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My first experience in a courtroom came before I went to college or law school. I was a young parent in a divorce case, scared and unprepared for what would happen when I walked through the doors of Lane County Circuit Court. I appeared before a judge who listened. He spoke clearly, without legal jargon, and as he explained his decision, he said words that gave me hope. I left knowing I had been heard and understood. More than that, I felt I had been treated fairly.
That experience stayed with me. It shaped not only how I think about justice, but why I became a lawyer in the first place. Since then, I have spent much of my career working with people who come to court on some of the hardest days of their lives: families in crisis, parents and children navigating painful change, domestic violence survivors trying to find safety and stability.
Again and again, I have worked with people trying to make decisions about children, housing, safety and the next shape of their family while under enormous stress. Through The Portia Project, I also worked with incarcerated women at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility who needed access to legal help and information.
In different settings, with different kinds of cases, I kept seeing the same thing: fairness is not abstract to the people who depend on the court. It can shape whether they leave feeling dismissed and lost or whether they leave understanding that the law heard them and took them seriously.
Of course, fairness is not the same thing as simply getting the result you want. Judges have a duty to follow the law, even when the outcome is difficult. But people also need a judge who is calm, prepared and careful, who explains the process clearly, listens before deciding and treats everyone in the courtroom with dignity and respect. That includes the people before the bench, but also jurors, witnesses, lawyers and family members whose lives may be deeply affected by what happens there.
A fair courtroom is one where people are heard, where proceedings are understandable and where the law is applied with consistency and care. It is a place where hard decisions may still be made, but where no one should feel belittled, brushed aside or left unable to follow what is happening.
That matters especially in family court. People often arrive carrying fear, grief, anger or confusion. Some have never been in a courtroom before. Some are trying to understand legal forms, deadlines and unfamiliar procedures while also managing children, work schedules, money problems, safety concerns and the strain of a life that may already feel as though it is coming apart. For some, even getting to court on time requires arranging childcare, missing work or asking for help they don’t want to ask for.
Judicial temperament matters in this setting. A fair courtroom does not erase conflict, and it cannot make every outcome painless. But it can make clear that the court is a place where people will be treated with seriousness, patience and respect.
I have seen how much that matters. When people are treated dismissively or leave confused about what happened, they may lose trust in the process, even if the legal ruling is correct. When proceedings are rushed or the human stakes are ignored, the court can feel remote from the lives it is supposed to serve. But when people are heard, when the process is clear and when their dignity is respected, the court can do what it is meant to do: help people move through conflict with the understanding that justice was administered fairly.
People may not be happy with the outcome when they leave court. In many cases, one side will not be. But they should leave knowing they were heard, that the process was clear and that their dignity mattered. That is what fairness feels like in the courtroom.
