Legal Data needs to be linked and made useful #futurelaw
The problem with criminal law data is not that we don’t have it, but that what we have is not easily linked with each other. It is not…
Open Law Laba blog by Margaret Hagan
Open Law Lab
The problem with criminal law data is not that we don’t have it, but that what we have is not easily linked with each other. It is not…
We see more discussion of predictive algorithms to judge people in criminal justice, to analyze whether / how to grant probation, bail, etc. But there are serious risks…
A panel on law, algorithms, ethics, and future tech. How do we build tools that understand when a person says, “I want a divorce,” they might be mad…
One of my academic articles has just been published in the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology. It’s called “The User Experience of the Internet as a Legal…
One of the main points of resistance for lawyers in the design process is getting from talk to action. It’s too easy to start off with best intentions,…
I love teaching. It is such a joy to bring students together to work on real-world challenges, and to do so in a sense of public service along…
This afternoon I was privileged to attend the final presentations in the new Stanford class Ending Poverty with Technology. This class is taught by Sociology professor David Grusky,…
The Office of Management and Budget released its proposed budget this week, in which they propose the elimination of the Legal Services Corporation. The LSC is the closest…
One of my Brazilian students in my Prototyping Access to Justice class alerted me to a very cool app in Brazil, all about empowering people about their legal…
The OpenGov Foundation has a project called Open Legal Documents. They have several projects about making government more open, transparent, and people-friendly. One way they do this is…
What are better ways to help people follow a legal process? To get all the tasks, forms, consults, and decisions made to get to resolution? One mode I’ve…
I have just released the first working version of my book, Law By Design. It is meant for people in the legal system, to understand how design process,…
For the Hack the JD event this past weekend at Santa Barbara’s College of Law, I was asked to prep a 5 minute elevator pitch of what I…
This past weekend, I spent two very gloriously sunny days in Santa Barbara’s College of Law, in windowless rooms, planning what a better way to educate future lawyers…
I was delighted to receive a gorgeous copy of an illustrated guide to the topics on the New York Bar Exam: The New York Bar Picture Book, by…
In our Prototyping Access to Justice class, Kursat Ozenc and I are leading student teams to get quickly from speculating about how the courts could be improved to…
In the Prototyping Access to Justice class that I’m teaching this quarter at Stanford, we’re taking a “service design” approach to the legal system. This means considering both…
Last week I presented at the LSC (Legal Services Corporation)-TIG (Tech Innovation Grants) conference, on a panel about legal aid + tech in the face of natural disasters.…
Prolonged Detention Stories is a website that humanizes, and makes interactive, a legal brief. It’s a simple and beautiful design, that lays out not only what legal arguments…
The International Bar Association has published the app eyeWitness, to allow people on the ground, in situations where atrocities are occurring, to gather evidence. The system they’ve set…
The Business Development Bank of Canada has an online simulation game that’s meant for training in Intellectual Property as applied to entrepreneurs. It’s not necessarily built to train lawyers,…
I have been talking with lots of 2Ls, 3Ls, and newly minted JDs over the past year, about what other kinds of career tracks are open to young…
Constitute is an interesting new web-app/design that is all about examining the different constitutions. It lets you choose multiple constitutions to compare against each other, and also filter…
TermsFeed is an online legal service that lets any user (most often the owner of a website or an app) generate the legal terms and conditions they need to…
This post was originally published over on Stanford Legal Design Lab’s Medium publication, Legal Design and Innovation. Enjoy! Out of all the workshops, design cycles, and product development…
A team from the University of Cambridge have launched Lawbot (BETA), an interactive conversational tool that can consult people on their possible legal situations. It’s a British tool,…
I have been thinking about better ways to integrate the quick-development cycle of the Agile Design Process, and the community-driven spirit of Participatory Design. Here is my initial…
Thanks to Aaron Stienstra for linking me to the Center for Civic Design, an effort to bring good design to elections and ballots. They are a non-profit who…
Hat tip to Helena Haapio for forwarding me this article out of South Africa about comic-book version of contracts that has been created and distributed by a fruit…
During a recent visit to the University of Denver, I was so impressed to hear about a project that has come out of IAALS (the Institute for the…
Here is a short set of notes that are slightly provocative, aimed at both law school leaders and faculty, and the students who are choosing whether and how…
CALI has published a coloring book authored by three librarians, Elizabeth Gotauco, Nicole Dyszlewski, and Raquel M. Ortiz, that gives an introductory primer on how to do legal…
One of the student fellows at Legal Design Lab has been encoding a whole range of similar legal policies, tagging up which sections of different institutions’ policy documents…
The dean of Osgoode Law School in Toronto, Lorne Sossin, has an interesting new post out about the new roles of law schools in developing problem-solvers and social…
I’ve been reading Wharton professor Adam Grant’s recent book Originals, that documents how new ideas and products emerge out of staid industries and bureaucracies. There’s a central point…
Last week, it was great to see a short article making the rounds about a new chat-bot legal service coded and launched by a Stanford undergrad student, Joshua…
I have been in different working groups and conferences over the past year, all focused on access to justice innovation, and we keep coming back to one new…
I attended a design talk where startup and tech companies’ designers were sharing notes about what they’ve learned about what kinds of visual and interaction design best connect…
If we were to build a 2016 tool to help people, searching online for help with a life problem (that we know has a possible legal solution/redress), what…
Last week I went to an evening talk at Intuit, hearing from a collection of designers, technologists, and strategists working to make personal finance more engaging for laypeople.…