Category: Training and Info

How do we train people on their rights, and how to be strategic legal actors?

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Ideabook Training and Info

Legal Go augmented reality legal ed game

A team from the Winkler Institute’s Justice Design 2016 class created a game Legal Go, inspired by Pokemon Go, but for learning law. It’s a way to train lay people on what the legal system is and how it works, through a mixture of in-person adventures and on-the-phone characters, challenges, and rewards.

Their description:

Inspired by the Pokémon Go phenomenon, Legal Go is augmented reality legal education game that makes learning about the legal system fun and interactive. As you wander the city you can complete missions that will help you build skills in empathy, understanding the legal process, finding legal and community services, and resources.*

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Training and Info

Know Your Rights App, Carteirada do Bem

One of my Brazilian students in my Prototyping Access to Justice class alerted me to a very cool app in Brazil, all about empowering people about their legal rights.

It’s called Carteirada do Bem. It’s a native app (on Android) and (on ioS) + a website. It is put out by the assembly of Rio di Janeiro.

It is an in-your-pocket tool for a citizen, to know what their legal rights are in a given situation. They can open the app, pick which domain their scenario is in (medical, at work, at a store, etc.). Then they can find the specific situation they’re in, and when they click on that — they get a quick, easy summary of what their rights are, and what ‘magic words’ they can say to assert the law.

Here’s a video of it in action.

And another video explaining it (for you Portugese speakers!).

The name of the app is a play on ‘badge for good’. Just like a police man can flash their badge to assert their legal authority, a person can pull out this app and flash the words and legal citation to assert their rights.

You can save common scenarios, to have them at the ready.

It’s a great model — one that I am exploring replicating for here in the US. Putting the essential law in people’s hands — in easy to use and easy to understand modes. Let me know what you think!

   

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Ideabook Procedural Guide Training and Info

“Magic” cards: essential info on a business card

Can we boil down all of the most essential things to know for a legal issue onto a business card?

We can list out What Not To Do, What to Say, What to Do, What to Expect. We could perhaps even diagram the procedure to expect.

The goal would be to give people a prep card that they can always have with them if they know a legal issue (like discrimination, arrest, family law problem, or something else) might crop up.

Or it could be for someone who is going through a legal process, and they need some help to remember where they are and what’s happening.

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Current Projects Integration into Community Training and Info

Street Law for ‘Know Your Rights’ training from Univ. of Georgia

University of Georgia has a Street Law program. It holds sessions to train people, especially young people, on legal topics. Much of their work is focused on how young people can understand the criminal justice system and the social services system, to be smart when navigating them.

Street Law UGA conducts community outreach geared primarily towards familiarizing youth about prevalent legal concerns and basic rights. Our student-run organization is designed to educate youth about practical law topics — “Street Law” —  and inspire youth to seek legal careers.  Street Law UGA focuses on educating minority and low income youth and inspiring youth from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the legal profession.

They have law students get off campus and into community placements. The goal is to have continuing relationships, to build a channel of expertise and relevant resources.

The law students are placed in middle and high schools, youth detention centers, independent living programs, and church youth groups.

The topics covered included the rights of an arrestee, the foster care system, dealing with a criminal record, what a crime is, etc.

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Current Projects Training and Info

Strategy Prep for “tough conversations”

Public legal education groups, including the Justice Education Society, in British Columbia have created online guides to help a person have difficult conversations.

They are particularly meant to resolve disputes before they become more problematic.

These give a small training in the mindsets and approaches a person can use to get to better outcomes. It’s not just the step-by-step of the process, it’s about changing lenses & strategies.

For example, here is the Negotiating a Solution resource. It provides overarching frameworks, priorities, and tips.

Good Legal Design out of British Columbia - Screen Shot 2015-10-04 at 9.10.58 PM

How to deal with ‘tough talks’ is available here at their site.Good Legal Design out of British Columbia - Screen Shot 2015-10-04 at 9.10.51 PM

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Current Projects Training and Info

Game-based simulation of court 

Source: A team at Northeastern Law

has been building a simulation game to help self-represented litigants prepare for their court appearance.

The sim­u­la­tion game is par­tic­u­larly tar­geted to the growing number of people who cannot afford legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and thus rep­re­sent them­selves in legal pro­ceed­ings ranging from evic­tions and mort­gage fore­clo­sures to child cus­tody pro­ceed­ings and debt col­lec­tion cases. Nation­ally, more than 80 per­cent of people with legal prob­lems must resolve them without the assis­tance of a lawyer. When a dis­pute lands in court, people without any legal training find them­selves addressing a judge, ques­tioning wit­nesses, and offering doc­u­ments into evidence.

The sim­u­la­tion game would let indi­vid­uals try out these kinds of expe­ri­ences in a vir­tual world before they appear in an actual court­room. It would ulti­mately be made avail­able online for free.

– See more at: http://www.northeastern.edu/camd/gamedesign/2014/09/25/simulation-game-people-prep-court/#sthash.aliE4ssc.dpuf

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Ideabook Training and Info

Street Law cartoon outreach

Legal Design Ideas - ideabook for access to justice - cartoon outreach around street law

Could we make gripping cartoon outreach posters — with basic primers on key points of law and legal services, that apply to people who are likely to be hanging out in a certain physical space?

This idea came up for Trafficking, in airports, bus terminals, and other places of transit. Could we have small illustrated stories or explainers about the law that applies, and what some cases’ storylines and outcomes are?

It will make the law seem more relevant, and also help people better understand what options and strategies are open to them.

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Ideabook Training and Info

Pre-Court Preparation Session

Orientation

When people are called into court — like a parent whose kids have ended up in the justice system, or like a person who gets called in to deal with a problem — could we prepare them in a better way?

Give them strategies?

Give them orientation about what the timelines and key things are?

Give them red flags about what to avoid?

Almost like a map and counselor to make sure they’re on track and not doing anything that harms their own case and outcomes?

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Ideabook Training and Info Work Product Tool

Interactive Online Workshops for legal tasks

Interactive Online Workshops for legal tasks
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.

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Ideabook Training and Info

Board Game guide for learning the law and thinking it through

Legal Design Projects - title cards - games of legal processes

Can we make navigators that are game-like, or make games that allow a person to do a prep-run of what an actual legal procedure will be like?

This concept came out of a workshop on improving immigration support. It was for a board game that a group could play together, to learn the scenarios and pathways of immigration law.

It would be a jumpoff point for questioning more about law, and thinking through how immigration rules could apply to him.