the media and the rest of the public informed? How's that worked? It's to give the public as much access to as much information as possible. Of course that's going to save our court staff time and effort in responding to inquiries. So we set up a web page on our website and it includes a case management or a case procedures order, a bar date order, a proof of claim information and the case docket amongst other things. We also have links to the websites of debtor's counsel, the US trustee, the noticing agent for the case, information regarding things of that nature. We also include pertinent information such as the phone numbers, addresses, bar dates, next hearing date and location of it. I've had to conduct hearings in this case in the district court courtroom because of the magnitude of lawyers that come in. Couple things that we found very other helpful also were to have the attorney sign in and state their name and who they represented on a paper which is then as filed and is introduced into evidence as part of the court record. This has become 100 lawyers and it would take us and anyone hearing it, quite an expenditure of time to get all those appearances as part of the record. One of the other things that we do is we have links to the hearing agendas. Every omnivist hearing date that I have, the debtor about three days before the hearing sends me an agenda and it lists all of the items that have been noticed for that day with docket numbers as well as all of the responses, objections and some guidance as to what is expected on that day and that way we can gain information as to what is going to go ahead for oral arguments, what I'll take testimony on, what'll be continued, withdrawn or settled and so it's very helpful but a real key here is to put a docket number with everything that is listed on that agenda. One other thing I wanted to mention in the Kmart case was the volume of pages in the statement of affairs and schedules. There were some 14,000 pages. So we had debtor's counsel file in a CD-ROM format, all of that information. We merged it into our system. It was immediately accessible up on the webpage, on our website so that anybody could gain that information immediately. The press of course wanted copies of the CD-ROM and we had that available too because we burned different copies. It's a wonderful use of technology, not just the web but the use of CD-ROM to get that information out. Thank you again so much Judge Sonnery. Ken, if you'll comment just for a minute on the district's pro se assistance efforts. We've talked about this before and I understand the attorneys contribute time and expertise pro bono. How does that work? Bob, what we have done is we have created basically an attorney help desk which allows pro se filers to come in on Friday for three hours staffed by an attorney. We've given them clerk's office space as well as we give them a clerk's office employee to help with some of the administrative matters and basically the program allows the attorneys using a volunteer attorney from the Chicago Bar Association to come in and counsel these debtors with just information and things that happen. A lot of times the judges will refer in matters that get particularly legal in nature in the courtroom will refer the debtors to this program so they can come in and get some additional assistance. Thanks so much Ken. We now have Jody Troxler on the line and Jody is the chapter 13 standing trustee for the Middle District of North Carolina. Jody, tell us about this chapter 13's debtor's school in the Middle District. I understand that that has been in existence for about 30 years. That's correct. I'm one of three chapter 13 trustees in this district and we do have a formal 13 debtor's school that is held and the school goes over budgeting and credit issues as well as some bankruptcy information such as terminology to try to help the individuals understand what they'll be going through in the chapter 13. The school is held on the morning of 341. The 341s are for 13 through in the afternoon and there's a three hour class in the morning where the individuals attend the class. We have in the district, we have two budget counselors who work with the three trustees offices and they hold the classes throughout the district and we use as our core materials written materials and videos which are now available through the trustees education network which is commonly known as TIN which is an organization, a nonprofit organization that was developed a few years ago by chapter 13 trustees to try to provide a core curriculum in this area that and the materials were developed by chapter 13 trustees and this provides the source for, the TIN offers trustees who have either been in this business a long time with the debtor education or new trustees who are just getting into it with the materials and other education information that can help them. The budget counselors in addition to working with them, the 13 debtors in the schools also can offer one-on-one budgeting or meetings with debtors if they desire and the budget counselors also go out into the community voluntarily to participate in seminars and that type of thing, especially in the budgeting area and they're very popular with our college areas when they do special seminars in this area. Jodi, thank you very much and I know you forwarded the agenda to me in some of the parts of the program and we're gonna make sure that we put that on our court operations exchange for folks who might be interested. Judge Kenner, I know in Boston you have a pro se reaffirmation clinic. Talk a little bit about that. We do, it's initiated by the Boston Bar Association and as one of the speakers earlier noted, the judges have agreed in Boston to have all of the reaffirmation hearings for pro se debtors on the same day at about the same time so that it's convenient for the judges, it's convenient for the attorneys who are donating their time and expertise. And I know you use the web quite a bit to put information out as well. We do use the web a great deal much like you do in the Southern District. I think one aspect that we're finding very useful for prospective bidders at auctions and private sales is we post all of our notices of sale on the web so that a person who's interested in buying a house in Worcester can offer a bid. And hopefully we've expanded the universe of people who will bid in bankruptcy sales and thereby increase the price. We've emphasized a lot the use of website to provide valuable information to the public and I know that there are a number of districts that use the web to post their little messages, if you will, some newsletters and what have you. We did have Martha Labus and also David, I had wanted to talk to you, but we're gonna move to another subject in that area just to let you know that the website is in fact used to foreign newsletters to get the word out to people, both individual districts and also in partnerships with bar associations. But I wanna move to another subject now because when we looked at the various websites out there we noticed that just a few of them include information relating to unclaimed funds. And Louisiana Middle I think is a great example and we have Monica Minier on the line to explain that effort, Monica. Yes, Bob. We put our unclaimed funds on our website a couple of years ago, we decided that this would be another helpful tool for the public to have. We print out the unclaimed funds from Fences. We scan it in, make it a PDF and we put it on our website. It's not a searchable document but they can certainly view it and review it and they have claims finders and creditors both have appreciated that. They no longer have to come down to the court and pull the files, pull the records and look at them. Our financial administrator is not disrupted from her work either on the telephone or with claims finders coming into the office. So it's been helpful both to the court and to the public. Thanks so much, Monica. Let's open it up now for any push-to-talk participants that might wanna ask a question of our panel. Anybody out there? We mentioned, okay, well, if you wanna ask a question later by all means, we'll open it up one more time. We mentioned before the use of feedback from how important it is to get feedback from the courts, from the folks out there and let me ask the panel members how you use it. Kathleen. Well, certainly we actively solicit feedback on certain things that we put out on our website when we make presentations to various bar associations and law firms. We certainly solicit feedback from them. Sometimes we get unsolicited feedback. A lot we get unsolicited feedback. Most of it good, though, on the good side of it. But on the occasion that there is something that should be addressed, we will address it and we appreciate the constituents coming back to us and letting us know what we're doing right and, on the other hand, what we could improve. We don't necessarily do it wrong, but we might need a little improvement. David, Devin, what Kathleen is saying that it's too easy when you have an offhanded comment that appears in the suggestion box to discount it and you just really cannot do that. You have to take every input you get seriously, consider it, consider the source and review it and see if you really can contribute to improving your operation and improving your customer service. Rebecca. Well, this really is an important part of outreach because outreach is so hard to measure. So what we have done is we have written evaluation at every program. Every participant answers the questions that we pose. In fact, sometimes they have to exchange their evaluation to get their certificate. It's that important to us. And we identify trends and then we really do incorporate that feedback into our next year's program. We also do videotaped exit interviews and that, in that way, we get to see the attitudes change. We get to see what kind of an emotional impact the program had on the students. And then also with the courthouse coordinators. We touch base with them by phone during the planning process. We actually talked to them in the very beginning in designing the process, then during the process of planning and execution and then afterwards we do a debriefing and that's just hugely helpful to us. George, any comments about feedback mechanisms? I think courts always have to be listening to what the public is saying. I think we have to reach out and find ways to gather information in lots of different ways, whether it's over the counter or at the public counter, whether it's via the internet, whether it's talking to state court judges, for example, at bar association functions. I think we always have to be listening. That's great. It's been a great discussion. We did in fact receive one additional affax and it relates to the programs that you noted before, Rebecca. We're considering reaching out to students in the community. What age group should we target, first of all and what kinds of programs do you think capture students' interests and attention? Well, the national initiatives are geared for high school seniors because this is the age group where students are eligible to register to vote or they are registered to vote. And as you know, that's a way to get into the jury pool. So what we do is we present jury service as a rite of passage along with voting and the other privileges and responsibilities of adulthood. But we really don't limit ourselves to that. Our lesson plans are geared for ninth through twelfth graders. Our key audience really is teachers because we know if we reach one teacher, that teacher touches the lives of hundreds of thousands, I should say, maybe sometimes they touch generations of students and then also in addition to that, we, I've lost my train of thought. Oh, that's okay. That's okay. We have another fast. Oh, I wanted to say yes, here we are. Yes, but judges really should feel free to reach out to the age groups that they're comfortable with. If it's second graders, if it's fifth graders, when you have a rapport, please do that. And also outreach didn't start three years ago when I joined the federal court system. Many judges have a career's worth of experience and we certainly acknowledge and appreciate that. Related to that, Judge Kenner, here's a fax for you. Are there recommendations that you could give to approach a judge to help us champion these outreach programs? Maybe I shouldn't ask that. Good question. Good question. Can I take that under advisory? You're right. Judge, your other record, go. I think some judges are comfortable doing this. Other judges are comfortable doing different things. I like working with school-age kids. Some of my colleagues work with law students, work with the bars. We all find a niche that we're comfortable with. We've just about reached the end of this particular session and this broadcast. So one last question for our panel here. One liners, please. What's the bottom line in terms of developing an successful outreach program? Kathleen? First of all, I'll get a commitment from your staff. Make sure that they understand that the outreaching and customer service is part of the court's mission. And take every opportunity available to get word out there, either do it in person or do it electronically, but use every available avenue that you may have at your disposal. That's great. Kathleen? Actually, Rebecca? Oh, Rebecca, I'm sorry. That's just fine. I would say to start small. And to keep the theme in place, low investment, high impact. So you want to expend as few resources as you can, but think about how can I make the most of those resources? Public affairs and outreach really is a planned, systematic, cohesive kind of a program. So make sure that it works together to support your strategic plan. Make sure that it advances the outcomes that you really wanna see in your community. Great, David. More technology is better. People are becoming more accustomed to using the web so you can use that to get your message across. The better off you will be. You need to provide a mechanism for inputs to improve your operation. And you need to take those inputs seriously when a customer takes the time to provide them. Great, Judge Kenner, the final word. I guess I would say be flexible and keep listening. That about does it. I wanna thank our panelists for the second session. Judge Kenner, Kathleen Farrell, David Oliveira, and Rebecca Fanning, and also Regina Bivens and Sandy Poindexter, as well as our push to talkers and phone in participants. Before I come back with some final thoughts, here are a few points to remember about community outreach and education. Today we've taken a look at the public information and outreach activities and some of the challenges and practices proven to be effective for our panelists and push to talk participants. I hope you found this broadcast to be informative and directly related to what you do on the job. Let me remind you to please complete an evaluation that was part of your downloadable materials on the DCN. We appreciate your feedback. Also, we invite you to access the court operations exchange on the FJC homepage. There you'll find information that courts have posted and are sharing with colleagues throughout the federal court system. In addition, you can ask a question and be part of a discussion on specific court related topics. It's a great resource. I wanna thank again our panelists and all push to talk participants for being so willing to share their experiences in this important subject area. That's such a vital part of the learning process. And a special thanks to David Sellers and the staff of the administrative office, the public affairs office, for partnering with us in this effort. In closing, a lot of what we've discussed today deals with communicating effectively. In his work on leadership wisdom, Larry Liberty notes that communication is more than just speaking and being understood. It's about clarity of thinking, willingness to listen, and the desire to see what someone else sees exactly the way they see things. It rests upon generosity and courage as much as skill. Thank you again for joining us today. Keep an eye on the FJTN bulletin for other upcoming programs of interest to all court staff. And we'll see you on our next FJTN broadcast.