Sujean Park is not big on fanfare.

Self-effacing and soft-spoken, she has quietly labored for more than two years in a little-traveled corner of Sacramento's federal courthouse to make an oversized load of prisoner lawsuits less burdensome to judges on the eastern side of California.

Her cover was blown when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals bestowed an honor on her.

Park was chosen by the circuit's Judicial Council, the governing body of federal courts in nine Western states and two Pacific island jurisdictions, to receive the 2011 Robert F. Peckham Award for excellence in alternative dispute resolution. The award bears the name of a now-deceased chief judge in the San Francisco-based Northern District of California, who helped pioneer means other than trials to resolve legal disputes.

Since her arrival in 2009, Park has been responsible for developing resources to assist the Sacramento-based Eastern District of California in dealing with the unusually large number of people representing themselves, primarily in lawsuits they have initiated.

Most of them – called pro se litigants – are inmates in state and federal prisons located within the sprawling district, which stretches from the Tehachapi range on the south to the Oregon border on the north and from the coastal mountains on the west to the Nevada border on the east.

The district is home to 19 of California's 33 adult prisons, housing nearly 70 percent of the state's prisoner population. Prisoner lawsuits have consistently given the district the highest caseload per judge in the nation – approximately 1,200.

These suits are mainly challenges to the plaintiffs' convictions or claims that the plaintiffs' civil rights have been violated since entering prison.

Prisoner petitions constitute nearly 54 percent of the district caseload, far exceeding a district's more typical 10 percent.

Park is credited with revitalizing the Eastern District's pro bono program, where an unpaid attorney represents someone who would otherwise be forced to proceed without counsel. She has more than doubled, to 235, the number of attorneys who are making themselves available for these court-appointed assignments.

She has also significantly expanded the use of alternative dispute resolution in prisoner cases, including drafting court papers, making arrangements for settlement conferences, and promoting live conferences at prisons and via closed-circuit video.

"It's tough sometimes to match an attorney willing to take a pro bono case with a prisoner," Park said. "So we offer limited-purpose appointments; maybe the attorney just handles the settlement, or just helps draft a complaint. We have a videoconferencing pilot, where we'll use three experienced mediators who take five cases each. We're trying everything to see what is effective."

Park has worked closely with faculty members at the McGeorge School of Law to establish a mediation clinic on prisoner rights. Students staff the clinic, collect information about a case, prepare a pre-conference memorandum and participate as co-mediators.

As a result of her notable success, Park has been put in charge of all the court's alternative dispute resolution programs, including its voluntary dispute resolution program available in civil cases without a pro se party.

"It's the best job I've ever had," said Park in an interview. "It's the most rewarding, for sure. It's so satisfying to see the legal and academic communities step up to help people who really need help."

When she started, Park recalled, she was told, "Here's a new program. Make something of it." Hers is the only position like it in the entire circuit.

"I was really scared, but the judges have been there for me," she said. "Their support and guidance are invaluable."

She credits U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller – then a magistrate judge and supported by U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr. – with lobbying the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for her office's funding. She works closely with U.S. Magistrate Judge Kendall J. Newman, who oversees her operation.

"He's very involved, very hands on," she said. "He makes the big decisions and participates in the training" of volunteer attorneys.

In the Sacramento division of the Eastern District, all cases with a pro se party are assigned to a magistrate judge.

Park, 34, was born in South Korea but moved with her parents to the United States the next year. She grew up in Orange County, earned an undergraduate degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a master's in business administration and a law degree, both from Pepperdine University.

Immediately before taking the federal court position, she spent a year and a half at the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, first as compliance counsel in connection with a long-running class-action lawsuit over the rights of parolees, and then as a labor-relations attorney.

Park passed the state's bar exam in 2004 and went to work for a Fair Oaks plaintiffs' personal injury firm. She's been in the area ever since, having seen, as she said, "how great it was."

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