I have been teaching and writing on how the Access to Justice movement might improve its innovations by including a wider community in its policy-making. My colleague Verena Kontscheider recommended that I explore the new world of Participatory Budgeting, in which cities use a community-driven design process to have policy-makers, experts, and the public to scope out new projects and allocate funds to them.
I will be running some preliminary studies of how we might do the brainstorming and allocation of funds through short user tests, or through online voting. More reports coming soon! It will be interesting to see if members of the public would allocate resources to the same innovations that legal professionals prioritize.
