3,122 informal hearings in 2013

An estimated 1-2 months to schedule and attend a hearing

An average of 45-60 minutes for a traffic violation informal hearing

1,320 cases reviewed online

$218,690 collected

In person hearings reduced by ~100 hearings/month across 6 dockets

Online cases close more quickly and close with less staff handling time. Additionally, 14A has been able to speed up revenue collection as a result of closing cases sooner.

Prior to Matterhorn, people would often schedule a formal hearing if they were unsatisfied with the outcome of their informal hearing. One important and unexpected result for the court is that fewer people now request formal hearings. Most people accept the court’s online decision, even when it is not in their favor.

Do the same work in

<20%

of the time.

Resolve cases

72%

faster

Get paid sooner

94%

paid in thirty days

Increase Public Access and Customer Satisfaction

Serve the missing

39%

The public also appreciates their benefits. Over 90% said they found the website easy-to-use and said they understood the status of their case throughout the online process.

Thirty-nine percent of people who used the system said they would otherwise not have been able to come to court. Through offering online ticket and warrant resolution with Matterhorn, District 14A has expanded access to justice by 64%.

“It was very easy to use especially seeing I was going out of town.”

“It did save me from missing a half-day of work, so that was good!”

See improvements in your traffic and minor infraction resolution results with online adjudication and plea negotiation:

Half the schedule: your days to case closure cut to 50%
30 times fewer defaults: the proportion of cases that default is cut from 15% to 0.5%
80% less staff time: And while your case volume is rising slightly overall, your staff time spent on routine hearings and procedures is cut to 20% of what it was.

This could be your court.

Ticket and Minor Infraction Resolution Results

All Matterhorn solutions are rigorously evaluated against key court and performance metrics, including:

• Public participation
• Time and cost savings of courts
• Case closure times
• Time to payment
• Default rates
• Feedback from court personnel
• Feedback from citizens

Analysis of these measures, both at the individual court level—as well as across the full spectrum of aggregated court data—reveals significant and positive outcomes for each of the metrics.

The outcomes below come from a study of six courts in Michigan who use Matterhorn online ticket and minor infraction resolution. Need more? See the results other courts have achieved.

Public participation in Matterhorn has consistently exceeded expectations in both rural and urban settings. The public has actively engaged in Matterhorn online dispute resolution from day one. This demonstrates that people are not only willing to use an online system to access the court, and in many cases, they may actually prefer to do so.

Times to case closure have been significantly reduced for courts using Matterhorn—from an average of 50 days before Matterhorn to just 14 days after implementation. But this reduction extends beyond the cases processed through the Matterhorn platform. On average, courts experience a reduction in time to close all cases, even for non-Matterhorn cases, from 50 days before launch to 34 days after.

Public participation online saves court resources.

With Matterhorn, court staff spend less time on administrative tasks and related hearing time for cases handled online. For example, Matterhorn has saved one court 130 minutes of combined staff time per hearing, cutting total time to 27 minutes from 157.

Most importantly, staff can focus on issues that need more of their attention.

Other parties benefit, too: law enforcement officers spend less time in court and more time in the community. Members of the public no longer need to take time off work, secure childcare, or find a way to get to court. That means time and cost savings for them too, and a leveling of access for people who have the hardest time getting to court.

Courts using Matterhorn also benefit from an increase in court capacity. Data reveal that as the number of cases “heard” online increases, the overall number of cases courts process rises as well. Furthermore, courts are able to handle these additional cases without increasing their staff.

In addition, time to payment has been substantially reduced for Matterhorn cases. Prior to Matterhorn, these courts had never approached 100% collection of fines. Using Matterhorn, on average courts collected 92% of fines in just 30 days—compared to only 51% before implementation. That's an 80% improvement.

And within 90 days, 99% of fines are collected through Matterhorn. With an ability-to-pay assessment included at the initiation of Matterhorn cases, citizens are able to begin a payment plan at the onset of their case and pay off their court obligations sooner.

Fewer than 2% of cases heard online through Matterhorn default, compared to rates ranging from 13 to 37% for cases that don’t go online. The system has a configurable ability-to-pay “smart” assessment that courts can use to evaluate and develop an optimal payment plan or alternative penalty—when needed.