You've worked inside the Clerk's office for over a year. What's the single biggest problem you've found?

The people who need this office most are the ones it prepares least.

Every week I work across various court calendars with pro se litigants — cases where one or both parties don't have a lawyer. Twenty to thirty cases, sometimes more. People walking in holding stacks of papers they printed from the internet, with no real understanding of what comes next or what they need to do.

By law, clerks can't give legal advice. I can't tell someone whether their paperwork is right. But we can connect them to resources — the courthouse facilitator, the NW Justice Project, the informal trial process — that most of them never find on their own, because this office has never made those resources visible.

Here's what that gap actually looks like in practice: a pro se litigant fumbles through evidentiary rules they've never heard of, when they could have simply requested an informal trial. A case doesn't get heard because the paperwork isn't complete — and the judge, who is already managing a packed calendar, has to stop and do the education that should have happened before that person ever walked through the door.

We are fortunate to have a skilled and empathetic bench in Kitsap County. Judges who actually take the time to help when they can. Attorneys in the room who give willingly when they see someone struggling. But that's not a system — that's people filling a gap that this office created.

It's heart-wrenching to watch. And it's completely avoidable.

The core problem isn't a lack of resources. They exist. What's missing is the will to surface them — before someone walks into what is already one of the most intimidating rooms they'll ever sit in, in one of the hardest moments of their life.

A well-designed resource page. A plain-language guide. A short video explaining what to expect. None of this is expensive or complicated. What it requires is someone who actually wants to make this office useful to the people who need it most.

That's the job I'm running to do.