Court navigators are undergraduate, graduate and law students who have been trained about how the court works and can help an unrepresented person navigate the steps of the court process.

This program focuses on helping tenants who are suing landlords for failure to repair hazardous housing conditions such as lack of heat or hot water, leaks and mold, and vermin infestation.

As indicated in a Baltimore Sun article, tenants in Baltimore experience great difficulty in enforcing their legal right to safe and healthy housing, and court navigators can help. Participating students also will begin assisting defendants in debt collection cases starting fall 2018.

Court navigators provide these tenants with basic information about their legal options, assist them with filling out court forms, go with them into the courtroom hearings and into hallway negotiations, and aid with any followup steps afterward. They also help tenants with organizing their paperwork, figuring out budgets, and getting access to resources. In other words, court navigators can help unrepresented people pursue their legal cases more effectively than when they go it alone. They can also help streamline the legal process to make the court work more efficiently.