Reimagining Justice

Episode no. 50 features Kanan Dhru. Our discussion covers: What is user-friendly, people-centred justice; The importance of data and evidence-based research; HiiL’s justice dashboard; Key factors for innovation at scale; How the justice accelerator works; The parallels between the medical and legal professions; How HiiL is transforming the justice sector; What you will learn at the Innovating Justice forum; 7 gamechangers for improving people-centred justice; How Kanan’s definition of legal innovation has changed since Episode 8! Proudly sponsored by Neota Logic and Legally Yours. Links: The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law “HiiL” Innovating Justice Forum Haqdarshak (India) Legally Yours Neota Logic Pro Bono Impact 25 Awards Andrea Perry-Petersen – LinkedIn - Twitter @winkiepp – andreaperrypetersen.com.au Twitter - @ReimaginingJ Facebook – Reimagining Justice group

Episode no. 49 features Elizabeth Shearer, President of the Queensland Law Society (“QLS”) and Founder of Affording Justice. Our discussion covers: the impact of Covid19 on the profession; what changes should remain; the purpose of the QLS Access to Justice committee and the ‘scorecard’; best uses for technology and the opportunity before the profession; Elizabeth’s journey to establish Affording Justice; how the Affording Justice model has evolved; key takeaways from her Churchill Trust research into telephone delivery; how to define success as a lawyer; guidance on low bono and unbundling; how Elizabeth will know she’s been a success as QLS President; and Elizabeth’s definition of legal innovation! Proudly sponsored by Neota Logic and Legally Yours. Links:  Affording Justice QLS Access to Justice Scorecard Elizabeth’s Churchill Fellowship report Legally Yours Neota Logic Andrea Perry-Petersen – LinkedIn - Twitter @winkiepp – andreaperrypetersen.com.au Twitter - @ReimaginingJ Facebook – Reimagining Jus

In this episode no. 48 I spoke with Laura Kiely, Barrister and Founder of online dispute resolution platform, Immediation. Our discussion covers: How Laura’s experience in corporate law and at the Bar led her to this point; Immediation – the need it addresses, how it was designed and how it works in practice; The types of clients implementing it and the matters with which it assists; The role of government and private companies in filling gaps in the market, especially as relates to access to justice; The impact of Covid19 on dispute resolution in general and what this has meant for Immediation; How life as a lawyer compares to life as a start up founder and overlaps in skills; Why Laura continues to practise law while running a company with 50 employees; Immediation’s funding journey; and Laura’s definition of legal innovation! Proudly sponsored by Neota Logic and Legally Yours. Links: Immediation HRC ”Addressing the problem of algorithmic bias” Legally Yours Neota Logic Andrea Perry-Petersen – LinkedIn

In this episode no. 47, I speak with Stevie Ghiassi, CEO and co-founder of Legaler, and Chairman of Legaler Aid. Our discussion covers: The mission of Legaler Aid and how it works in practice What inspired Stevie to found Legaler Aid to address the justice gap How Legaler Aid is expanding the network of lawyers doing pro bono work What Stevie considers the first step in modernising legal services Why incorporating blockchain technology is critical Video conferencing technology Legaler and its application during the pandemic The work of the Australian Legal Technology Association (“ALTA”) Tips for founders including where to base yourself and getting the structure right The pending launch of comprehensive global research about the business of legal tech, the Global Legal Technology Report and Directory Stevie’s definition of legal innovation! Proudly sponsored by Neota Logic and Legally Yours. Links: Legaler Aid Legaler Global Legal Tech Report ALTA Legally Yours Neota Logic Andrea Perry-Petersen – LinkedI

In this episode no. 46 I speak with Brendan Lacota, Head of Community Programs at Justice Connect and Vice-President of the Law Institute of Victoria. This interview covers: How online tools help and what technology was used to develop: FineFixer, Dear Landlord, Justice Connect Answers and onlinewillkit.com How to design an online tool How to acquire skills to design an online tool Insights Brendan has gained and why he still applies them The best form of consumer facing legal technology right now and use cases for technology in the future What has most surprised him over his time implementing technology into a legal practice A specific product Justice Connect is developing to combat elder abuse His priorities for service with the Law Institute of Victoria and Law Council of Australia Brendan’s definition of legal innovation or, more particularly what it’s not! Proudly sponsored by Neota Logic and Legally Yours. Links: Justice Connect Fine Fixer Dear Landlord Paper Giant Online will kit Legally Yours Neota

In this episode no. 45 I speak with President of the American Bar Association and Partner, Snell & Wilcox, Ms Patrica Lee Refo. This interview covers: The ABA’s mission, including racial equity and other practical strategies The current focus on unmet legal needs due to the pandemic The impact of the pandemic on the practise of law including remote working and training junior lawyers The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity facing the profession Who are the people best-placed to innovate and reform How the historic ABA resolution regarding reform was developed and passed The importance of experimenting and measuring what works The role of technology and paraprofessionals in creating more options for everyday people Specific ABA projects including Free Legal Answers, Legal Tech for a change, the Miranda tool and Floodproof app The power inherent in being a lawyer The need to build back justice systems that are better than before Ms Refo’s definition of legal innovation or, more particularly what it’s not! Prou

In this episode no. 44 I interview Lucy Ricca, Executive Director at Office of Legal Services Innovation, Utah Supreme Court. Lucy and I discuss what is arguably the most significant changes to the practice of law in the US in approximately 100 years including reducing economic restrictions around who can practice law to enable more innovation, more scale, and more access for consumers of legal services. We canvas how the current rules of legal regulation limit innovation and access to legal services, and most importantly what we can do about that. This interview covers: The key factors that led to establishing the Implementation Task Force on Regulatory Reform, especially how the task force progressed from theory to practice The work of the task force including setting up the regulatory sandbox What a regulatory sandbox is and its process for assessing risk Key concerns from lawyers about the potential rule changes The types of applications in the sandbox What will make the biggest difference Lucy’s definit

Reimagining Justice covers issues at the intersection of innovation, law and social justice. You’ll enjoy it if you’re someone who hopes to make a positive improvement to people’s experience of the law through new ways of thinking and doing. Self-represented litigants… do you love them or loath them? Well either way they are a fact of life and this episode will give you some ideas about how to best respond to self rep litigants no matter which side of the fence you’re on. This is episode no. 43 and I speak with Katherine Alteneder, Consulting Senior Strategic Advisor with the Self-Represented Litigation Network. This episode covers: how the network most effectively facilitates people from diverse backgrounds, how the network measures the value of its work, exactly what self-help is and why it’s considered a core service of the court, her idea for a community council to hold courts accountable, Katherine’s definition of legal innovation, and the importance of judicial education about self-representation. If

In this episode no. 42 I speak with Kate Fazio, Head of Innovation and engagement at legal services charity Justice Connect, where Kate leads an interdisciplinary team to develop products and strategies such as the Gateway Project and Pro Bono Portal to increase access to Justice. For her work transforming justice Kate has received many awards including the 2020 Telstra Business Women’s Award (For Purpose) and the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Design Award in Service Design.  As a lawyer, technologist and journalist with a Masters in Social Impact, Kate is a change-maker bringing an intersectional lens to improving access to justice in Australia. This interview will be helpful if you want to embed digital transformation across your organisation or guarantee a program with impact. And wait until you hear Kate’s definition of MVP. You should listen to this episode if you want to know more about: The work of Justice Connect (“JC”), its clearing house function and how it assists individuals and not-for-profit organis

This is episode no. 41 and I am speaking with experienced lawyer, and advocate for survivors of domestic and family violence, Angela Lynch, CEO of Women’s Legal Service Queensland. With over 23 years in the domestic violence legal sector, Angela has a deep understanding of the issues and translates this practical legal knowledge and experience into significant law reform, policy, community legal education and safer client outcomes. In 2017 Angela’s dedication to the sector was acknowledged when she was awarded the Lawyer’s Weekly Women in Law Not-for-profit Lawyer of the Year, and Women in Law Excellence Award and the Women’s Agenda National Emerging Leader in the Legal Sector award. In this episode we discuss the work of Women’s Legal Service Qld in championing frontline operations, external advocacy, client services including for rural and regional women, and fundraising. You will hear how women’s legal service has responded to the pandemic, in particular the significant increase in demand for its services

Each Reimagining Justice episode covers issues at the intersection of law, social justice and innovation. You will enjoy it if you are someone who hopes to improve people’s experience of the law through new ways of thinking and doing. Welcome to episode 40 where the tables have been turned, the interviewer is Walkley award winning journalist The Wandering journo Nance Haxton and the guest is me! After years at the ABC, and a stint as Griffith university’s journalist in residence, Nance is now a freelance podcast producer with podcasts including “Streets of Your Town”, Remarkable Tales and The Gender Card (link to her website in the show notes). The core topic of this episode is the Churchill Trust fellowship research I undertook from December last year to February this year when I met global leaders in justice innovation just before Covid19 changed the world. I outline what a Churchill fellowship is exactly, why I applied, the process involved and the reasons I was a successful recipient. I share some of my p

In episode 39 I speak with Jon Cina, Associate Director, Access and Equity at Victoria Legal Aid (“VLA”). In this role since 2016, Jon oversees the legal help contact centre, funding to Victorian community legal centres, support and innovation in the sector all the while maintaining a focus on a whole of client approach to legal service delivery. VLA deals with a huge volume of inquiries each year and during this interview we discuss the approaches VLA is implementing to best respond to those needs. Jon studied law in Scotland and had various roles in UN War Crimes Tribunals in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and East Timor. Once he moved to Australia, he managed an inquiry at the Victorian Parliament Law Reform Committee and in his roles as Assistant and Acting Director of Court support services at the Department of Justice and Regulation helped to make the court system more effective. Immediately prior to joining VLA Jon led the team that established the Victorian Mental Health Complaints Commissioner. Jon an

In this episode no. 38 I speak with Eduardo Gonzalez, who has had a variety of roles in his short career and who is now Project Manager with the Self-representation Litigation Network (“SRLN”). The SRLN is a network of professionals including judges, court administrators, the private bar, technologists and librarians all connecting in relation to access to justice and whose core work is to support collaboration and knowledge sharing. But Eduardo has also worked in legal design both as a consultant and at the NuLawLab at Northeastern University in Boston where he was involved in an exciting project using video games to educate self-represented litigants. For the last couple of years Eduardo has been an Access to Justice Technology fellow at Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Policy, all experiences we discuss. We covered the challenges in collating. updating and sharing information in a meaningful way, and insights from the participants in the SRLN justice tech working group that Eduardo coordinates.

This is episode no. 37, with Associate Professor and Dean of law at Flinders University Tania Leiman in which we cover many highly current topics. From history to the future, looking back in order to improve how we move forward, skills for lawyers of the future, how technology has evolved to make the law more accessible, what law students should know about Australia’s place in the world and being a global citizen, how to increase legal literacy, the role of law in all our lives, how Flinders University is delivering all that in their new curriculum, the tension between doctrinal knowledge and skills development including the relevance of the Priestly 11, how regulation is meant to protect the consumer, the value of legal education and Tania’s position on legal innovation. Tania sees technology as a tool for promotion of human rights and social justice. In this interview she very clearly describes how law binds our society together and the important and interconnected role of law schools, lawyers and regulator

This episode no. 36 is with Program Manager of LawHelp Interactive at Pro Bono Net, Claudia Johnson. When in some states of America there are 27 forms to file for a simple divorce, we discuss where responsibility lies to make the law relating to housing, health, and family issues, more understandable for lay people, which is particularly important given the global rise in numbers of self-represented litigants. There’s been a theme going for the past few episodes around the use of document automation to make legal service delivery more efficient, but more importantly effective and scalable when it’s based on human centred design principles. Again in this episode we cover smart forms, use cases they’re best suited for and some they’re not - and importantly, how to decide. As Claudia says, “there are easy ways to use tech to magnify the goodness of law and show respect to your clients”. We also talked about Claudia’s project with Bay area legal aid which centralised intake for a large number of clients over a l

In this episode no. 35, I speak with New Orleans based lawyer Amanda Leigh Brown. Amanda is founder and Executive Director of Langiappe Law Lab, a legal aid technology non-profit serving Louisiana’s justice community by empowering the public with legal information and helping legal service providers do their work better. Throughout her career Amanda has worked on apps that assist people after disasters, a state-wide portal system providing information and referrals and practical and ethical guidelines to use when developing AI. We touched on the importance of data and the biggest challenges to any project and Amanda shared the differing responses she received to the online legal information portal. On a personal level she shares how she first developed an interest in tech and the influence of law school on her career choices. One of the things I found most interesting about this conversation was the impact on her of her experience at Microsoft. Of course the pandemic has spurred Amanda on to even more action

In this episode no. 34, I speak with Sydney-based lawyer Carly Stebbing who established Resolution 123 - a law firm using technology and flexible work to deliver employment law services to employees in a fast, simple and affordable way. Carly has over 13 years of employment law experience working for employer associations, law firms and volunteering at community legal centres. The fact that she has worked for employers means she has the benefit of knowing how employers think and what their lawyers will be advising them. Carly is a Flexible Workday Ambassador and has numerous awards, winning law firm Innovator of the Year in last year’s Women in Law awards. This episode covers a lot of ground and will have wide appeal, especially if you’re interested in how to run a client focused firm for the everyday person while incorporating technology into your business model. Carly shares the concerns that initially prevented her from starting her firm, and the factors that came together to mean she eventually did take t

In this episode no. 33 I speak with Quinten Steenhuis, Clinical Fellow at Suffolk University Law School doing what I would describe as ground-breaking work through a project responding to the covid19 crisis by bringing essential legal services online. But before this project, as a senior housing attorney and systems administrator at Greater Boston Legal Services Quinten had developed MADE, an effective legal tech product assisting people with eviction proceedings. He also runs his own consulting business Lemma Legal focusing on user-facing technology projects. You’ll no doubt hear the excitement in my voice as we discuss MADE and the current document assembly line project which needs many adjectives to describe it because it’s ticking so many boxes. It’s global, responsive, innovative (of course), collaborative, necessary and open source. And Quinten told me that they are still looking for volunteers so if you’re interested follow the links in the show notes. And another thing that will be really interesting

In this episode no. 32 I speak with Jennie Pakula, Manager of Innovation & Consumer Engagement at the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner. We covered a lot of ground in this interview, charting the role of regulator from traditional disciplinarian to modern stakeholder solving challenges of both clients and lawyers; examples of effective uses of technology in the profession; and the purpose of a regulatory inbox. We covered the kinds of issues lawyers are looking to professional and regulatory bodies for guidance upon, including the whole legal information/advice divide and where issues arise regarding unauthorised practice of law. Jennie was very open in sharing the kinds of questions that come into the regulatory inbox, which will provide insight into the type of innovation currently moving the profession forward. Jennie discussed the work of the new consumer advisory committee at the commission and whether regulation has actually been fulfilling its true role in protecting the consumer. Jen

This episode no. 31 is a really important one in light of current circumstances and the impact on the legal profession, not only through disrupted working conditions but regarding current modes of conducting hearings - it covers issues of grave importance to maintaining the rule of law. I speak with Dr. Natalie Byrom who is Director of Research at UK The Legal Education Foundation where she leads work to build the evidence base for what works in helping individuals to secure their rights. Last year she was seconded to Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service as Expert Advisor on Open Data and Academic Engagement where her remit included advising on the data architecture and methods required to evaluate the impact of technology focused court reform on both access to and the fairness of the justice system. The 3 big topics in this episode are: the urgent shift to online hearings we’re seeing right now around the world - whether they are taking account of more vulnerable people and what could be done to impr