As more law school labs, hackathons, and innovation work lead to more individual products and services that aim to increase access to need to think about how to scale, maintain, and integrate them to make a significant improvement in people’s access.
That means we need to design, with intention, ways to move from individual efforts to coordination and expansion. Yesterday’s Clinnovation conference at Suffolk, bringing together many different law schools whose teams are building one-off innovations, was the start of such an effort. As is the Legal Services Corporation’s yearly TIG/Innovations conference and grant program, which helps legal aid groups to replicate projects.
I started brainstorming other means which our community can focus on, in the sketch below. Funding is likely a key part, but must go clearly together with a well-thought agenda that doesn’t merely expect scaling to happen through informal networking or once a year conference (or a website clearinghouse). Those more casual plans have not translated yet into an ecosystem that promotes scaling, guidance on innovation, and interoperability.
