Boston Municipal Court Department

"From an architectural point of view, this building is a treat for the eyes. It is so beautiful and gracious; every point of view is amazing."

"Been calling for 3 days for family and probate, no answer for 3 days. SMH is this not a court house"

"Filed a case in MA and won it by default. The case was complex and plaintiff and defendant were in multiple states. The whole process was done vitally. The clerks are very helpful and always a phone call away. Easy and not stressful."

"Horrendous bureaucracy on all fronts. Needed to fix a typo in my name they made years earlier, had to go through entire "name change" process, including paying a couple hundred in fees, waiting over a year to get the paperwork (after it got rejected twice because the clerk missed some paperwork that was clearly in the file). Then, after I needed another copy, I had to come in again and wait 2+ hours in line for them to make a quick photocopy. Also (unrelated to above) needed to do an eviction through this court of a tenant who was clearly gaming the system (this was pre-COVID, so the current level of bureaucracy is probably even worse). This is the most inefficient court I've seen, which is not interested in doing the right thing, but in making people go away. Even on the day of the court hearing, they scheduled 200+ hearings on same day (not because they're understaffed, but because they only schedule these hearings on a Thursday once a month - I don't understand this dogmatic medieval ritualism, why not do these daily) and notified us that they don't expect to get through all of them. In the hallway, mediators notified us that they weren't even planning on doing the hearings that day and "encouraged" landlords to "settle" with the tenant to speed things up (this is after waiting 4+ months to make it to court to begin with). After this government-facilitated extortion, I was finally able to get the tenant out who was damaging my house, not paying rent, starting fights with neighbors, and retaliating to any requests to act like a human being with calls to ISD (usually to complain about damage that she and her boyfriend caused in another 3AM confrontation). I had a ton of evidence, letters from neighbors, and police calls. The court literally didn't care about any of it. This court is simply a corrupt machine for leeching your hard-earned money (whether it is to pay for artificial red tape they themselves create as in the first example or rewarding bad actors who game the system with money extorted from you)."

"I received paperwork to fill out from the clerk just after 4 PM. The clerk had knowledge that I was going to be filing the paperwork that I was filling out. I approached the clerks desk at 4:16 to be told that they had closed out for the day because they close out at 4:15. These are your public servants and this is how they treat you. Ironically I was there a filing against public servants miss treating the people."