Cost of legal services – including access

Could 2021 Be The Year Of Civil Justice Reform? [Bayles]

On 01/27/2021, in Access to Justice (A2J), Cost of legal services - including access, ethics, law schools, legal reform, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, society, United States, by Daniel Christian

Could 2021 Be The Year Of Civil Justice Reform? — from law360.com by Cara Bayles

Excerpt:

Now, any tenant in Boulder, regardless of means, can get an attorney to represent them in housing court for free. While a handful of other cities like New York and San Francisco offer similar programs, there is no universal right to an attorney in eviction cases.

Justice advocates are hoping that could change. COVID-19, they say, has drawn attention to access to justice issues that have plagued civil proceedings for years. They hope the tragedies of 2020 can fuel reform in 2021.

Six months into the pandemic, millions of Americans had fallen behind on rent. One statistic that civil justice advocates have known for years became apparent — that while 90% of landlords have legal counsel in eviction proceedings, only 10% of tenants do.

From DSC:
Reading through the article below, I can’t help but wonder…how might the eviction crisis impact higher education?

Losing a Home Because of the Pandemic Is Hard Enough. How Long Should It Haunt You? — from nytimes.com by Barbara Kiviat (professor of sociology) and Sara Sternberg Greene (law professor)
Americans who default on their rent may find it hard to escape lasting effects on their financial future.

Excerpts:

Millions of Americans have fallen behind on rent during the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting the passage of eviction moratoriums and rental assistance plans. But as policymakers have struggled to meet the needs of tenants and landlords, they’ve largely overlooked a crucial fact: The looming eviction crisis isn’t just about falling behind on rent and losing one’s home to eviction. It’s also about the records of those events, captured in court documents and credit reports, that will haunt millions of Americans for years to come.

Just as criminal records carry collateral consequences — preventing people from getting jobs, renting apartments and so on — blemishes on a person’s financial history can have far-ranging effects. Records of evictions can prevent Americans from renting new places to live, and debts and lawsuits related to unpaid rent can follow people as they apply for jobs, take out insurance policies, apply for mortgages and more. The process starts when landlords report late payments directly, file for eviction, sue in small claims court and hire debt collectors to pursue back rent. Those paper trails of unpaid rent and eviction get sucked into the digital warehouses of credit bureaus and data brokers.

“The transformative power of virtual courts” [Edwards] + five other items re: legal technology

On 12/15/2020, in change, Cost of legal services - including access, face-to-face, future, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, parents/guardians, society, UK, Uncategorized, United States, by Daniel Christian

The transformative power of virtual courts — from raconteur.net by Ben Edwards

Excerpt:

At the Odeon cinema in Edinburgh’s Fort Kinnaird retail park, the movie posters have been taken down and the popcorn machines covered up as jurors take their seats in one of the four auditoriums to attend a virtual court hearing.

These remote jury centres have allowed the Scottish High Court to restart criminal trials by beaming live court action directly onto the cinema screen, allowing jurors to watch and hear evidence while maintaining social distancing, something that wouldn’t have been possible inside the main court building. With a further 11 screens available in Glasgow, the court is now back up to full capacity.

“The real beauty in this approach is it provides a way of scaling up; we have a model that works and can be applied anywhere,” says Tim Barraclough, executive director of the Judicial Office for Scotland.

Also see:

Reynen Court Now Lets You Take Legal Tech Products For A Test Drive — from legaltechmonitor.com by Bob Ambrogi

Excerpt:

Reynen Court, the platform that describes itself as the app store for legal technology, has introduced a new feature, appropriately called One-Click Test Drive, that makes it easy for law firms and legal departments to test products without having to buy them or negotiate trial licenses.

Using Test Drive, a user can quickly deploy a pilot of a pre-configured application in a secure environment. The application comes fully loaded with dummy data and transaction or case materials. It can be easily launched without requiring IT support.

Legal Tech Traditionally Favored Law Firms. That May Be Changing — from law.com by Frank Ready
Ironclad’s “State of Digital Contracting, Winter 2020: AI and the Elusive Promise of Smart Contracting” virtual event delved into how changes in service delivery models could help to drive a new wave of legal tech directed toward in-house attorneys and nonlawyers.

Excerpts from Working Remote: Advantages Gained from Legal Technology Adoption — from law.com
In this episode of the Perspectives podcast, sponsored by AbacusNext and hosted on Law.com, we’ll hear highlights from the September 9th presentation titled, Working Remote: Advantages Gained Through Legal Technology Adoption.

The Top 25 Artificial Lawyer Articles of 2020 — from artificiallawyer.com by Richard Tromans

What Is Quantum Computing and How Is It Disrupting Law Firms? — from lawtechnologytoday.org by Shannon Flynn

State Court Budget Forecast: Stormy with Rising Backlogs [Strickler]

On 11/23/2020, in Access to Justice (A2J), budgets, Cost of legal services - including access, law schools, leadership, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, telelegal, United States, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

State Court Budget Forecast: Stormy with Rising Backlogs — from law360.com by Andrew Strickler

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

As state lawmakers begin preparing for upcoming legislative sessions amid a resurgent pandemic, a scattered but largely grim outlook for state court funding is beginning to take shape.

With some judicial administrators already dealing with staggered budgets and new technology costs, experts and advocates say court leaders have their work cut out for them to convince budget analysts and lawmakers to pay for pandemic recovery efforts.

Perhaps nowhere is the coming financial strain more apparent than in Florida, where legislators began gathering Tuesday in Tallahassee to face a historic $5.4 billion budget deficit over the next two years.

There, court leaders have drawn on their experiences dealing with a crush of foreclosures and other litigation following the 2008 financial crisis to project that nearly 1 million additional cases will be in front of the state’s trial courts by the middle of 2021.
…
In New York, where the next fiscal year promises to include a gaping $14.5 billion budget hole, dozens of appellate judges over age 70 are being forced into retirement, a move court administrators said would save $55 million in the coming years and help prevent staff layoffs.

Addendum on 11/24/20:

The recordings of every Civil Justice Fest webinar are now available! Visit https://t.co/TCyoXN26aj to start watching, and keep an eye out for the #12DaysofCivilJustice beginning this Friday! pic.twitter.com/SEW0Ll6glj

— MasonLEC (@MasonLEC) November 24, 2020

Civil Justice Fest: A Month of Dialogues On the Most Pressing Civil Justice Issues — from vimeo.com
Judicial Education Program & Congressional Civil Justice Academy Law & Economics Center Antonin Scalia Law School George Mason University November 2020 Virtual

On LawNext: Rocket Lawyer Founder Charley Moore — from lawsitesblog.com by Bob Ambrogi; with thanks to Gabe Teninbaum for this resource from his Lawtomatic Newsletter

Excerpt

In September, Rocket Lawyer became the first national company approved to participate in Utah’s regulatory sandbox, a pilot program for licensing new and alternative forms of legal providers and services. For Charley Moore, who founded Rocket Lawyer in 2008, it was yet another step in his quest to deliver high-value legal services at an affordable price.
…
In this episode of LawNext, Moore recounts the founding and development of Rocket Lawyer and its expansion into Europe starting in 2012. He also explains why he wanted the company to participate in the Utah sandbox and what he expects to happen there. Finally, as one of the few Black CEOs in legal tech, Moore discusses his thoughts on expanding diversity in the industry.

Also see:

Also from Gabe, see:

Justice-as-a-Service — from Henrik Zillmer

Excerpts:

There’s a new wave of customer empowerment coming. It’s called Justice-as-a-Service (JaaS), and you need to know about it because it benefits you – you just don’t know it yet.

Justice-as-a-Service is an on-demand service, powered by tech, that challenges private and public companies by representing the consumer in their fight for justice/compensation based on laws, consumers’ rights, and contract of carriage.

Why is there a need for JaaS?

You don’t know your consumer rights.
You don’t know how to claim and neither does the service provider.
You don’t have the time to fight for your rights.
Success is very unlikely.

Three items re: legal technologies

On 10/13/2020, in Africa, Asia, Australia, business, Canada, career development, change, changing business models, Cost of legal services - including access, Europe, future, law schools, Legal operations, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, technology (general), tools, UK, United States, by Daniel Christian

Technologies that enable legal and compliance leaders to spot innovations — from helpnetsecurity.com
COVID-19 has accelerated the push toward digital business transformation for most businesses, and legal and compliance leaders are under pressure to anticipate both the potential improvements and possible risks that come with new legal technology innovations, according to Gartner.

Excerpt:

To address this challenge, Gartner lists the 31 must-watch legal technologies to allow legal and compliance leaders to identify innovations that will allow them to act faster. They can use this information for internal planning and prioritization of emerging innovations.

Also see:
(with a shoutout to Nicola Shaver for this resource)

Also see:

Envisioning the future of law — from abovethelaw.com by Ken Crutchfield
We’ve seen a transformation underway within the legal industry for some time now, and the pandemic is continuing to accelerate these changes.

Excerpt:

We’ve seen a transformation underway within the legal industry for some time now, and the pandemic is continuing to accelerate these changes. From what we have observed in recent months, many of the technologies that were reshaping the practice of law have now become necessary, and resistance to digital workflows is no longer a viable option for many legal professionals. In the midst of this transformation, we can draw some observations about how the industry can cope with what’s next.

“States across the country need to pivot quickly in order to figure out how to create more accessible—and affordable—legal services.” [Zachariah DeMeola ]

On 07/30/2020, in Access to Justice (A2J), computer science, Cost of legal services - including access, law schools, leadership, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, programming, reinvent, society, sociology, technology (general), by Daniel Christian

With millions of Americans unemployed, hundreds of thousands sick, and a recession on the horizon, states across the country need to pivot quickly in order to figure out how to create more accessible—and affordable—legal services. https://t.co/MneMA3nUoU

— Zachariah J. DeMeola (@z_demeola) July 30, 2020

From DSC:
Perhaps faculty members and their students in Computer Science Departments across the nation could unleash some excellent products/projects/ideas to make this happen! Talk about Project Based Learning (PBL)! Students and faculty members could have immediate positive impacts on the nation for their work.

How might tools like Microsoft’s new Whiteboard be used in online-based learning? In “learning pods?” [Christian]

On 07/29/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Access to Justice (A2J), active learning, adjunct faculty, art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bring your own device (BYOD), business, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Cost of legal services - including access, creativity, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, face-to-face, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, graphics, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, Microsoft, multimedia, online learning, online media, online tutoring, participation, platforms, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, second screen apps, smart classrooms, smart/connected TV, social learning / networks, society, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, technology (general), telelegal, telemedicine / telehealth / virtual health, telepresence, television, tools, transmedia, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Questions/reflections from DSC:

How might this be used for online-based learning?
For “learning pods” and homeschoolers out there?
Will assistants such as the Webex Assistant for Meetings (WAM) be integrated into such tools (i.e., would such tools provide translation, transcripts, closed captioning, and more)?
How might this type of tool be used in telehealth? Telelegal? In online-based courtrooms? In presentations?

#onlinelearning #collaboration #education #secondscreen #edtedh #presentations #AI #telehealth #telelegal #emergingtechnologies

Will the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally remake the legal industry? [Moran]

On 07/28/2020, in Cost of legal services - including access, experimentation, health, ideas, innovation, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, Michigan, reinvent, society, universities, by Daniel Christian

Will the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally remake the legal industry? — from abajournal.com by Lyle Moran

Excerpt:

They both note that while the Great Recession was a substantial shock to the economic system, COVID-19 has resulted in the sudden upheaval of society at large. This includes changing how members of the public can access the court system or connect with a lawyer.

“It is really fundamentally disrupting overnight every single component of the legal system, and that is very different than 2008-2009,” says Leonard, who is also Penn Law’s chief innovation officer. “I think it creates enormous opportunities for changing many of the ways we work as lawyers, the ways we provide legal services to our clients and also the ways the justice system as a whole works.”

In the short term, Leonard says the pandemic has resulted in massive “forced experimentation.”

People being sworn in on a laptop

In June, Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice McCormack swore in a cohort of law students via a Zoom conference. Photo courtesy of the Michigan Supreme Court; Shutterstock.

Also see:

ANALYSIS: Firms Are More Prepared to Use Legal Tech in 2020 — from news.bloomberglaw.com
Intellectual Property And High-Tech Law Are Creating New Legal Jobs — from by Michael Puyanic

Gartner Legal Tech Hype Curve – 2020 Positions [artificiallawyer.com]

On 07/28/2020, in 21st century, bots, career development, change, corporate / business world, Cost of legal services - including access, emerging technologies, future, law schools, Legal operations, legal technologies, technology (general), trends, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Gartner Legal Tech Hype Curve – 2020 Positions — from artificiallawyer.com

Excerpt:

Research company Gartner has published its Legal Tech Hype Curve analysis for 2020, showing where various types of tech are on their famous development and real world adoption chart.

Have a look at the main chart below:

DC: How could tech help here? “Renters, homeowners face new phase of coronavirus crisis with evictions, foreclosures looming” [Keenan]

On 07/13/2020, in Access to Justice (A2J), Cost of legal services - including access, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, parents/guardians, policy, political science, society, trends, Uncategorized, United States, by Daniel Christian

Renters, homeowners face new phase of coronavirus crisis with evictions, foreclosures looming — from finance.yahoo.com by Alexis Keenan

Excerpt:

A potential housing crisis is on the way for millions of Americans whose mortgage and rent deferrals are about to sunset.

Evictions loom as the end of state and local moratoriums will no longer protect homeowners and tenants unable to make payments because of COVID-19 lockdowns. A minority of U.S. states have already expired orders against evictions, and a host of others across the country are set to expire over the next two months.

Once they do, residents are facing a possible flood of non-payment legal actions. The COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project (CEDP) predicted recently that by the end of September, more than 20 million U.S. renters —many of them Black and Latino located in big cities — will be at risk for eviction.

[Podcasts] COVID 19: Leonard, Furlong, & Moon: The Future of Legal Services (Pts 1 & 2)

On 04/21/2020, in 21st century, Access to Justice (A2J), career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, communities of practice, competency-based learning/education, corporate / business world, Cost of legal services - including access, experimentation, law schools, leadership, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, online learning, podcasting, political science, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, society, technology (general), telelegal, tools, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Jennifer Leonard, Jordan Long, and Cat Moon

Part I — 4/10/20

This episode is the first of two episodes that discuss the future of the profession in the wake of the COVID19 crisis. Guests Jordan Furlong and Cat Moon discuss:

How COVID 19 exposes the access to justice crisis the profession has created
Why the crisis offers the opportunity to leverage technology in new ways
Why the structures and systems that have defined the profession have been so durable
Whether lawyers view the crisis as a blip or a transformation
How leaders can pivot toward innovation

From DSC:
At several points in the conversation, when Cat and Jordan were both referring to the importance of experimentation within the legal realm, I was reminded of this graphic that I did back in 2013:

I was reminded of it as well because Jennifer Leonard rightly (in my perspective), brought in higher education into the discussion at several points. There are some similarities — especially concerning power and privilege. Well, it’s now true in the legal realm as well (and probably has been true for a while…I’m just behind).

Experimentation. Experimentation. Experimentation. <– so key in the legal realm right now!

Other notes I took:

Triage: Need to deal with essentials to keep afloat. Yourself, staff, clients, cash flow. Put out the fire.
Reconstruction: In parallel, create “field hospitals.” Recession is going to have massive impacts on old systems. Need new systems. Start building institutions that work. Build as many of these as you can. Experiments. House isn’t going to be inhabitable after the fire. Need a new shelter — maybe start w/ a tent, then a cabin, then a house. Build on something small. Start building what’s going to replace the old systems.
Power and privilege imbalance is why people haven’t been able to change things. “I can make you do something for me. You come here so I can dispense justice to you.” But not just judges…throughout the system.
Public legal awareness and legal education. In high schools, universities, colleges, churches, mosques, synagogues, etc.
Higher ed and legal services? Anything we can learn from each other?
Systems created by people who rule the systems. Power imbalance exists in higher ed, but hubris is completely indefensible within the legal realm. Need much better access to legal information and legal understanding.
OS on the Mac. Don’t have another OS for legal system to move to. We need to redesign our legal OS to serve more people.
Law is society’s OS. Law is DOS-based…need Windows or Mac type of leap.
Self protectionism. Hubris. Power imbalance. Power hungry.
Yet many who enter legal profession come in wanting to make the world a better place. Why the move away from these ideals? Need more focus on developing professional identity. Structure, framework for how to be a lawyer. Students become more cynical as time goes by. Also, there’s “ladder pulling.” Pay your dues. Get hazed. I had to do it…now you have to do it. Bar Exam good example of this. Confirmation bias. It’s the way we’ve always done it.

Today, the following things ARE happening — so it CAN be done! The people in charge just didn’ want to do these things.

lawyers working from home
e-filing of documents to courts
video hearings in court
faster, cheaper, more convenient

Jennifer Leonard, Jordan Long, and Cat Moon

Part II – 4/14/20

On this second part of a two-part series, Professor Cat Moon and Jordan Furlong discuss COVID 19’s impact on legal education and law firms. The conversation explores:

The “knock out effect” the crisis has on the various parts of the lawyer formation system
Who might take ownership of coordinating the new landscape of lawyer accreditation
The opportunities lifelong learning creates for law schools to be involved in the ongoing development of legal professionals
How human-centered design and project-based learning offer ways to integrate the three sides of the Delta model of lawyer competency
How small and solo law firms might be impacted by the crisis

Notes I took:

The knock-out effect.
How can we coordinate amongst the players in the system? Will be hard, because of the existing fiefdoms. Power and authority move back up the chain to those who did the delegating in the first place. If the power has been delegated to you, you are at a disadvantage. Jordan sees an assertion of authority from a central entity — legislatures most likely; possibly courts.
This moment offers us an opportunity to experiment and to redesign our systems. Can find new ways to fulfill missions.
Have no choice but to embrace the ambiguity of the moment.
Triage, then try to build something better than what we had before.
We have to build something different. “And look, the sky’s not falling!” Think big. Act boldly in these experiments. Expand what we think is possible.
The repercussions of the Coronavirus will be with us for much longer than many think it will
Legal principles/concepts/rules. Areas of practice. Professional formation (ethics, integrity, operational aspects, & more). Know the law, but also WHY we have the law and lawyers.
Can learn “black letter law” asynchronously and via videoconferencing.
Need to expand curriculum: Project/time management, customer service, financial and tech literacy
Delta Model — a framework for developing lawyer competencies; starts in law schools; what are the skills and competencies; the foundation is the practice of law; research, issue spotting, PM, data analysis, understanding business; understanding people; wholistic approach. A lifelong journey of growth.
Law schools — 3 years, then done. Not a productive way to do things. We need to keep people on top of their game throughout a career. Is legal education a place or a system/process that you enter and re-enter again and again throughout one’s career? Wouldn’t it be great if I could access ___ modules along the way?
How are we going to create/design highly engaging online-based learning experiences? #1 on Cat’s priority list now. Got moved up the priority list.
There are pros and cons for both F2F and online-based learning. Humanizing impact when your professors are teaching from their homes.
Reframing legal education just as we are reframing courts as a service, not a place.
Blended approach can be very effective/powerful.
Need to collect data on what’s working and what’s not working.
Fundamental business model of corporate side is likely at the end of its course; law firms will need a new model for generating profit. For smaller firms, prospects are more dire as their clients are going through major negative changes. Potential unsustainability of many practices.
How can we provide different models that expand access to justice? That help develop happier and healthier lawyers?
Per legalproblemsolving.org, human-centered design is:
- …a fluid framework for discovering problems, ideating solutions, and iterating to continuously improve solutions. HCD provides a methodology for considering both legal service delivery challenges, as well as clients’ legal problems. The HCD method also serves as a tool individual law students can use to craft a rewarding, successful legal career.

Pandemic II: Justice system down [Furlong]

On 04/11/2020, in 21st century, Access to Justice (A2J), Canada, Cost of legal services - including access, law schools, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, policy, political science, productivity / tips and tricks, society, United States, by Daniel Christian

Pandemic II: Justice system down — from law21.ca by Jordan Furlong

Excerpt:

We need to recognize a couple of things about our justice system, in order to fully appreciate the fate that awaits it in the COVID-19 era and the tasks that now lie in front of us.

The first is that the system has nowhere near the capacity or resilience required to handle an emergency of this magnitude. Like our hospitals, which are about to be overrun with virus patients, our courts are perpetually underfunded, technologically handicapped, and already overloaded.

Case backlogs are common, hearings are routinely adjourned, and even straightforward cases stretch out over months and years. There is an entire body of constitutional law that addresses how long you can delay a person’s trial before their rights are violated, and it should tell us something that we don’t even find that remarkable anymore.

What this crisis has revealed is the central operating assumption of our justice institutions, which has now become our stumbling block: Everybody comes to the courthouse.
…
Richard Susskind has made many insightful observations over the course of his career, but I suspect one will outlast all the others: “We have to decide if court is a place or a service.” For hundreds of years — right up until last month, in fact — court has been a place. By the time this pandemic has truly run its course, court will be a service.

Also see:

EU Proposes Strict Regulations for AI — from futuretech360.com by John K. Waters

Excerpt:

The European Union this week unveiled its first proposed regulations for artificial intelligence (AI) technology, along with a strategy for handling personal digital data. The new regs provide guidance around such AI use cases as autonomous vehicles and biometric IDs.

Published online by the European Commission, the proposed regulations would apply to “high-risk” uses of AI in areas such as health care, transportation and criminal justice. The criteria to determine risk would include such considerations as whether a person might get hurt, say, by a self-driving car or a medical device, and how much influence a human has on an AI’s decision in areas like job recruiting and law enforcement.

From DSC:
Here are two other example of AI’s further integration into the legal realm:

Casetext is Automating Litigation — from businesswire.com
Casetext’s new litigation automation technology, Compose, automates substantive legal work — and a substantial number of billable hours

Excerpt:

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Casetext, the legal technology company known for its groundbreaking A.I. legal research platform, today announces a new product that will define litigation automation: Compose. Compose, which automates the first draft of a legal brief, is poised to disrupt the $437 billion¹ legal services industry and fundamentally change our understanding of what types of professional work are uniquely human.

UC Irvine School of Law To Integrate Blue J Legal’s AI-Enabled Tax Platform into Curriculum — from businesswire.com
First of its kind initiative aims to prepare graduate students for careers in tax law where AI will be integral to the decision-making process

The joint effort aims to demonstrate why advanced technological integration in higher education is important and how to leverage it, specifically in tax law.

DC: Given today’s pace of change, pulse-checking &putting things on our radars are key.I appreciate the power of “streams of content” 2enhance our personal learning ecosystems. Along these lines, I also like Feedly & subscribing to a variety of RSS feeds.https://t.co/SzvTBMXfQE pic.twitter.com/2FE4dX1skB

— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) February 26, 2020

Online tool will help ‘Spot’ legal issues that people face [pewtrusts.org]

On 02/15/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Cost of legal services - including access, ideas, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, society, technology (general), tools, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Online tool will help ‘Spot’ legal issues that people face — from .pewtrusts.org
Artificial intelligence can boost non-lawyers’ ability to navigate civil court system

Excerpt:

People looking for information on legal questions often start their searches online, without a good handle on the terminology. Today’s machine learning tools can help put nonlegal phrasing into context, using artificial intelligence to match people’s situations with specific legal issues, supplying accurate information and connections to potential services.

A team at the Legal Innovation and Technology (LIT) Lab at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, with funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts, is building an application programming interface, or API—known as Spot—that can serve as a computerized issue spotter. Spot could be used by legal services websites and others to help lay users, and its functionality will improve as it accumulates more data and real-life examples.

Learning Ecosystems

Could 2021 Be The Year Of Civil Justice Reform? [Bayles]

How might the eviction crisis impact higher education? [Christian]

“The transformative power of virtual courts” [Edwards] + five other items re: legal technology

State Court Budget Forecast: Stormy with Rising Backlogs [Strickler]

On LawNext: Rocket Lawyer Founder Charley Moore [Ambrogi & Moore]; + Justice As A Service (JaaS)

Three items re: legal technologies

“States across the country need to pivot quickly in order to figure out how to create more accessible—and affordable—legal services.” [Zachariah DeMeola ]

Will the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally remake the legal industry? [Moran]

Gartner Legal Tech Hype Curve – 2020 Positions [artificiallawyer.com]

DC: How could tech help here? “Renters, homeowners face new phase of coronavirus crisis with evictions, foreclosures looming” [Keenan]

[Podcasts] COVID 19: Leonard, Furlong, & Moon: The Future of Legal Services (Pts 1 & 2)

Pandemic II: Justice system down [Furlong]

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