Open, Coordinated Data and the User Experience of Law

I have a much longer post on this coming — but after the session I ran last week at the Legal Services Corporation’s Technology Innovation Grant conference in San Antonio along with Greg Bloom of the Open Referral Initiative, and Sam Halpert of Pro Bono Net, I just wanted to capture in sketch form what I’m thinking a lot about.

We need not just better interface design, to help users of the legal system understand it — we need legal service providers to code up and share the data they hold (and typically silo away) about the services they offer, eligibility for them, and the steps to follow a legal process.

This information can be so much more powerful if it is connected with other service providers’ information, and make for a much more friendly, supportive, and meaningful journey through the legal system from the user’s perspective.