Maybe These Poster Proposals from SRLN Will Stimulate Ideas

Posted on November 13, 2012 by richardzorza

As I have previously blogged, this Friday is the deadline for Poster Proposals for the open gathering in Chicago on Research into Access to Justice to be held on December 7.  Proposals should be sent to A2Jworkshop@abfn.org by Friday, November 16.

I am sharing the three Poster Proposals just submitted by the Self-Represented Litigation Network.  As I am sure you know, these are one page proposals, and if accepted, require only the generation for display and discussion, of a poster:   “A poster is an approximately 30” by 40” rectangular board on which you can put text and figures describing research findings or research needs. You may choose to print out several sheets of paper, or a single large poster paper.”

Here is the key para from the Poster Proposal on Simplificaton.

.  .  . [T] the poster would highlight several areas of research need.  Among them might be:  a broader review of the elements of simplification in other court and access innovations; review of the approaches of prior reforms (including the fundamental “Federal” rules from the thirties; analysis of stakeholders and possible processes for simplification reform; economic studies of costs/benefits, and of impact on potential stakeholders and interest groups; and identification of substantive areas most amenable to such approaches.

Here is the key para from the Poster Proposal on Triage.

As a general matter, there is an emerging consensus that matters such as party power, party capacity, opponent representation status, stake, and legal merits will be key elements in triage processes.  We need a coherent approach to the understanding of triage options, and a way of making sure that research on needs, service innovations, outcomes, and processes will all feed properly into an integrated triage picture that can be used to build, test, validate, and deploy triage protocols for access and fairness.  The Poster would lay out the need, summarize the work so far, and start to explore the elements and structure that would be needed in this component of the research agenda.

Here is the key language from the Proposal on Outcome Measures

Some of the possible outcome and proxy approaches, which would be tested and validated in such a research initiative would be:

  • Was the case decided on substance rather than on technicalities?
  • Were the facts and the law before the decision maker(s)?
  • Was the outcome within the range of discretion of the decision maker based on the facts and law presented?  Or within those available for presentation?
  • Did the litigants feel that that the decision maker was presented all the facts and law?
  • Did the litigants feel the decision was “fair”?

 The greatest value of the research would be in the comparison of these measures, which would, or rather might, provide some confidence in their long-term use.

Naturally, I welcome discussion of other possible Posters, the whole research agenda question that the Posters are intended to help stimulate, and the implications of the specific ones that are suggested here.

Posted in Research and Evalation, Simplification, SRL Statistics, Triage | 2 Comments

Center for Court Access to Justice for All Issues First Accss Brief on Self-Help Services

Posted on November 13, 2012 by richardzorza

This Brief is the first of a series of Access Briefs, developed by the National Center for State Court’s new Center for Court Access to Justice for All.

The Brief, like those to follow, is a short summary of the particular topic within the access area.  This one covers a range of self-help services, from self-help centers to Internet programs, and from phone help to caseflow innovation.

The Brief is carefully documented with specific examples and evaluative research, when available.

The brief are intended to assist courts and their partners assess the possibilities and advantages of such innovations.

To give a flavor, here is a quote from part of the Brief on Courthouse Desks or Offices:

This can be as simple as a staff or volunteer who greets court users and directs them to appropriate services and provides basic information. A more comprehensive self-help program involving a staff attorney and trained volunteers or staff can provide more in-depth resources in person, in printed format, or online. Review of completed forms and referrals to various outside service agencies for additional assistance, ideally based on a diagnostic protocol, can be a part of this model. More sophisticated programs may develop neutral ways of providing information to each litigant on what must next be done based on the specifics of the case file. If it is not possible to establish dedicated staffing, current staff such as court clerks can be trained to provide such services as part of their ongoing responsibilities. Providing such assistance can also serve to sensitize all staff to the needs of self-represented litigants more broadly.

Examples given for this section are from California, Connecticut and Minnesota.

As a consultant to the Center, let me add my thanks to them and to the funding Public Welfare Foundation for the opportunity to participate in this important project.

Please spread it around in your networks.

Posted in Court Management, Self-Help Services | Comments Off on Center for Court Access to Justice for All Issues First Accss Brief on Self-Help Services

How Law Student/Bar Applicant Pro Bono Requirements Might Move National

Posted on November 13, 2012 by richardzorza

Its an interesting possibility.  Could New York’s recently finalized 50 hour pro bono requirement for those seeking bar admission go national, and if so, what would the mechanism be?

David Udell, of the National Center for Access to Justice and Deborah Rhode of Stanford, have sent a letter to the ABA Standards Committee on Law School Accreditation urging that a 50 hour pro bono requirement become part of the Accreditation Standards.

Of course, the strongest argument for this move, beyond the moral one, is that it would mesh perfectly with what is happening at the bar admission level, making life far easier for law students who will be applying to join the bar in New York, or other states that follow its lead.

Interestingly, the relevant Chapter of the Standards, Chapter 3, is on the Agenda of the next meeting of the Standards Review Committee, to be held in Atlanta on November 16.  It will be interesting to see what develops — I am sure additonal comments would be appreciated by the Committee.  David Stern, of Equal Justice Works, has already submitted this one.

The list of members of the Committee is here.

Posted in Law Schools, Pro Bono | Comments Off on How Law Student/Bar Applicant Pro Bono Requirements Might Move National

Guest Blogger Claudia Johnson on The Technology Future

Posted on November 9, 2012 by richardzorza

With the first LSC Technology and Access to Justice Summit completed, and the second in the planning phase, this blog’s guest blogger Claudia Johnson offers these general thoughts on directions for the future.

Continue reading →

Posted in Guest Bloggers, LSC, Research and Evalation, Technology, Tools, Transparency, Triage | 3 Comments

Post Election Implications for Access to Justice — Part I: Broad Themes

Posted on November 8, 2012 by richardzorza

This very much not an electoral politics blog.  But Tuesday had such strong implications for the access to justice discussion that I think it may be useful to start to think through some of the second level themes and implications that lie just under the headline result and its lesson that people want and need government to work.

Here are some post election themes that I think most important in creating a moment of opportunity for access issues.

Latinos.  The almost universal agreement about the major impact that Latino voters had on the result will create a much more sympathetic environment for access issues that are related to Limited English Proficiency.   At a minimum, the impact will ensure a lock-in of Democratic commitment on these issues.   It may also mean that at least some Republicans, seeing ways to lay a relatively relatively non-controversial foundation with the Latino community, may also embrace LEP access.  Its not impossiblethat funding for LEP programs will get easier for courts, and that legislatures will be more generally sympathetic to general cultural and language access issues.  It may be that some of the disputes about legal representation for the undocumented may shift.  It may even mean that there will be increased focus on sorting out the huge problems in our immigration court system.  Moreover, the LEP access issue can lay the groundwork for broader analysis of access barriers and how they can be overcome.

Veterans  There is also a sense (although not nearly as strong or at the surface) that the Administration’s focus on veterans’ families and returning veterans themselves has been a political as well as a moral success.  Thus, at least in the short term, we may see an even greater funding and programmatic openness to the access to justice needs of veterans and their families.  While such programs will surely always be popular, in the longer term, as the wars wind down, such programs may become less visible.

Women’s Issues. The numbers on this are overwhelming.  The point here is that the political resonance goes way beyond the so-called “social issues” to the broader question of whether our political and economic system is supporting women in their choices.  So issues such as family court access, child support enforcement and domestic violence services and funding might move to the front. (Something tells me that the Violence Against Women Act re-authorization will move now.)  The number of women in the House and the Senate is impressive and its impact is not yet fully realized (Bloomberg here.)

Gay Equality. The tipping point in history on Tuesday changes everything.  State after state is soon going to be redesigning its family court forms.  In the end it’s the little kind of stuff like forms that marks the greatest arcstoward justice.

Perhaps most significantly, and depending on local political configuration, most of these substantive areas offer at least some potential for bipartisan consensus, with both parties having incentives to move forward.

The point is obvious that these topics can and must be addressed not as a political agenda, but as access issues as to which there is now demonstrated broad public interest and sympathy.  Access Commissions seem to me as ideal institutions to start to explore opportunities for change that will meet the needs of a broad public.

P.S. I tentatively plan a Part II of this series, in which I will discuss some of the more specific implications for access institutions and budgets — highly uncertain as they are right now, because of the broader fiscal uncertainties.

Posted in Access to Justice Generally, Child Support, Court Management, Domestic Violence, LEP | 1 Comment

A Pulitzer for Nate Silver?

Posted on November 6, 2012 by richardzorza

I have long been a fan of Nate Silver’s election prediction blog, now part of the New York Times.

I now realize that his use of statistical modeling has changed, at least among leadership and policy elites, our ability to think and talk about statistical methods and mathematical modeling.  As such that has huge implications for the future.

Now you can say something like — “Oh well, I wonder if we should try a Monte Carlo simulation on this — you know, like Nate Silver does . . .”

Moreover, this increasing sensitivity to probabilities in outcomes — something still very threatening to the law — will reduce our systems psychic barriers to research and increase our understanding of their implications and thus of our abiity to make use of them.  This will be particularly important in our triage and simplification work.

Of course, if Nate turns out to be wrong in his predictions tonight, the Pulitzer Committee may be a little less open to the idea.

Update:  The Romney campaign has now conceded Florida, and so Nate hits 100%.

Update 2:  The New Republic notes that the day before the election, 20% of visitors to the Times site looked at Nate’s blog.

Earlier this year, approximately 1 percent of visits to the New York Times included FiveThirtyEight. Last week, that number was 13 percent. Yesterday, it was 20 percent. That is, one in five visitors to the sixth-most-trafficked U.S. news site took a look at Silver’s blog.

Posted in Research and Evalation, Simplification, Triage | Comments Off on A Pulitzer for Nate Silver?

Important Call for Posters — Access to Justice Research Meeting

Posted on November 5, 2012 by richardzorza

Here is the Call for Posters for the Access to Civil Justice: Re-envisioning and Reinvigorating Research Workshop, funded by NSF.

This poster concept may not be familiar to all of us in access to justice, but it is now absolutely standard in the scientific research community.  The idea is that people with ideas to share put them on a single poster, and then interested people walk around the room and approach those that they want to explore.  The presenter can then walk the people through the research or presentation.  I am sure there are various other versions, in which everyone gets to make a very short presentation to a larger group.

In any event, this is an extremely important opportunity for people to get a broad range of ideas into the research community.  As you know the day after the Poster Session, there will be a smaller invitational workshop, and as a result, ideas offered at the Poster will have a great potential impact both on that session, and thus on t he development and execution of a research agenda for access to justice.

Note please that the Call is very much not limited to one for presentations on actual research.  The planners see this as an opportunity to gather ideas about research needs and opportunities.  So please do take advantage of this and submit a proposal for such a poster.  This is the biggest opportunity to contribute to an access to justice agenda in at least 30 years, and more likely ever.

ACCESS TO CIVIL JUSTICE: RE-ENVISIONING AND REINVIGORATING RESEARCH
CALL FOR POSTERS

In conjunction with the National Legal Aid and Defender Association annual conference, the Access to Civil Justice: Re-envisioning and Reinvigorating Research Workshop solicits posters that highlight recent and on-going research projects and current research needs in the area of access to civil justice (A2J).
Legal Aid Programs: Would you like to have more information to help you effectively assist clients and the client community? What type of information would you like to know? Please give us your suggestions for civil legal aid research projects.
Researchers: What civil legal aid topics or questions would you like to research in the future? Are you currently engaged in, or have you recently completed, a civil legal aid research project? If so, tell us about it.
The poster session, Ideas and Approaches for Access to Civil Justice Research: Bridging the Divides of Research and Practice, will be held from 2-3:30pm on Friday, December 7 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile, 540 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL. The session will provide a forum for presenters to highlight and communicate research needs and research findings and to receive feedback from knowledgeable conference attendees.

We welcome and encourage contributions from both field professionals and researchers working in the area of access to civil justice. The session will be immediately followed by an open discussion of access to justice research, Opportunities and Challenges for Access to Civil Justice Research: A Town Hall-Style Meeting Bringing Researchers and Field Professionals Together, from 3:45-5:15 pm.
POSTER SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
Poster proposals should be submitted as a PDF or Word file of no more than one page. The proposal should contain an abstract describing the content of the poster, along with the title, author(s), institutional affiliations, and contact information. Please submit your poster proposal to A2Jworkshop@abfn.org by Friday, November 16.

Submissions will be acknowledged, and authors will be notified with further details about the poster session. Ideas generated in the poster session will enliven and inform the town hall meeting to follow. At authors’ discretion, posters will be eligible for publication in the proceedings of the workshop
BASIC INFORMATION ABOUT POSTERS
If you submit a poster, it will be on display during the National Legal Aid and Defender Association meetings, and you will have a chance to present the poster to interested attendees at the poster session. A poster is an approximately 30” by 40” rectangular board on which you can put text and figures describing research findings or research needs. You may choose to print out several sheets of paper, or a single large poster paper.
BACKGROUND ON THE WORKSHOP
The Access Workshop, funded by the National Science Foundation (SES-1237958), reaches across the divides of scholarship and practice to bring together researchers and field personnel to kickstart policy- relevant research in the area of access to civil justice. For questions or more information, please visit http://www.americanbarfoundation.org/research/A2J.html or write to A2Jworkshop@abfn.org.

Posted in Access to Justice Generally, Meetings, Research and Evalation | 3 Comments

Research on Young People’s Use of Internet to Get Legal Information

Posted on November 5, 2012 by richardzorza

I am happy to report on, and post, a presentation by, Catina Denvir at the University of London, on preliminary results on research on young people’s use of the Internet in the UK.  I think these prelimnary results are important and helpful in our ongoing planning and design.

The researcher, after observing that there were high levels of access but low levels of use in this area, decided to conduct an experiment to test actual impact from this use of the Internet.  Users were given hypotheticals and then tracked and surveyed in employment and housing law.  These are some of the results.

Changes were Subject Specific (example housing):

“Landlord  
   • Before  -­‐  Knowledge  poor  in  regards  to  eviction  without  a  court  order,  and
whether  the  landlord’s  employees  can  remove  you  from  the  property  

• Uncertainty  as  to  what  constituted  a  breach  of  the  lease  

• After  -­‐  improvement  across  the  board,  but  uncertainty  about  who  can  evict  a  tenant” 

Lots of Searching and Churning Through Pages

Average time on a page less than a minute

Jurisdictional Errors

Did not limit searching to UK — It would be interesting to know about the extent to which people in the UK now assume US law rules (or dear, in some areas of poverty law.)  We obviously have the same problem in the US in terms of distinguishing between states.

Lots of back and forth between sites

Little discrimination as to which sites reliable

Order of Search Results was Very Important

Used top page and top result regardless of reliability. (So we need to do a better job of getting our stuff at the top, and educating public.)

After use of Internet, Greater Emphasis on Informal Mechanisms to Resolve Matter

Failure to understand legal processes

Failure to appreciate urgency

May Increase Knowledge, but not Confidence in Ability to Deal with Problem

This is consistent with other research in which I have been involved.

Obviously, this all opens up huge areas of additional inquiry.  Some of the most obvious:

  • How can we do better with search results (like expanding the LSC Google partnership so that it gets more broadly to trusted ATJ sites?
  • How can we use community eduction so people know to trust ATJ sites (how about a national certification system and courts and legal aid jointly promoting the reliability of those sites?
  • What would people need to have better confidence in their ability to navigate the system — would better descriptions do it, or does the system itself need to be easier?  Some of this could be tested.

Further information about the research is available from Catrina Denvir, catrina.denvir.10(at)ucl.ac.uk, at University College London.

 

Posted in Research and Evalation, Technology, Usabilty | 1 Comment

Time For a National Center on Mobile Access to Justice

Posted on November 3, 2012 by richardzorza

Several organizations have been stepping up to the plate on mobile, for example, LSC with its TIG grants, Illinois LegalAidOnline with their informational and pro bono apps, the State Bar of Georgia. Not to mention the Pro Bono Net, Northwest Justice Project and Montana Legal Services partnership.

But, more generally, we are way behind where we should be.  See here one blog post on possibilities for the courts.

How many courts get you mobile messages reminders of court appearance dates, community service obligations — with maps, tools to get you to the right courtroom service locations, reminders of risk of default as you fail to check in at the court?

How many legal aid programs remind you of appointments (including with social service, public benefits, etc.) again with the tools, help, chat to help you navigate the interview?

Maybe we need a jointly-funded national Center on Mobile Access to Justice (C-MAJ, pronounced Madge), to push the envelope, work with the main mobile technology platforms, and incentivize the developer community.  (For a depressing search, try putting access to justice into the Google Play Store., or the Mac App Store (nothing!))

By now, every court and every state legal aid system should have something on mobile.  Remember, the Pew data on how low income folks use mobile for their Internet access. (High school grad only, 49% of mobile owners using mobile for Internet.)

As the App Stores show, there is a huge burst of creative energy out there, and we are only on the edge of it.

p.s., I should have given much more credit to the wonderful “apps for justice” clinical project  that CALI and the CAJT are running.  As described by John Mayer, jmayer(at)cali.org, on the LSTech list,  the basic idea is “to get law school clinics to integrate the teaching of A2J Author into a new or existing clinic course and partner with a local (or digitally remote) legal aid program so that law students develop new A2J Guided Interviews.”

 

Posted in Funding, Mobile Technology, Technology | 5 Comments

If Alan Turing Had Lived — Or Died Earlier

Posted on November 2, 2012 by richardzorza

It might be worth asking ourselves what might the world look like if the man who won World War II and created the digital technology revolution had been allowed to live as an openly gay man, to marry, and create a family?

There is a strong argument that the most important person of the 20th century was not Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt or even Steve Jobs.

Rather that honor should belong to Alan Turing, who may be more responsible than anyone else for the outcome of World War II, and is generally regarded as the father of the world’s computer revolution. Turing, as the leading mathematician at Bletchley Park, the British decoding operation that was routinely reading the German’s most secret communications, must have impacted the results of every battle and every diplomatic initiative in World War II.

One example recently discussed in Double Cross, by Ben Macintyre, is that thanks to Bletchley Park and Turing, the Allies were reading so much of the reporting of the German’s intelligence reports to Hitler, that we knew, almost to a certainty, that the Allied plan to convince the Germans that the main attack on France would not come in Normandy was a complete success – with immeasurable impact on the continuing campaign of misinformation, on the battle for France, and the outcome of the war.

Similar operations in Washington, working closely with Bletchley Park, were reading the Japanese cable traffic during the battle of Midway, almost in real time.  It’s hard to win a naval battle when the enemy knows not just where you are, but where you have told your ships to go.  Midway turned the tide in the Pacific.

Turing’s creating of almost the entire field of computer science – and thus of perhaps the most transformative industry since the steam engine – is no less significant.  While many of his papers were kept secret for 70 years, his work established foundations for the theoretical basis of problem solving using digital techniques.

In 1954, Turing died of cyanide poisoning.  While there remains dispute, it is broadly believed that he killed himself after being forced to undergo chemical castration following a criminal conviction for “gross indecency” for homosexual acts, which were still illegal in the United Kingdom.  (Cyanide was found in his body, and a half-eaten apple was next found to him.  The apple was never tested.)

On September 10, 2009, then UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an apology:  “So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.”  Too little, too late, but a trigger for thought.

I ask you to consider two alternative histories.  Supposing Turing had been hounded to his death in 1939 instead of 1954.  World War II might have ended completely differently, and even if, after millions more deaths and a different map of Europe, it had still ended with the defeat of Nazism, whatever computer world we might now have would surely have been fundamentally different.  Indeed, as technology moves to human-like interfaces, we should all remember that the Turing Test, developed by Turing in 1950 poses the challenge whether a human can tell if he or she is talking to a computer or to a human.

Or what about a happier alternative?  Suppose that Turing had been allowed to live – and to continue his work, and had to chosen to marry a man and nurture a family, instead of being driven into a marginal world and then death.  What world would we be living in now?

Might the difference between the world in which we live, and the one he might have helped create be as big as the difference between the world in which we live and the one he helped us avoid?

What might his children have contributed?

Its not just about civil rights – its about what we all gain – even the most homophobic – when all people are free to live, love, create, and contribute.

p.s.  Steve Jobs was once asked if the Apple logo with its bite out had been intended as homage to Turing, through a reference to his mode of believed suicide.   His reply: “God, we wish it were.“

Posted in Access to Justice Generally | 3 Comments

Court Simplification Working Paper from SRLN

Posted on October 30, 2012 by richardzorza

The Self-Represented Litigation Network has completed its Working Paper titled Towards Simplification.

The document, more a road-map than a proposal, outlines seven principles for simplification, six approaches, four barriers and political issues, and nine possible strategies.  The document is here.  Also available as a link here on www.selfhelpsupport.org.

To give a sense of its flavor, here is a list of the outcomes that can help a simplification project be viewed as a success:

  • Less time start to finish
  • Less participant time (total hours) required
  • Less steps in the process
  • Fewer documents or materials required
  • Less information gathered
  • Greater ease of submission of information
  • Fewer individuals/parties involved
  • Information provided by those able to provide it
  • Steps required to be taken more by those able to (including court)
  • Less resources needed to assist people to obtain access (i.e shifting the triage formula away from the need for counsel)

I am starting work for the Symposium Issue of Drake Law Review on an article on Simplification, based in part on ideas gathered during the drafting of this Working Paper, and would welcome any additional thoughts.

 

 

Posted in Simplification, Systematic Change | 2 Comments

Learning About Our Guest Blogger Claudia Johnson

Posted on October 27, 2012 by richardzorza

Many of you have read posts on this blog from Claudia Johnson.  Most of us did not know where here passion for access, and indeed the breadth of her vision, came from.  As she tells us in a recent post on the Pro Bono Net blog:

From the 1920s to the mid-1940s, my paternal great grandfather, Rafael Benjamin Colindres, sat on the Supreme Court of El Salvador. Aside from working to move the Court to modern rules and processes, he also authored the Penal Code in El Salvador, as well as the Commercial Code—including printing them so that they would be accessible. I chanced upon these codes at the rare book collection at  Doe Library Berkeley when I was in college—and this is how I found out about his pro bono work. Finding the books was thrilling, especially since I had lost every connection to my past in the civil war that ravaged El Salvador in the 1980s. I peppered my dad with questions about Rafael Benjamin. He shared this story with me when I was 19. My mom corroborated it—as it also involved her family. And since then, his example doing pro bono work has been my legacy.

Its an inspiring story.  Read it, especially the ending:

Though I am four generations down the line from Rafael Benjamin, his example and his values continue to move me. Due to the civil war, I never got to learn and study the codes my grandfather authored and edited, nor read his decisions.  Instead I studied the Uniform Commercial Code and criminal law in the US and read other decisions. However, despite never having the privilege to study or practice the same law as he did (which was my original plan at age five before the civil war got in the way), his example and the social conscience he instilled in his children and grandchildren is what creates in me the strong belief that practicing law is not a business, but a vocation, a gift to be shared with others for the benefit of our community, and with others in need. And that is why I am now focusing on the needs of those without lawyers in my America. Four generations down—and the pro bono work my great grandfather did still has an impact.

Posted in Pro Bono | Comments Off on Learning About Our Guest Blogger Claudia Johnson

Counting Pro Bono — A New Question From the UK

Posted on October 25, 2012 by richardzorza

This should get us thinking.

An article in the UK Law Society Gazette, Pro bono – minding the gap, as commented on by the excellent Richard Moorehead here, suggests that the current systems of counting pro bono are inadequate.

One suggestion is that firms need to start assessing their impact, not just the cash value of the contribution.  Interestingly, this discussion is taking place against a backdrop of a significant increase in the “justice gap” in the UK as a result of the Coalition’s dramatic cuts to legal aid, particularly in family law.  It is also, sadly, taking place against a reduction in terms of the number of actual hours contributed to pro bono.

In any event, the question for us is whether the US access community should do a better job of measuring the impact of pro bono — it would be an interesting question for the Research Gathering in Chicago in December.

One risk, of course, is that a discussion of outcomes might politicize pro bono — right not, after all, pro bono is about the most purely non-political cause in our world — even phrases like judicial independence are no longer politically neutral.  On the other hand, maybe a full discussion of impact might lead to true ways of measuring the accessibility of the system, not just to individuals, but to interests and causes that are not now heard.

 

Posted in Pro Bono, Research and Evalation | Comments Off on Counting Pro Bono — A New Question From the UK

Self-Represented Litigation Network Plans Equal Justice Conference Pre-Conference

Posted on October 21, 2012 by richardzorza

Once again this coming year, the Self-Represented Litigation Network will be hosting a pre-conference in association with the NLADA/ABA Equal Justice Conference.  The pre-conference will be May 8, 2013, and the main conference will be May 9-11.  As usual, there will be an Access to Justice Commissions gathering on Saturday the 11th.

Here is the overall “save the date.”

Save the Date_EJC2013

More information here.

I very much welcome suggestions and ideas for what we should be focusing the pre-c0nfernce on.  Here is last year’s pre-conference agenda .

Posted in Meetings, Self-Help Services | 5 Comments

Using Prizes to Engage the Tech Community — A Model for Us

Posted on October 20, 2012 by richardzorza

The Federal Trade Commission is using the lure of a $50,000 prize to incentivise new ideas to deal with robocall problem.

Best of all, the agency is making data available to help people think about the problem:

As part of the challenge, the FTC announced it will provide participants, or “solvers,” with data on de-identified consumer complaints about robocalls made between June 2008 and September 2012.  Solvers interested in this data will receive periodic updates with contemporary data through December 31, 2012. The complaint data will include: date of call; approximate time of call; reported caller name; first seven digits of reported caller phone number; and consumer area code.

Access organizations need to be doing just the same thing.  How about offering prizes for the following — and how about using the comments to suggest other areas for such encouragement?

  • Mobile apps to help protect DV victims
  • Tools to match legal issues people are facing with the online information about how to deal with them (with data from websites on search patterns)
  • Tools to find unconscious judicial bias (with case decision data)
  • Tools to analyze courtroom transcripts for anything (with transcripts)
  • Tools to help legal aid advocates identify areas most impacted by foreclosure and where to focus intervention resources (with foreclosure records and court files)
  • Triage tools (legal aid intake files, courtroom files, all purged)

Remember, this award is part of a broader government initiative at Challenge.gov:

This is the agency’s first government contest hosted on Challenge.gov, an online challenge platform administered by the U.S. General Services Administration, in partnership with ChallengePost. Challenge.gov empowers the U.S. government and the public to bring the best ideas and top talent to bear on our nation’s most pressing issues.

Look at it, celebrate the power of government for good and join.  There are several hundred such challenges up there.

Posted in Research and Evalation, Science | Comments Off on Using Prizes to Engage the Tech Community — A Model for Us