CLOSING THE DISTANCE

Meeting NCSC’s Standard for Remote Access to Justice

“Without the proper technology and support in place, the benefits of remote proceedings can be diminished.”

NCSC, announcing the September 2026 update of the Remote Proceedings Toolkit

That sentence is a standard, not a caveat. The National Center for State Courts has spent several years documenting what remote hearings can do for access to justice, and it has been equally clear about what has to be true for them to do it: the right technology, in place, with the right support around it. This article follows that standard through the evidence NCSC has published, and shows, point by point, how Cives’ Courts solution is built to meet it.

1. The Case for Remote Hearings

The evidence for remote hearings is, by now, substantial. A study of twenty-six justice courts in Maricopa County, Arizona, covering five years, found that remote appearances significantly improved appearance rates; default-judgment rates in eviction cases fell from about 40 per cent to as low as 13 per cent. In Harris County, Texas, one justice of the peace reported a fall from 28 per cent to under 20 per cent within a year of the switch. The public says it would use the option: in NCSC’s 2023 State of the State Courts poll of 1,000 registered voters, 63 per cent said they would definitely or probably use video to appear in a case, up from 52 per cent in 2021 and 59 per cent in 2022, with support holding at 60 per cent even among respondents over 50.

Court users who have actually tried it agree. In NCSC’s Eviction Diversion Initiative, drawing on more than 5,000 self-represented litigants in 24 courts, 90.3 per cent said they were very or somewhat comfortable attending court virtually. Self-represented litigants in an Indiana study found remote civil courts as easy to navigate as in-person ones; in California, more than 90 per cent of court users and 98 per cent of staff reported positive experiences.

Table 1. The evidence at a glance

This is the case NCSC has built for remote hearings. What follows is the standard it attaches to that case, and how Cives is built to meet each part of it.

2. Reaching Everyone, Wherever They Start

NCSC’s first condition is access: courts must understand the technology their communities actually have, and remove the friction that keeps people from using it. In a pilot across rural counties of southern Illinois, legal aid lawyers appeared remotely, saving 633.5 hours of travel and 18,432 miles of driving, worth an estimated $11,626.83 in reimbursable mileage, capacity that went straight back into serving more clients. The same logic reaches what NCSC calls legal deserts, places where distance, few attorneys, poverty or poor connectivity make legal help hard to find: an attorney from a better-served area can represent a client there remotely, at no travel cost to either side.

Cives is built so that reaching a hearing takes as little as possible. The platform is web-native, with no download or installation and one-click join, so a participant can move from a text message or an email straight into a session on whatever device they have. A telephone dial-in stands behind that, so a lost data connection or a phone with no camera does not mean a missed hearing, and virtual waiting rooms keep participants organised and informed while they wait to be called. None of it requires an appointment with an IT department, on either side of the connection.

3. Understood, in Any Language

NCSC treats language access as central, not supplementary: allowing interpreters to appear remotely can ease interpreter shortages and widen access, provided participants can actually reach the interpretation channel and staff know how to use it. Cives states that its platform carries simultaneous interpretation and real-time translation in more than 120 languages, so that notices, instructions and platform content meet a participant in the language they actually speak. That sits alongside, and is not a substitute for, the qualified court interpreters NCSC treats as a separate professional safeguard for the proceeding itself.

The same standard extends to disability access. NCSC’s benchmark is that a platform must work with a screen reader and offer captioning, and it asks courts to keep in-person attendance available for the people for whom it remains the more accessible option. Cives states that its interface offers real-time captions, keyboard navigation, role-based configurations such as high-contrast and large-text display, and conformance with WCAG 2.2 Level AA, a later version of the WCAG 2.1 Level AA standard NCSC uses as its benchmark. Remote appearance can itself serve as an accommodation, letting a court that does not normally sit remotely bring in one participant by video where that helps them take part fully.

4. Confidential Conversations, Built In

NCSC is direct about what representation requires in a remote setting: without the ability to communicate in real time, attorney-client representation in criminal cases can be seriously compromised, and courts should provide breakout rooms before, during and after hearings, with ample time for consultation. Cives states that its platform provides breakout rooms for exactly that purpose, so a lawyer and a client can step out of the main session, speak privately, and return, on the same call they joined from the courthouse, a library, or home.

5. A Record Courts Can Rely On

NCSC is equally direct about the record. Platform transcription alone should never be the only record of a proceeding, and any automated transcription needs human review. The reason is not abstract. In one Massachusetts case, Adoption of Patty (2022), a mother was repeatedly disconnected from a hearing on the termination of her parental rights, and the decision ending those rights was reversed on appeal, precisely because what had happened during the hearing could not be reliably established. NCSC’s standard asks courts to be able to answer, after the fact, exactly what a participant experienced.

Cives states that its platform produces a transcription and an audit trail covering 100 per cent of sessions, recording, among other things, when each participant connected and whether anyone dropped out. That record is what lets a court, and a reviewing court, see what happened rather than reconstruct it from memory, and it is data a court can use for the evaluation NCSC asks every remote-hearing policy to undergo at least once a year: how many hearings had a technical problem, and how was it resolved.

6. One Hearing, Every Participant

NCSC’s guidance increasingly assumes a hybrid courtroom, some participants in the room, others joining remotely, rather than a choice between two separate formats. Cives states that its platform holds in-person and remote participants in the same session, so a court is not running a physical docket and a digital one in parallel, and a hearing does not change character depending on how each person happens to have joined it.

7. Built to NCSC’s Six Practices

NCSC organises its guidance into six practices for courts to build a remote-hearing policy around. Not all of them are things a platform can deliver on its own, and Table 2 says so plainly; where a practice remains the court’s responsibility, that is stated alongside what Cives contributes to it.

Table 2. NCSC’s six practices, and Cives’ role in each

8. What Courts Can Do Next

The evidence points to a short list of practical steps, none of which depends on any particular product.

• Start where the evidence is strongest: short, non-evidentiary hearings in civil matters.
• Keep in-person and telephone options for everyone, and make it easy to ask for a change of format without filing a motion.
• Tell people how to connect, in plain language, with pictures, and in the languages the community speaks.
• Test with the people most likely to struggle, including those with limited English proficiency and those with disabilities, before relying on the system.
• Measure and review: track appearance rates, technical problems and time to resolution, and reassess the policy at least once a year.

9. Conclusion

NCSC’s standard is not a warning to work around. It is a description of what remote justice looks like when it works: technology that reaches people wherever they start, that they understand and can be understood through, that protects the conversations representation depends on, and that leaves a record a court can stand behind. Several years of evidence now show what that standard makes possible, more people appearing, fewer defaults, lower costs, wider reach, and Cives’ Courts solution is built, point by point, to meet it.

Cives exists because access to justice is only as real as a person’s ability to take part in it. We build technology for every citizen, not only those who live near a courthouse, speak the language of the proceeding, or own the fastest connection, because the Latin word encoded in our name (cives, Latin for “citizens”) admits no exceptions: every person is a citizen deserving of the same access. Every civis. Every hearing. Every time. That is not an aspiration. It is an obligation.

We believe that courts deserve technology that reflects their highest purpose: equal justice, equal participation, equal dignity. We build to that standard, and we hold ourselves to it, because the people who come before them, wherever they join from, deserve nothing less.