Court is less intimidating on screen, Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack says. “When you are in the comfort of your own home, where you feel safe and secure, it’s easier to feel confident in letting the court know what’s on your mind.”
As COVID-19 spread through New York City and shuttered its courthouses in March 2020, Sateesh Nori realized JustFix.nyc could do even more to empower tenants to exercise their rights during the pandemic.
Reardon is a great listener who gets people’s support by understanding their agendas and emotions. “She plays the long game, not the short game. She never comes in and jams something down people’s throats,” law professor William Henderson says.
Soon after his 2013 election to the bench in Louisiana’s 24th Judicial District, Judge Scott Schlegel started looking for ways to repurpose technology common in the private sector for deployment in the court system.
After the Virginia Supreme Court issued an order June 22 stating that remote proceedings should be used to conduct as much business as possible, Tran offered webinars to help lawyers with the Fairfax Bar Association get up to speed with Webex.
For nearly 12 years, Steenhuis worked as a senior housing attorney, systems administrator and developer at Greater Boston Legal Services, where he also built Massachusetts Defense for Eviction, which helps pro se tenants defend themselves.
Tom Martin created LawDroid Builder, a “no-code” software platform that allows legal organizations to design custom chatbots to intake clients, automate documents and assemble digital tools.
JusticeText reviews video and audio files and generates searchable transcripts of them. The technology uses a speech-to-text machine learning algorithm to process data such as body camera videos and recordings of jailhouse conversations for users.
When Stacy Butler, the director of the Innovation for Justice Program, is asked if she will ever practice law again, she doesn’t hesitate to answer. “No,” Butler says. “It was adversarial and antagonistic. It did not feed my soul.”
Josh Blandi founded UniCourt, which gives law firms and businesses real-time access to court records and legal data for case research and tracking, business development, competitive intelligence and various other purposes.
Intent on demystifying the process for people representing themselves, Sonja Ebron, who also has a background in artificial intelligence; and Debra Slone, who has a PhD in library and information science, launched Courtroom5 in 2017.
Natalie Anne Knowlton’s work for the IAALS has provided data and reference for states that have overhauled or are considering modifying their UPL regulations to allow for alternative business structures or limited nonlawyer practice.
Uzoma Orchingwa and Gabriel Saruhashi used their savings to launch the technology nonprofit Ameelio in March 2020. The duo offers families a free mobile app that allows them to send letters into prisons.
Patrick Palace’s current volunteer work includes serving as vice chair of the ABA Center for Innovation and secretary of the National Conference of Bar Presidents—two groups with members who sometimes don’t agree on regulation changes in the law.
Janis Puracal helps people who are trying to prove their innocence after a conviction. But she also works with clients pretrial to reveal any flawed or misleading forensic evidence to prevent a conviction in the first place.
