N.C. law students pitch access to justice solutions at Legal Design Derby
The multi-school competition challenged teams to develop tech-based tools to provide more North Carolinians with access to justice resources.
NCCU Law 2L Donna Dodson and NCCU Law 3L Alliah Harrison and Duke Law 1Ls Jorren Biggs and Alex Neumann discuss their idea with Littlejohn
Students from three North Carolina law schools gathered at North Carolina Central University to participate in the fourth annual Legal Design Derby focused on access to justice. Co-hosted by the Duke Center on Law & Technology (DCLT) and the NCCU Tech Law & Policy Center, this human-centered design sprint provided students an opportunity to contribute their ideas to the new Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) Innovation Lab.
"The derby is an opportunity to step outside of the normal law school environment and take on an issue, a challenge that they care about," said DCLT Director Jeff Ward, a clinical professor of law at Duke. "In this case, it's a question intimately connected to access to legal services for our community."
NCCU Tech Law & Policy Center Executive Director Diane Littlejohn said, “It's been really great to see the ideas that students are coming up with. It's been refreshing to see what people who are not in the profession yet can think of versus people who are already in it.”
In teams of three or four, students explored the question “How might we empower North Carolinians to better understand their legal issues and identify potential solutions for themselves?” Throughout the day, law students heard from Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) about their services, brainstormed potential tech-enabled solutions, sought feedback from their peers on their ideas, and asked questions of mentors and legal professionals. The design-based pedagogy of the Derby allowed students to tap into their creativity and express themselves via methods not traditionally used in law school. The process of building an initial prototype, for example, gave one student an opportunity to draw.
“Law students can actually benefit by adding to their tool belt,” Ward said, “Being creative, celebrating their creativity, being more thoughtful about all of the potential solutions and how the legal portion of that solution might work in collaboration with other disciplines."
The winning team consisted of Duke Law 1Ls Jorren Biggs and Alex Neumann working with NCCU Law 2L Donna Dodson and NCCU Law 3L Alliah Harrison. Their proposed idea, LANC-E, or Legal Aid of North Carolina E-Screening tool, would use generative AI to answer questions for potential clients interested in seeking services. The algorithm behind the AI would be trained using data from questions asked by real people and answered by LANC staff, and answers would be cited to help build trust in the tool.
“One challenge that we realized is that a specific solution to a problem can sometimes exacerbate other issues,” Neumann said. “Something we realized pretty early on is that by creating a digital solution, you caused further problems with the urban-rural divide.”
The students also recognized how LANC cannot help with all civil legal issues, so they proposed paths to direct clients to Legal Aid’s intake process, a partner organization, or another source of information if LANC is not able to assist with that legal need. One of these resources is LANC's own Innovation Lab, which partners with law schools to develop innovative tech-based solutions that improve the delivery of legal services to low-income communities, particularly in rural areas.
“This exchange of ideas and best practices between academic institutions and the Legal Aid of NC Innovation Lab encourages the development of creative solutions to legal challenges through design thinking and technology," said Scheree Gilcrhist, chief innovation officer at LANC. "It fosters knowledge sharing and collaboration that can have a lasting impact on Legal Aid of NC’s clients and its ability to adapt to evolving needs.”
Student participants were encouraged to follow through with their idea in partnership with LANC’s Innovation Lab. Financial support, academic credit, mentoring, and other resources through the DCLT or their respective law schools may be available to participants to explore, build, and implement their idea into reality. Each member of the winning team was awarded a cash prize of $250.
Said Neumann: “I think it's really exciting to be able to do something that, if it actually comes into being, there are a lot more people that are going to get help and learn more about how to do things for themselves.”
The Legal Design Derby is made possible through a sponsorship by Lawyers Mutual Consulting & Services. Special thanks also go to LexisNexis for sponsoring the DCLT. Both sponsors sent a representative to participate as a mentor in this fall’s Legal Design Derby. Read more about the Legal Design Derby.