Over more than 30 years as an assistant district attorney, district court judge, and chief district court judge in Guilford County, Teresa Vincent repeatedly saw what happened when people who couldn’t afford legal counsel represented themselves in court.
Procedural problems. Missing documents. Hearings that were delayed for months.
“We saw it all the time,” said Vincent, who retired in 2024 but is still commissioned as an emergency district judge.
The downstream impacts of that can be devastating, Vincent said—particularly in divorce and child custody cases, where families can be repeatedly disrupted, children pulled from one home to another, and child abuse and domestic violence become more likely as legal conflicts remain unresolved.
That’s why Vincent, inspired by a similar program in Wake County, worked with the Guilford County Board of Commissioners to create the Guilford County Legal Support Center. The first office opened at the High Point courthouse in July of last year, when the Guilford County Board of Commissioners allocated $544,000 in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to get it off the ground. Last week, a second location opened at the Guilford County Courthouse in downtown Greensboro.
The Greensboro center is open Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. While it can’t assist with criminal cases, it can help people handle their own civil cases, from family law to housing.
While it’s best to have an attorney, Vincent said, many people can’t afford that.
“I feel like that can be a real barrier to justice,” Vincent said. “We should do what we can to alleviate some of the barriers and some of the pitfalls, so we can get legal issues addressed as soon as we can address them. It’s a win-win.”
We caught up with Vincent, who was the first Black woman ever to serve as chief district court judge in Guilford County, ahead of last week’s opening of the Greensboro center. She talked with us about the impact programs of this type can have—and the ripple effects of people being unable to easily navigate the legal system.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
When I was a cops and courts reporter, I saw a lot of people try to represent themselves. It didn’t often go well for them. They were usually doing it because they couldn’t afford a lawyer. Whether it’s a criminal or a civil case, the stakes can be very high. But I take it you’ve seen programs like the Guilford County Legal Support Center help people alleviate some of that.
Exactly. When I learned about the facility in Wake County, I contacted the [Guilford] County Commissioners, and they said, ‘Well, let’s see.’ So they sent one of their representatives, Frankie Jones, who is also a lawyer but a county commissioner, with me to do a field trip. We went down there, and we both were just totally impressed.
This was not just a self-support center where you just go, and we have resources there, you get what you think you need, and then sometimes you come to court and find out that’s not what you really needed. It’s actually a support center. There’s a physical person present, so you can ask questions. You can make sure that you get the packets that you need that match up with your subject matter. Because we have pre-prepared packets that people can access to make sure that they have the documents that they need. And then, if they have questions as they’re filling them out, we have a person here that they can ask questions. They can’t give legal advice. But they can help with information.
A lot of litigants end up frustrated in court because they don’t know how to navigate the system. It’s very difficult for any layperson.
And we’re frustrated right along with them. Because we have to follow the law, and we’re supposed to be there to help. It’s frustrating for them, it’s frustrating for the judges, it’s frustrating for the attorneys. I think this will even help the lawyers, because sometimes you have one litigant that’s represented and one who isn’t.
You have a person that is a lawyer that’s representing a litigant. And you have somebody who has their paperwork done properly, and they’ve prepared; they’ve been paid. They’re ready to go, and their client is frustrated as well and needs some resolution. So, if that case can be moved that day, as opposed to kicking it down the road, it helps that lawyer as well. Because they’ve been able to satisfy their client’s’ wishes, their desires, their expectations. Because they have the expectation when they come to court, this is it. We’re going to get it resolved today. We’re going to move on, only to be told sometimes that we can’t do it today. We’re going to have to continue it, at a minimum, typically 30 days out.
Thirty days is a long time if you’re dealing with divorce cases, if you’re dealing with child custody. And it could be much longer. It could be continued repeatedly. The consequences of it not being resolved, and the instability that it can cause, can be serious.
That’s right. A whole month of dealing with these issues, these challenges that are still not addressed. People miss work. They miss school. Either parent might pick them up from school, and then you have disagreement about who should be doing that. You can’t discount the financial impact it has and the emotional trauma that kids are exposed to because of delays in having these cases heard.
So that’s the whole goal, that we want to minimize frustration, minimize stress, and alleviate delays or denials of justice. That’s what we’re supposed to be here for. We are supposed to be here to administer justice without delay, without denial, and with impartiality. So, in order to meet our constitutional mandate, I feel like we need to do our part. And this is just a part of the equation where I feel like we’re doing our part to help people help themselves in these situations.
You’re starting off with just one staff person, but I understand that you hope that, like Wake County’s center, it will grow.
Yes. We wanted to start small because you don’t want to overinvest. But our vision is that it will grow from one to two staff people and ultimately to partner with the law schools and with lawyers who want to do pro bono work. We have Elon Law, Wake Forest Law, and now High Point University has a law school. If we can partner with them, people can get hands-on help that will go even beyond what we’re providing now.
I would imagine that in addition to the benefit to the litigants, there’s the potential for a lot of benefit to the courts themselves.
Yes. We have a large percentage of self-represented litigants right now. So much that we set aside two days every month in civil court just for people that are representing themselves. When we were mixing the self-represented cases on days when there are cases where there are lawyers, we saw the cases getting dragged out, being behind on those cases, or getting bumped off the calendar because we couldn’t accommodate them. So hopefully, it will make the entire system more efficient to have people be more prepared coming in.
