As more lawyers, court staff, and justice system professionals learn about the new wave of generative AI, there’s increasing discussion about how AI models & applications might help close the justice gap for people struggling with legal problems. Could AI tools like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard help get…

Reimagining How Lawyers Communicate Contract Terms & Insurance Policies to the Public — How can we help people to understand whether a contract is a good fit for them? Like when they are faced with a possible insurance policy, how can we help them make wise, informed choices about whether this policy is a good fit for them? Our groups at Stanford Legal…

A Human-Centered Rubric to Evaluate a Form — Forms are not just pieces of paper. They’re tools for people to get their story across to a powerful judge, clerk, administrator, lawyer, or someone else who can decide about their future. How — and if — you fill in a government form can determine if: you get to stay…

Lessons Learned from the Eviction Prevention Learning Lab cohort — As eviction rates go back up following the court shutdowns and emergency moratoria during the pandemic, communities are struggling with the question: how can we prevent evictions? How can we help people stay in their homes, avoid lawsuits to force them out of their houses or pay extra fees, and…

Reflecting back on all of our legal design work over the past 10 years, I’ve spotted a common pattern happening: Momentum builds around a justice reform policy that intends to address a fundamental problem in people’s ability to access the justice system. This could be around giving people facing traffic…

Building a network that’s researching, designing, and evaluating what works to increase access to justice — Earlier this summer I was lucky to spend a Saturday in conversation with Professor Monica Palmirani & her research group CIRSFID at the University of Bologna. It was a pleasant afternoon talking about projects & giving feedback on early-stage initiatives. Especially because of COVID, it has been hard to build…

(Even if we should be moving away from forms altogether…) — I am thinking a lot about forms these days! At the Stanford Filing Fairness Project, our team is working on a near future in which PDF forms no longer are key to people’s access to the court system. In that vision, it’s all about moving from populating PDFs to gathering…

A design research report from Stanford’s Justice By Design: Eviction class in Winter 2022 — This report is by the class team Trevor Byrne, Emma Dolan, Jordan Payne, Alexandra Reeves, Amy Zhai — along with the teaching team Nora Al Haider, and Margaret Hagan As the eviction crisis spreads throughout the United States, there is an access to justice paradox that has emerged. More and…

Digital Legal Needs analysis of an online legal clinic to predict seasonal trends in people’s legal needs by Nóra Al Haider and Margaret Hagan Stanford Legal Design Lab collaborated with the American Bar Association to analyze ABA Free Legal Answers. Free Legal Answers is an online legal clinic through which low-income individuals get answers to civil legal questions from lawyers, completely free of charge.