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The most recent episode of Sidebar, a podcast from the New Jersey State Bar Association, features a conversation with Victoria Pratt, former chief judge of the Newark Municipal Court.
Pratt attracted international attention after her work in in New Jersey’s first community courtroom – Newark Community Solutions – was the subject of an article in The Guardian. She later recorded a TED Talk entitled “How Judges Can Show Respect.”
On the TED site alone, Pratt’s talk has garnered more than 1.1 million views. Millions more views have been logged on Facebook, YouTube and other sites. Pratt speaks about practicing procedural justice, an approach that aims to increase public trust in the system by showing those who come through the courtroom respect, giving them an opportunity to speak and better understand the process.
Pratt just finished up a one-year appointment at Rutgers Law School and has been asked to speak on procedural justice in jurisdictions across the country and around the world. She is now the principal of her own consulting firm, Pratt Lucien Consultants.
Our conversation with Pratt talks more about procedural justice, how both judges and attorneys can practice the principles, why people respond to it, and what going viral has meant to her.
You can subscribe to Sidebar through iTunes by going to http://bit.ly/NJStateBarSidebar, or stream the episodes through Soundcloud at soundcloud.com/njsbasidebar. You can also listen through your web browser by hitting play on the embedded audio at the top of this page.