The most striking civil justice transformation in the last thirty years is that the typical civil case in a state court has gone from being a lawsuit about an auto accident to a debt collection case. These two case types are fundamentally different. About half of the debt collection cases involves a plaintiff who is a debt buyer and not the company from which the defendant had initially borrowed the money. These companies file a high volume of cases and specialize in debt collection. The defendants, by contrast, rarely participate in the litigation in any meaningful way. Often, they do not appear in court, and in less than 6% of the litigation, does an attorney represent the defendant. In 70% of the cases, the result is a default judgment in which the defendant does not participate, but plaintiffs may garnish their wages or freeze their bank accounts. For this reason, courts have been actively researching how to improve case management in debt collection cases on their civil dockets.

Recently, Professor Eric Helland, William F. Podlich Professor of Economics and George R. Roberts Fellow, and the students in the CMC Policy Lab worked with the RAND Institute for Civil Justice to examine who the participants in these cases are, what are the outcomes of these cases, and what policy proposals might mitigate the disparity between plaintiffs and defendants. What did they find? Professor Helland shares insights on his work and speaks on what it's like to engage students in research at CMC.