Work Product Tool – Page 4 – Justice Innovation

Assisted Decision Making from Josh Blackman

Here is the presentation from today’s Stanford Law lunch, with law professor Josh Blackman discussing his startup to rival Pacer in distributing case information in a more usable way, with better ways to see relations between firms, judges, cases, companies, etc.

Assisted Decision Making from Josh Blackman

He also mentioned the possibility of developing a Siri, Attorney at Law, in which a non-lawyer could ask a simple question to their mobile phone: “My landlord won’t fix my heat, what should I do”. The phone would then suggest possible paths of action the non-lawyer could take: call tenant rights’ group; file a pro se suit against the landlord; find a lawyer; or compose a legal document complaining of the problem.

Blackman made the argument that these kinds of future legal tech could be an important means of access to justice — people could get solutions to their legal problems without the hassle and wait of going to a legal services office and waiting for help.

A2J Author for Non-Lawyers

Chicago-Kent Law School, out of its Center for Access to Justice & Technology, has started publishing A2J — Access to Justice apps.

A2J Author is a platform that lets non-tech specialists in the government, courts, and legal world to build websites & apps to let non-lawyers get more access — more easily — to the bureaucracy of the courts.

One instantiation is the A2J Guided Interview, which walks people who are representing themselves in court through the process. It takes them through a flowchart of decisions and tells them what papers they’ll need to assemble for court documents.

You can try it out if you want to pretend you are filing an “Application to Sue or Defend as an Indigent in Cook County, Illinois”. At the link, an online program to help you create the form to file this for free.