Justice Innovation
What if we had more legal services that provided people in crisis with empathy? It might be in the form of someone to listen to their story and engage them in conversation. It might be a computer algorithm that gives a sense of conversation and attention. It might be with small interventions in the typical court, legal aid, or lawyer processes that make people feel more ‘listened to’ and ‘understood’.
What if every person had a lawyer that was closely related to them, that was responsible for advising them and keeping them legally healthy, and dealing with any problem that arises for them.
Could we build a smart system inside courthouses that provide Internet access, connections to printing/copying, and electrical power for all those who need to be computer-connected while doing their business in the court?
What if legal aid groups banded together, to make their office, software, services, and other purchases together? If they buy in bulk and together, they can negotiate better prices, licenses, and other terms. A platform could bring these groups together to make smarter decisions (based on the wisdom of the group, so that each group doesn’t have to relearn the space or redo the negotiations). It can also save them money and time, and get more favorable conditions.
This idea came out of the Florida 2015 Legal Aid Summit, and was a finalist for the awards.
Could we take the workshops that self-help centers already run in person, and make online versions of them to get wider distribution? To people who can’t travel to self-help centers or need it during weekends or evenings? If we package up the guides into more usable formats, we can help amplify their impact.
What if we made templated, user-tested Cover Sheets to all legal tasks (whether it’s filling out forms or going through a procedure) so that people have great introductions and orientations to the task before being asked to do it?
Talking to Bonnie Hough of the California Judicial Council last week, she recommended checking out several great projects coming out of Canada — specifically British Columbia — for inspiration about how courts can be more user-friendly. Many of them are efforts of the Justice Education Society, which is a public-oriented organization that is developing new tech tools & new user-oriented approaches to delivering legal services.
One example is the Small BC platform online. It is an online dispute resolution system to at least get a person started with filing the forms & tackling the process to resolving a small claim.
Notice also the lady in the bottom right corner — she’s a virtual assistant who speaks in a friendly, conversational way to tell you what the site has to offer and get you started with using the services.
This page gives you the two main options they have to help you recover your claim — giving you a diagramatic view of what each has to offer & what you can start doing now. It’s action-oriented as well as informative.
Inspired by the civic technology project CityVoice, that lets any person call up to leave a voice message about a problem they’re experiencing with their city government or infrastructure — can we provide a similar feedback loop in court and legal services?
What if people in the legal system had ways to give their feedback, so that the courts, lawyers, and other professionals could improve their services based on user experience metrics?
The metrics could be:
– comprehensibility
– accessibility
– ease of use
– sense of fairness
– positivity/negativity of experience
This is a simple feedback card — a piece of paper — from Uniqlo, a clothing store. Could we use these cards along with SMS text lines, phone voice lines, a visual ideas board, or other ways to gather user input into what their baseline current experience is, and what they would prefer.
At courts, at community centers, at libraries, at cafes — can we have interactive boards full of resources and services that people could access?
Using a large touch screen, a court or clinic could have a Triage screen, a Resources Screen, or a Directions Screen. People could come up to ask a question or find resources.
The person could jump to the most relevant content — making it a more personalized experience, and to have an interactive experience akin to a human-to-human one.