A2J Design Lab
For illustrative purposes only, here are some solutions developed by teams at the April 2018 Access to Justice InnoTech Law Hackathon:
Team: Gekko
(A) Target Users
LawChat (http://lawchat.me/) targets anyone who wishes to seek free initial legal help but have difficulty in finding one.
(B) Problems to be solved
The problems that Gekko aim to solve include: (1) general public’s lack of knowledge on where to seek free legal advice; (2) general public’s difficulty in describing and articulating their problems to the lawyers; and (3) insufficient time during the pro-bono meeting for lawyers to give substantial advice.
(C) Proposed solution
The proposed solution aims to reinvent the expectations of the initial legal consultation for both clients and lawyers. Firstly, LawChat's timeline organizes and presents users' information chronologically and coherently to lawyers. Secondly, LawChat generates a checklist of useful information and documents to bring which enhances the sharing of information between lawyers and clients before the consultation. Thus, lawyers can optimize the meeting time and focus on critical issues. Thirdly, LawChat allows users to navigate different law firms at their fingertips by allowing them to filter their search with their selected criteria. This allows users to utilise the option of having 45 minute free legal consultation and tap into the free legal resources.
Team: A Team
A Team's target users are litigants in person (claimants and/or defendants) in Small Claims Tribunal.
Litigants in person often find it difficult to fill in complicated court forms, formulate their arguments with legal reasoning and follow lengthy procedures. This is remarkably problematic in Small Claims Tribunal since all of the litigants are without any legal representation. The litigants' non-legalistic grounds of claims and mistaken procedures often undermine the Small Claims Tribunal's efficiency. The unnecessarily prolonged proceedings also bring distress and frustration to litigants.
This team designed a web-based solution which handholds any person to pursue his claim and/or defence in the Small Claims Tribunal. The solution is a smart and easy-to-use step-by-step guide which walks the user through the "small claim" process with the following features:
(1) smart court form generator - assisting the user in preparing and drafting the required legal documents such as claim form and affidavits; and
(2) process housekeeper - informing the user of deadlines and reminding the user to complete the exact documents on time in the litigation process.
