Categories
Background

InfoCamp Redesign Law

I went to InfoCamp today at Berkeley with the intention of soaking up best practices and inventive ideas from User Experience Designers and Information Junkies at the School of Information. I did do that — but ended up putting together an impromptu 50 minute presentation /slash/ participatory design session /slash/ user research focus group all on Redesigning the Law. Endria, also a Stanford Law 3rd year, was my co-leader & instigator, along with San Ng, who is a fellow at the I-School and works in international development/law/technology on innovating justice.

InfoCamp Berkeley

We put together a short game plan for how to get an audience full of designers, information scientists, programmers, entrepreneurs, etc. interested in the Wicked Problems of Law — and convince them that they should come work with us on tackling Legal Problems & building Legal Solutions.

Redesigning Justice

Our opening gambit was to ask people:

  • How has law touched your life?
  • Have you ever had to hire a lawyer?
  • Have you ever used a legal document?
  • Have you ever had to go to court?
  • Have you ever looked up legal information online?

image

We were trying to learn ourselves, what are non-lawyers’ mental models of law — as well as their sentiments towards law, lawyers, and courts.  Answer: a handful of people have had “legal experiences”, several of which have been Confusing, Opaque, Difficult to Navigate, Without Clear Guidance, Overwhelming.  Some had business and corporate work done, or immigration assistance from their employers’ lawyers — and had fairly good experiences with lawyers (found by companies) who helped them out.

But when Endria asked what the first 3 words that came to their minds were, when the word Law came up, they were universally negative: Bureaucratic, Confusing, Opaque, Difficult, Boring, Expensive…

image

We moved from there to talk about the “Design Fails of Law”. We showed a House Bill about legalizing marijuana, and we showed a criminal Rap sheet on the overhead.  The reactions: confusing, unclear what the topic is, full of information I don’t care about, not prioritized, where is the table of contents, how can I know what the topic is? Here are some of the information that the Bill was missing, that the users wanted:

Infocamp Legal Design - How might we make law more accessible

So we had a 3 minute design challenge. We passed out pieces of blank white paper, and gave the room full of participants the chance to redesign the front page of the House Bill to make it more clear. Here are some of the results:

Redesigned Legal Bill Front Page Redesigned Legal Bill Front Page 2

We also got some takeaways about how we might redesign all kinds of public-facing legal documents — as well as other user research insights of interest:

image

  1. Documents should, on their face, provide glance-able, quickly navigable table of contents that will take you exactly where you need to go inside the pile of text
  2. If law-makers and lawyers won’t create usable documents, we need to train intermediaries to build usable interfaces on top of this legal output
  3. A bill or a law should have a front page that is Visual & Clean, featuring the information that users most want to know: what topics are talked about in this document (perhaps presented as tags), in particular: what changes does this bring from what was before, who is affected and who is not, what is the history/background/sponsor group for this.
  4. Legal knowledge might be better passed through channels that resemble peer and family networks, because users don’t trust lawyers or legal officials (bad reputations, as untrustworthy, unfriendly, and not-on-the-user’s-side).
  5. Law sounds BAD, Justice sounds GOOD.
  6. The Bay Area may be treated just like ‘developing countries’ would be: we should build micro-justice resources that help people here find legal resources and help, just like some international development bodies are doing in Kenya and Thailand.
  7. Users want lawyer reviews — they really want peer recommendations and data from courts & practices to be able to figure out what lawyer to use — this is a huge need.
  8. Legal redesigners should look to the medical field to see how the nurse-practitioner vs. doctor movement might help law to move forward in bringing non-lawyers (or, significantly less expensive and more user-friendly lawyers) into the delivery of legal counsel and support.
  9. Legal redesigners should find incentives to get people into the door for Preventative Legal Services — sign up for legal check-ins now, get discounts on legal services in the future? Force airport-goers, bus-riders, other random people to think about their legal futures?  Build law games that sneak legal reflection & knowledge into people’s every day lives.
  10. Law & governance redesigners need not just build better presentations of law, but figure out how to get people to care about law & government, to find their sites, to make the argument that Law Matters and You Should Participate in Your Government — Onboarding is more of a challenge than building beautiful interfaces.
  11. Stanford d.school & Law School need to collaborate with Berkeley’s I.School & Law School to build a legal redesign program — that can convince developers, engineers, information scientists, designers, and more to come work with us on building incremental solutions to all these challenges.

And with all those insights, time to move forward to start playing with them and figuring out how to make some awesome stuff that takes on these challenges and addresses these needs!

Infocamp2-001

Categories
Advocates Ideabook

An Angie’s List for Lawyers

I have heard from a few people that they want an Angie’s List for Lawyers — a service they are willing to pay for, to get quality, real, vetted reviews of lawyers in the area.  I decided to seek out some user research, from blog posts and other Internet discussions, to see what this ‘Angie’s List for Lawyers’ discourse is all about.

angieslist

Here are some queries on Angie’s List itself.

Speaking as someone who logged in today to try to find an attorney, I see this category as one that’s exactly what I have my Angie’s List membership for:

1. It’s important that I find a good one
2. I’m not an expert enough to know myself who is a good one
3. The industry is full of advertisements and misinformation
4. I wish I knew what experiences other people have had

This points out the scope of the need.  Some users find it very hard to navigate the (limited) information available about attorneys online and in other communications.  They want to hear recommendations of others.  They want to make a good investment — and feel that the choice is a very important one — but fear going down a wrong path.  Importantly, they (or at least this user) is aware of the limits of their knowledge about law, and want to defer to those who have more expertise.

Some more discussion from another user on the site:

I was truly confused as to why Angies List does not provide a category for legal professionals. I was thinking of signing up because I needed a good lawyer and when I noticed that they dont provide such a category, I called them. They claim that they do not want to list attorneys because the services provided by attorneys cannot be effectively rated. I highly disagreed. People go to attorneys for specific help (i.e. file for bankruptcy, real estate closings, divorces, etc.) and the services that the attorney provides to the person (i.e. timeliness, cost, professionalism, promises, knowledge, etc.) can easily be rated. I am not going to pay a monthly fee for this service if it doesnt include all areas that someone needs help with. What I mean is, whats the point for paying a monthly fee for this site if I could find a plumber but need to pay another site to find an attorney. It should be all in one site. Really, there reasons for not having attorneys make no sense, and they should be added.

This shows the resistance of Angie’s List to jump into legal service ratings.  Obviously there are some legal and quality dynamics behind the scenes, and Angie’s List feels it’s better not to take on the risks and difficulties of rating lawyers.  But the user need is still there…

Another quote from the same site.

I think rating attorneys would be a very valuable service. I’m a middle aged woman that has many young adults come to me for advice. When I’m asked how they can find a good attorney I just hang my head and sadly tell them that they have to talk around. Hopefully they can get a free interview. This has not always been good advice and is not always possible depending upon their situation. If there was a resource to go to where an individual could read about previous experiences of the services provided by an attorney, it would be a great asset. In my mind, Angie’s List is a prime place for this kind of referral

And another, scouting out what a legal problem situation looks like…

Legal services are one of those things:

(1) that you use only occasionally,

(2) that you’ve GOT to get good consumer information about beforehand to avoid disaster, and

(3) that it’s almost impossible to research effectively without a big network of family, friends, and colleagues.

In other words, it’s perfect for Angie’s List!

I got lucky a few weeks ago, finding an attorney to help an elderly friend with a housing problem, but I’ll be needing a completely different kind of lawyer in a few months for a house sale – so here’s hoping Angie’s List gets this category up and running FAST.

Here is some pushback from another poster on the same site — that makes some points on why reviews are hard and may be misleading — and so there should not be an Angie’s List style of referral.

It is difficult to rate attorneys because not only are there a lot of them, but there are as many specialties as there in the medical field. That said, it’s not that it can’t be done or that reviews don’t exist. Most County Bar Associations, such as Dallas County Bar Association, will have an Attorney Referral Program. The good part about it is that they will set you up with an attorney, and for $20 (unless it’s changed), you get 30 minutes of an attorney’s time. Sometimes that is all you need, sometimes you will decide to work with that attorney, sometimes that attorney will know a colleague who will be a better fit, or you can go back to the Bar Association and ask for another referral. This is a low risk way to get started.

Another difficulty with rating attorneys is that they can be rated on several aspects including legal expertise, absence of Bar complaints, bedside manner, how their practice is set up, how many “wins”, etc. Sometimes a non-lawyer isn’t even sure what kind of lawyer they need and may be barking up the wrong attorney tree, so to speak. (Another good reason to contact the county’s Bar Association where you live or where the disputed transaction/conduct took place. Anyone rating a lawyer, like other ratings here, will be doing so as much on subjective expections and win/loss rather than the true compentency and professionalism of the attorney. If I need a trial lawyer to take my case to trial, I’d be less concerned about his bedside manner and more with how he/she does in the court room. (A bit like how I don’t care how nice my surgeon is as long as he/she is the best cutter in the field.) However, if I need a tax lawyer, family lawyer, or estate lawyer, for example, my relationship with the lawyer may require more contact, and I would want to know not only about competency, reputation, ethics, costs, but also whether there is a fit, I feel comfortable, I trust I will be dealt with in a manner to which clients are entitled, among other things. These factors can all vary depending on whether the firm is small, medium or large.

It is best, if possible, to meet with several attorneys. There are a number of ratings sites on the web, but there is not one single site of which I’m aware that can truly encompass all aspects of whether an attorney is right for you. However, looking at these various sites can be a good start of what to look for and where to go. For any name you find or get, you will want to go to the website of State Bar of Texas (or whatever state is involved) and check to see that the lawyer and/or the law firm is in good standing. There’s more, but that’s a quick overview.

Interesting about this last quote: though the user is writing saying that there should NOT be a review site for lawyers, in the 2nd to last paragraph, s/he seems to lay out a set of factors that a Lawyer Rating site could be compiling and creating a wonderful, accurate, reliable rating score for a lawyer.  It could be an adjustable rating, based on the size of the practice, the type of practice, and the type of case.

Out of these user needs, an outline of a product may be coming together — not exactly like Angie’s List — but accomplishing ‘the trusted reviews of expert professional’ that are so in demand…

Categories
Advocates Current Projects

Legal Force: for Main Street law

image

image

image

Usable law design from Legal Force, in the quick snapshot handouts it provides passersby at it store in Palo Alto.

Categories
Ideabook Wayfinding and Space Design

Redesigning the Courthouse?

image

At Georgia Tech’s school of architecture, they are investigating the physical design of the courthouse experience.

Categories
Advocates Current Projects

Apps to Manage Lawyers

Open Law Lab - viewabill - app to manage lawyer

Here’s an article by Jennifer Smith in the Wall Street Journal on new crops of apps that help clients find and monitor lawyers.  It mentions Viewabill (tracking how much their lawyers are charging them, in real-time); Rocket Lawyer’s mobile app (create basic legal documents and buy plans for low-cost access to advice); Attorney Proz (lists area lawyers, who have paid to be listed); Ask a Lawyer (ask lawyers in Kalamzoo about basic legal questions and get free answers to your e-mail); and soon to be a LegalZoom app.

Now that people use apps to bank, order food and even monitor eBay auction bids, it was only a matter of time before they called in the lawyers.

Appearing in app stores are programs to help people keep track of their attorneys’ bills, draft legal documents and locate nearby lawyers.

Attorneys are doing more work on smartphones and tablets, and they have a whole host of apps at their disposal to help look up case law, track client calls and even assist with depositions and jury selection.

But until recently, few options existed for clients who wished to track cases or seek advice using mobile devices. This new crop of apps aims to add transparency, and a measure of convenience, to the process.

One new app, Viewabill, lets people track how much their lawyers are charging them in real-time. The idea is to head off sticker shock when business owners and company lawyers open up their monthly bills.

The app acts as kind of a client nanny-cam. It captures information as law firms enter it into their billing systems and transmits it to clients’ mobiles and desktops. Users select how often they want to get updates, set alerts pegged to certain dollar thresholds and can mark questionable items. The app can also be used to track hours logged by accountants and other professional service providers.

The app is now being used by a handful of companies and law firms on a beta basis, with a wider launch planned this month, said Florida-based entrepreneur David Schottenstein, who co-founded the enterprise with an attorney friend, Robbie Friedman. Firms would pay an annual cost of $25 to $40 per matter, depending on volume, or $25,000 for unlimited use, said Mr. Schottenstein.

Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 1.00.56 PM

“It helps them to understand what we do,” said Brian Baker, a bankruptcy lawyer at Ravin Greenberg LLC in New Jersey, which has been testing the app.

Errol Feldman, general counsel for JPay Inc., a Florida company that provides payment transfers and other services to inmates at corrections facilities, has been using Viewabill to make sure firms working to resolve contract disputes do so in a timely fashion.

Legal consultant Susan Hackett said the app was the latest example of a push for greater communication between lawyers and clients, who increasingly want more involvement in the work they assign to outside law firms.

Some companies with big in-house legal departments have already invested in software programs that let clients track the progress of legal matters or monitor law firm bills from their desktop computers. Such systems don’t come cheap, and not many clients use them yet—fewer than 20% of general counsel, according to a 2011 poll by the Association of Corporate Counsel.

Not all law firms may welcome the additional element of client control on the legal side of things. For Viewabill to work, for instance, lawyers have to enter their hours in a timely fashion.

“These technologies may scare people,” Ms. Hackett said. “But they are all productive parts of the march towards clients and lawyers having conversations in real time.”

This month online legal services company Rocket Lawyer Inc. is debuting a mobile app tailored to its customer base: consumers and small business owners who log on to the site to create basic legal documents or buy plans that provide low-cost access to legal advice.

Charley Moore, Rocket Lawyer’s founder and executive chairman, said more site traffic is coming from tablets and smartphones these days, reflecting his customers’ increasingly mobile bent. Many are small business owners who spend much of their time on the road, he said.

“Their office is their dashboard, so we have to deliver the tools,” Mr. Moore said.

Customers can use the app to create a non-disclosure agreement (more forms will soon be available) or modify existing documents they have already created. The app itself is free, and users can access some functions gratis.

Users can also locate nearby attorneys from Rocket Lawyer’s network—the app is integrated with Google GOOG +0.53% Maps—and punch in basic legal questions, although the reply, which is supposed to arrive within one business day, may not be swift as some might hope.

A handful of other apps offer similar services. Attorney Proz also lists area lawyers, who pay to be included. Ask a Lawyer, an app linked to Kalamazoo, Mich., law firm Willis Law, also offers free answers to basic legal questions, with replies sent to users’ email addresses.

Not to be outdone, online legal services company LegalZoom.com Inc., a Rocket Lawyer competitor, also has an app in the works, a company spokeswoman said.

A version of this article appeared March 11, 2013, on page B5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Apps Help Find Lawyers, And Keep an Eye on Them.

Categories
Current Projects

Law Schools’ Access to Justice programs

Open Law Lab - Access to Justice DOJ

A USDOJ report on Law Schools’ Access to Justice programs:meaning, what pro bono & public service offerings the schools have.

The report allows schools to present what offerings they have, but it is a more a spotlight on programs, and less a detailed or critical summary of what’s working & what’s not.

Overall, it’s a nice school-by-school summary, but still a little too short and self-reported to be fully useful.

The description:

At the October 13 Champions of Change event, Stanford Law Professor Deborah Rhode noted that it is a “shameful irony that the country with the highest concentration of lawyers in the world does such an abysmal job of ensuring that they are available for the vast majority of low-income people who need them, and whose needs are greatest.”  When millions of people in the United States cannot get legal help that is often critical to their wellbeing and freedom, all parts of the legal profession need to be engaged to address the crisis.  There is no better place to begin than when future lawyers are at the very start of their careers – when they are still in law school.

Champion Martha Bergmark, President of the Mississippi Center for Justice, noted with some envy that when she was in law school, clinics were only just beginning.  But as most Champions observed on October 13, times have changed and law schools now offer a wide range of opportunities for students to learn about legal issues involving poverty and equal justice, and get hands-on experience helping victims of domestic violence, or people with a criminal record get a second chance, or provide defender services for Native Americans.

What are law schools really offering?  The U.S. Department of Justice Access to Justice Initiative asked participating law schools to discuss how they are institutionalizing their commitment to pro bono and public service.  They were asked to address two questions: 1) What is your school doing to support a public service ethic in every student?; and 2) What new public service opportunities are you offering in the 2011-12 academic year?

Categories
Background

Access to justice, the problem

Margaret Hagan - twin crisis access to justice

A drawing I had made during the Law Without Walls conference, based on a great passing comment…

Categories
Dispute Resolution Ideabook

Online Mediation: what might it look like?

I am on a design team, working on how to redesign the small claims mediation & family mediation (that now would occur offline, in a court house, in a room with a mediator and the parties) into an online experience.

My team interviewed a mediator who has expertise in these offline mediations — these are my notes & insights.

Green: possible failpoints, where a mediation could go wrong online.

Yellow: best practices she recommends.

Red Pink: insights into how mediations work & what the stakeholders want.

Bright Pink: miscellaneous comments.

Stay tuned — we are moving towards mocking up basic flows and interfaces for an online mediation experience…

Categories
Current Projects

Law Kiosk in action

Back in 2004, the Legal Services Corporation sponsored a law kiosk for an “online legal service center” on Navajo territory in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.  Read an article from back when it was debuted.  It meant to deliver access to justice, specifically for consumer and tax law.

“DNA Peoples Legal Services installed computer kiosks throughout the 25,000 miles of Navajo and Hopi Nations located in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico through a Technology Initiative Grant from Legal Services Corporation. These web-based kiosks connect to the Internet via satellite and DSL allowing users to access legal information through either spoken instructions delivered in English, Hopi or Navajo or written instructions in English. To further increase accessibility, DNA created custom graphic icons to help clients navigate the website. These touch-screen kiosks, installed in each of its nine offices located on or near Hopi and Navajo reservations, provide information through DNA’s internal web server on issues such as Consumer Law, Tax Law, Trash and Recycling, and information on free income-tax seminars. These kiosks allow DNA People’s Legal Services to better serve these Southwestern Native American communities, which spans across an immense geographical area. 

DNA Legal Services was supplied by a kiosk company, NBG Solutions.  A 2002 article from Portland’s Business Journal gave more explanation to the project.

DNA is a nonprofit agency providing free civic legal services to low-income people in its service areas—which happen to cover Navajo and Hopi reservations.

DNA was awarded a technology grant by the Legal Service Corp. to find an innovative way to deliver legal services to clients spread over a vast area— more than 25,000 square miles—with a very small staff.

DNA’s task is challenging: to provide help with legal chores such as name changes, simple divorces and guardianships.

The help is sorely needed. Much of the population in DNA’s service area is under-educated, and poor enough to lack such basic amenities as a phone in the home, let alone a computer.

Language is also an issue for DNA’s clients. “Most of our clients don’t speak or read English,” said Chris O’Shea Heydinger, director of development and information technology for DNA.

“They certainly don’t read in their native languages,” an accomplishment that is limited only to university graduates who pursue the study of Native American languages as an academic subject. Neither Navajo nor Hopi was codified as a written language until the mid-20th century.

A technological solution of some sort was required, rather than simply offering stacks of self-help brochures at DNA offices, precisely because written materials would be no help at all to most clients.

DNA’s answer, built by NBG Solutions, is a kiosk equipped with a touch-screen web browser that can be navigated using custom-designed icons supplied by DNA—for example, a traditional hogan (Navajo house) denoting the home page, and an arrowhead denoting “back” or “forward.”

With the kiosks already delivered and waiting, DNA is in the last stages of designing its web site to deliver spoken information in Navajo or Hopi, depending on where the kiosk is located.

Clients will be able to navigate the graphics-intensive web site to the services they need, and will be able to listen to instructions in their native language, then print out forms as they need them.

The web site, “a labor of love,” according to Heydinger, will go live in April.

The kiosks will be connected to the internet via satellite, because the reservations are so far from the internet backbone.

Categories
Ideabook

Online Dispute Resolution in British Columbia

Open Law Lab - ODR in Canada

Canada — in particular British Columbia — has been the leading light in using online tools for providing dispute resolution to citizens.  They have found most success in small property & zoning disputes, and also with consumer protection cases.

They have done some empirical research and found that people in family law disputes actually DO want online tools in their disputes. Particular use has been found in divorce settlements, dividing up joint property.

The court there is also considering building a full scale online tribunal.

B.C. plans to create the first-ever tribunal in Canada that offers a full array of online tools to allow British Columbians to solve common strata and small civil claims outside of courts, Minister of Justice and Attorney General Shirley Bond announced today.

If passed, the Civil Resolution Tribunal Act will create an independent tribunal offering 24/7 online dispute resolution tools to families and small business owners as a speedy and cost-effective alternative to going to court. The tribunal would address disputes by providing parties with information that may prevent disputes from growing and resolve disputes by consent or, where necessary, by an independent tribunal hearing. Resolving a dispute through the tribunal is expected to take about 60 days, compared to 12 to 18 months for small claims court.

Giving families alternatives to seeking solutions in court is among the B.C. government’s justice reform initiatives to achieve efficiencies and deal with growing resource pressures. The February 2012 Green Paper, Modernizing British Columbia’s Justice System, identified tribunals as a simple and less expensive solution to easing delays in the court system.