One of the fundamental principles of access to justice is physical access to the judicial system and to a trial. While technology has advanced in this regard thanks to telephone hearings, Fuller notes that the pandemic has accelerated technology adoption – the need has surpassed historical constraints. He points out that the introduction of videoconferencing for some court services during times of social distancing is a great example of how technology is opening new doors for clients and lawyers. His team at Docketly, which provides performance advice, has witnessed this change. 4 The term “triage” is enclosed in quotation marks because its use here differs from its original meaning on the battlefield and in other emergency medical situations, where large numbers of casualties are divided into groups in order to make the most efficient use of limited treatment resources in medical circumstances. One of the groups are people whose injuries are so severe that they are abandoned. Instead, this initiative has the task of ending the current practice of abandoning (i.e. not serving) large numbers of poor people with basic civilian needs. We also use the term “triage,” as it is commonly used today, in the access to justice community to characterize a set of strategies aimed at the most efficient allocation of scarce resources. The summit resulted in a blueprint for the use of technology to provide some form of effective support to 100% of people who otherwise cannot afford a lawyer to meet essential civil law needs. We look forward to working with the entire legal services community to achieve the Summit`s vision of an unprecedented expansion of access to justice in the United States.

The “Summit Report on Using Technology to Expand Access to Justice” focuses on ways to leverage technology to provide all Americans with some form of effective assistance to meet the essential needs of civil law. The report contains a number of concrete recommendations to expand and improve legal assistance in civil matters through an integrated service system that provides the public with the knowledge and wisdom of legal experts on computers and mobile devices. It will be essential for the steering committee to communicate with national organizations representing stakeholders involved in access to justice. The Committee must apply to and receive the support of the Commission on Access to Justice in each State where it exists. These entities are natural allies because they invariably have memberships and inter-organizational missions. Learn more about how technology can bridge the access to justice gap. You can access the full webinar “A New Day in Court: Technology and the Legal System” by registering here. The initiative will require a communications programme to provide progress reports on projects and to keep the access to justice community (IT professionals and legal practitioners) informed of new cutting-edge applications, technological trends and developments, and strategic analysis of the impact of major technological trends on the initiative and the access to justice community in general. Informational websites are being redesigned to make it easier to access and interact with mobile devices by providing information in smaller, simplified sections readable on a smartphone screen. The new national legal portal and other automated systems should automatically detect the type of request device and provide information in the appropriate format for the device. Mehlhase suggests that the standardization of technology and the ability to have the world at your fingertips via the internet has raised certain expectations.

People expect easy access to products, services and information, even instantaneously. To meet these expectations and maintain their client lists, lawyers must stay on top of the technology used by their clients. He argues that people appreciate and judge lawyers based on their successful adoption and implementation of technology, especially when they can see it for themselves. Finding effective ways to integrate technology into the legal process will be critical not only to providing access, but also to making the process accessible and comfortable for legal clients. Websites are being redesigned to make it easier to access and interact with mobile devices by providing information in smaller, streamlined sections readable on a smartphone screen. For some U.S. court officials, the pandemic has crystallized the benefits of technology-based access to justice. But before allocating a budget for long-term initiatives, a group of access to justice advocates noted that such software will fail if users` needs and experience are not understood. Individuals and small organizations now have the resources and skills to create sophisticated mobile apps.

Hackathons and other crowdsourcing tools should be used to stimulate creativity and initiative in the development of useful mobile applications for access to justice. For example, a state may challenge students to develop court map apps for every courthouse in the state. Expert systems use the information provided by a client to create personalized legal information tailored to him or the lawyer/assistant. Such systems can be considered for a variety of issues, including entitlement to benefits, identification of necessary forms and procedures, alternative approaches to problem solving and preventive law. The success of LawHelpMN and Ohio Legal Help shows that this approach works. Both receive a lot of visitors: LawHelpMN averaged 46,355 monthly users in 2021 and Ohio Legal Help 51,956. Auburn`s surveys of portal users, stakeholder interviews and website reviews have shown that these portals work well because they are easy to understand and accessible to users with disabilities. In addition, by working with a wide range of stakeholders, the portals have been able to respond to changing circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic and provide timely and relevant resources. Technology can and must play a critical role in transforming service delivery so that all poor people in the United States with substantive civil law receive some form of effective assistance. To ensure that the poor do not miss out on important and urgent information provided by mobile apps, the initiative should lead a campaign to convince telecom operators to exclude certain access to justice addresses from the calculation of billable usage figures – minutes and data.

Unlike other parts of this plan, compiling documents is a relatively mature process used by many institutions to access justice. The biggest challenge is not technological, but the lack of uniform forms of courts in most states. Access to justice institutions in each State must make the development of uniform forms across the country a priority, but this obligation is beyond the scope of this report. When business process analysis is performed with participants from multiple entities (p. e.g., courts, legal service providers, private lawyers, libraries, etc.), benefits extend to: Fuller cautions that courts should be wary of adopting existing public solutions that may provide a quick fix for now, but were developed without the confidentiality and processes of the court. He hopes that this technology can be further explored by courts that tailor solutions to their needs and better support the court process. Casey Chiappetta works on the Pew Charitable Trusts Civil Law System Modernization Project.