Can Scrappy Innovators Close the Access to Justice Gap? The Social Justice Hackathon

This past weekend’s first ever Social Justice Hackathon sponsored by Microsoft, Puget Sound Legal, Rehmke & Flynn PLLC, and Avvo kicked off Friday night at Seattle University School of Law, where an energetic and curious group of 63 law students, young lawyers, and programmers confronted the problem of legal access in America.

After some networking and then remarks by Annette Clark, Dean of the law school, and Hon. Donald Horowitz, co-author of the WA Access to Justice Technology Principles, ideas for apps were presented and teams began to form.

Teams worked throughout the weekend on projects that aimed to make legal services more accessible to the 80% of the poor and 60% of the middle class who are unable to afford legal representation. Teams worked for next several hours on their ideas. By the time they adjourned late Friday night, most teams had a complete and consistent view of the problem they set out to solve and its context.

For many of them, it was their first hackathon and they had no clue what to expect. Bob Watson, one of the attendees stated, “I felt that bringing together a collection of designers, developers, lawyers, and social activists would, if nothing else, make for an interesting evening.”

The teams reconvened Saturday Morning to continue building up their projects. During the lunch session, guests were able to hear Texas A&M Professor Milan Markovic’s remarks on the “Access to Justice Myths.” After, mentors assisted the teams with finalizing their presentations and projects before teams made their final presentations on Saturday evening to judges Brian Howe, CEO of Impact Hub, Diana Singleton, Director of the Access to Justice Institute, and Aurora Martin, Director of Columbia Legal Services.

 

After presentations, CEO of MetaJure, Inc. gave the Keynote remarks on “Innovations in Access.” The winning teams will be provided resources as they continue to develop their projects until they showcase their projects at a follow up demo day. Below is more information about the winning teams and their members.

 1st Place Winning Team: Court Whisperer

Court Whisperer is a mobile application that enables people to fill out court forms by speaking and that produces a finished, properly formatted court document. Basically, this app allows users to fill out court forms on a phone without having to actually deal with the forms themselves. Not only that, but the app can use the phone’s voice-recognition software to allow the user to speak his/her answers. Team members: Katherine Alteneder (Project Lead), Mathias Burton (UX), Dan Liebling (Dev), Bob Watson (UX), Taylor Lea (Dev), and Judd Deaver (Dev).

 2nd PlaceNLC Resource Dispersion Optimization

This team worked to develop a solution to more easily share self-help legal resources with clients that the Neighborhood Legal Clinic serves. They created this innovative solution through an inventive application of cutting-edge web technologies. The team launched an impressive prototype in just one day, allowing Clinic attorneys to easily send resources to their clients at the tap of a screen. Team members: Sara Huang (EVP of Front End Development), David Sessoms (Senior UX Designer), Akash Badshah (Principal Solution Architect), Adelaine Shay (Legal Partner), Austin Chang (Senior Managing CSV Partner), Dan McKeown (Pacific Pelican), Rene Miller (Executive API Manager).

 Paid It

This is a mobile app for clients facing eviction due to lack of rental (or other documents of proof) evidence to present in legal cases. Users can create a ledger of their payments with an easy interface that allows them to photograph and save heir payment instrument (e.g., money order) right in the ledger. Team members: Michael (Legal – Project Owner), Destinee (Project Manager), Jacob (Legal), Rahn (SDET), Liam (Android Dev), Allison (UX Designer), Diana (UX Designer), Chris (iOS Dev).