About me
Bonnie Rose Hough is a consultant on access to justice issues working with courts and legal services agencies. She retired in December 2022 as Principal Managing Attorney for the Center for Families, Children & the Courts of the Judicial Council of California where she worked for over 25 years to assist courts meet the needs of people who cannot afford counsel in civil cases. In that position, Bonnie managed over $125 million annually in funding for legal services agencies as well as for court-based, attorney supervised, self-help centers.
Bonnie managed a number of major research projects studying the impact of legal aid and self-help assistance. She is the editor of the Benchguide for Judicial Officers on Handling Cases Involving Self-Represented Litigants. She worked with an extraordinary team on the California Courts On-Line Self-Help Guide (www.selfhelp.courts.ca.gov), which contains thousands of pages of legal information and step by step guides in English and Spanish and is used by over 6 million people per year.
Bonnie was a founder of the Family & Children’s Law Center in Marin County and served as its executive director and lead attorney for six years. She attended the University of California, Law, San Francisco, and also holds a Masters of Public Administration. Before joining the Judicial Council, she practiced family law, providing both limited and full scope assistance to individuals with modest incomes.
She has received awards for her work from the California Judges Association, the Legal Aid Association of California, the Legal Services Funders Network, the California Access to Justice Commission, California Women Lawyers, and the National Self-Represented Litigation Network.
