Knake on Democratizing Legal Education

Professor Renee Newman Knake of Michigan State University and the ReInventLaw Lab has posted Democratizing Legal Education, forthcoming in Connecticut Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

Millions of Americans lack representation for their legal problems while thousands of lawyers are unemployed. Why? Commentators and academics offer a range of answers to this question, from economic factors to regulatory constraints. Whatever the root cause, clearly a massive delivery problem exists for personal legal services. Most individuals simply do not realize when a lawyer might be necessary or helpful. This Article, written at the invitation of the Connecticut Law Review for their Volume 45 Symposium entitled “Are Law School’s Passing the Bar? Examining the Demands and Limitations of the Legal Education Market,” suggests that democratizing legal education — i.e., systematically providing basic information about how to access legal services to the general public — offers a solution to the unmet need for those services, as well as to the unemployment crisis among the legal profession more broadly. Law schools have an important role to play in this effort. This article offers three recommendations.

The recommendations are:

First, law schools can fuel innovation in new markets and in methods for delivery, thereby leading to greater public awareness of legal services. Second, schools and regulators should work together to reduce the cost and time involved in training and licensing for lawyers who desire to engage in limited practice areas that are underserved, such as housing, domestic relations, and child custody. Third, law schools should educate the public about law, lawyers, and legal services through programs that also enhance student learning.

More white papers from Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice, in Harvard JOLT

Several white papers from the 2012 Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice have been published as Occasional Papers by Harvard Journal of Law & Technology:

• John M. Greacen and William L. Jones: Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice: Analytical Framework
• Stephanie Kimbro: Using Technology to Unbundle in the Legal Services Community
• Marc Lauritsen: A Decision Space for Legal Service Delivery
• Susan Ledray: Virtual Services Whitepaper
• Richard Zorza: Preliminary Thoughts on Blue Sky Technology Driven Access and Decision Systems

HT @LSCtweets

Technology Improving Access to Legal Information in Developing Countries

The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law has posted Smart ways to deliver the legal information people really need, at the HiiL Insights blog:

This post describes a number of recent technological and process innovations that are increasing access to justice in developing nations.

Among the innovations and resources covered are:

• Joyce Hakmeh‘s work on Legal information building and sharing in the Arab world
• Online legal document assembly services, like LegalZoom
• SMS-based legal information services such as Frontline SMS Legal
• “Microjustice” projects such as Microjustice Kenya

McDonald on Client-Centered Innovation in Access to Justice

Sean Martin McDonald, JD, MA, of FrontlineSMS and FrontlineSMS:Legal has posted The Future of Law is No Field of Dreams, at the Innovating Justice Blog.

He writes:

By including user input in the evolution of legal services, we can overcome the practical barriers to access, reaching billions of new clients and fulfilling the promises of equality made in our constitutions, treaties, and oaths.

For more information, please see the complete post.

Mr. McDonald discusses this topic at greater length in his VoxPopuLII post entitled Law in the Last-Mile: The Potential of Mobile Integration into Legal Services.

Abstracts and Archived Tweets for CLARITY 2012: Conference on Plain Language and Law

Abstracts, archived tweets (in .csv format), and the program are available, for CLARITY 2012: Conference on Plain Language and Law, which was held 21-23 May 2012, in Washington, DC.

The conference hashtag was #clarity2012.

The conference was co-hosted by Clarity, the international plain-legal language association; Scribes —- The American Society of Legal Writers; and the Center for Plain Language.

Barendrecht, Verdonschot, et al., Towards Basic Justice Care for Everyone: Trend Report, Part 1

Professor Dr. Maurits Barendrecht, Jin Ho Verdonschot, LL.M., M.Phil., and colleagues of The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL) have published Towards Basic Justice Care for Everyone: Trend Report, Part 1 (2012).

The report describes barriers to access to justice for many citizens of law-income countries, and describes new approaches to overcoming those barriers, including the following:

• [...] New technologies and organisational masterpieces, often coming from the IT sector, can be adopted. eBay resolves 60 million consumer disputes each year, using an online platform where mediators or adjudicators can log in if their help is needed. A programme lead by entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani issues ID’s based on iris scans to 20 million Indian residents each month. Legalzoom.com has a profitable business in legal documents online. Legal expenses insurance companies solve a great number of conflicts effectively. These innovations attract a huge amount of clients and work in many different legal settings.
• Innovative judges, lawyers, helpdesks and web platforms reinvented legal information. Instead of abstract, Napoleon-like codes, they offer new standards for settlements (for child support, damages schedules, etc.) and step by step guidelines for resolving issues. [...]

This report was the subject of a conference entitled Innovating Justice Forum 2012, held 16-17 in The Hague. New information discussed at the conference is to be described in Part 2 of the report.

For more information, please see the HiiL Website, or Innovating Justice: Platform for Rule of Law Solutions.

HT @JinHoV.

Kirchberger on Law as an App

Christine Kirchberger, Esq., LL.M., M.L.I.T., junior lecturer and doctoral candidate at Stockholm University Department of Law‘s Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute (IRI), has posted Law as an App, on her blog entitled iinek’s blog.

The post was written in preparation for Ms. Kirchberger’s presentation at the conference, Juridiska tjänster via webben – drivkrafter och överväganden, held 15 November 2011 in Stockholm.

Click here for the presentation slides.

Here is an excerpt of the post:

[...] When we talk about law as a service or law as an app, we could start by discussing what law is. While legal theorists have done this for quite some time now, there is still no generally accepted answer. If we – more practically – assume that law is there for a purpose – the purpose of making society run smoothly and avoiding unbalance – one could assume that society should be aware of the law on a daily basis in order to allow it to run smoothly.

The ideal law app, therefore, tells a person in advance – proactively – if a legal problem is near and how to avoid it. This could be compared to a GPS navigator warning a car driver of a nearby traffic jam and suggesting alternative routes. Think about how many legal disputes could be prevented just by getting the right information/advice at the right time. [...]

For more information, please see the complete post.

The post is to some extent a response to Jason Wilson‘s post entitled I am Now an App.

For more information on Ms. Kirchberger’s research, please see her post at VoxPopuLII entitled, If the mountain will not come to the prophet, the prophet will go to the mountain.

New on VoxPopuLII: McDonald on Law in the Last-Mile: The Potential of Mobile Integration into Legal Services

Sean Martin McDonald, JD, MA, of FrontlineSMS and FrontlineSMS:Legal has posted Law in the Last-Mile: The Potential of Mobile Integration into Legal Services, on the VoxPopuLII blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In this post, Mr. McDonald describes the obstacles preventing many people in developing countries from accessing legal services. He then argues that new technologies, based on text messaging via mobile phones, can overcome many of these obstacles and substantially improve access to justice for low-income persons. He describes one such technology, FrontlineSMS:Legal, which uses text messaging to improve legal client intake and referral, client and case management, and caseload allocation functions for organizations offering legal services to individuals in developing nations.

This post should be of interest to the access-to-justice community, the information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) community, developers of mobile technology, and the legal technology community.

Rickard-Clarke on Access to Justice and Legal Information in Ireland

Commissioner Patricia T. Rickard-Clarke of the Law Reform Commission of Ireland has published The Irish Legal System, Law Libraries and Legal Information: Access to Justice: Accessibility, Legal Information Management, 11(3), 159-164 (2011). Here is the abstract:

Patricia T Rickard-Clarke writes on the complex issues relating to access to justice for the citizens of Ireland. Her article addresses the practical need for consolidation of legislation and the issues of making law accessible in a form that people can understand. The article also takes into account comparative developments in other jurisdictions.

McMillan on E-Filing Systems for Self-Represented Litigants

James E. McMillan of the National Center for State Courts has posted E-Filing Must Support the Self-Represented, Court Technology Bulletin, 8 September 2011.

This is the latest post in Mr. McMillan’s series, Eight Rules of E-Filing.

In this post, Mr. McMillan argues that e-filing systems implemented by courts in which large numbers of self-represented litigants appear must be designed for use by those litigants. Mr. McMillan then describes a number of court technologies that that enable self-represented litigants to file litigation papers online.

For more information, please see the complete post.