A few weeks ago I went to a hearing in municipal court.  I was only there to observe.  I’d never seen one in person before.

And it was riveting.

As a law student, watching that hearing was like being a kid in a candy shop.  I was able to see all these things I had only read about in caselaw and textbooks.  It was about 8 hours long, but to me those hours just flew by.

But something else occurred to me during that hearing.  This is a horrible user experience.

What does that mean?  User experience (usually abbreviated to UX) is a term used in the tech community to describe the interaction between a user and some type of software, usually a website.  Is it easy to understand?  Is it Intuitive? Can a user easily find what they were looking for?

Continue Reading UX in the Courtroom

Legal design is the application of human-centered design to the world of law, to make legal systems and services more human-centered, usable, and satisfying.  –Margaret Hagen, Law By Design

Legal design is an idea that says that the law needs to reach out to people, instead of making people come to the law.  If people in legal need are told to figure it out on their own, they’ll get nowhere.  All the resources in the world could be available for them, but if they don’t know about those resources or how to get them, then those resources are totally useless.

Photo from Pixabay.comSo a great way to apply legal design is to use it to help under-represented populations get the access to justice they need.  In Montana, where I am right now, the most marginalized groups are the Native American tribes.  Many of the tribe members have legal issues with no information about the resources available to them.

And there are several resources available.  The University of Montana offers a tribal law clinic for civil and criminal matters.  Montana Legal Services Association offers help in all civil matters, and some criminal matters for certain tribes.  There’s even a government website that puts all the basic legal information for each tribe in one place.

But many, if not most, tribal members have no idea how to access these Continue Reading Reaching Native Tribes Through Legal Design

Inclusivity can be an overwhelming word.  It sounds like a lot more work for your organization.  It sounds costly.  And yet it’s incredibly easy.

For non-profit legal organizations, being inclusive means just continuing that overall mission of justice for all, regardless of any barriers.  In some ways, providing the LGBTQ+ community better justice is the same thing as providing larger communities better justice.  Eviction is legally the same no matter your background, heritage, or identity.  Name changes are the same tedious process for everyone.

But on the other hand, providing better justice to the LGBTQ+ community may require a bit of a paradigm shift.

Continue Reading How Easy Is It To Be Inclusive?

Promoting Justice for all, regardless of how much money someone has in their wallet, or their zip code.

Being a fellow through the ATJ Tech Fellowship means that I work with a host organization to really understand the nitty-gritty of the legal tech world. It allows me to come face to face with the problems that the access to justice community faces and try to come up with legal tech solutions to those problems.

This summer, my host organization is the Montana Legal Services Association (MLSA). This organization works with low-income Montanans to provide legal advice, information, and representation on civil legal issues such as domestic violence, landlord/tenant situations, parental rights, and so much more.

Continue Reading A State-Wide Law Firm

My name is Rebekah Hall and I am a 3L at Alexander Blewett III School of Law, and a fellow for the ATJ Tech Fellowship. Under About you can find out more about my background and my weird hobbies.

So why am I starting this blog? Part of the reason is because this blog is a requirement for fellows in the ATJ Tech Fellowship, and fellows need to do a few blog challenges. I’ll tag those challenge posts. The other reason I’m starting this blog, though, is to explore the newly developing world of legal tech. This is going to be a platform for me to discuss what legal tech is, why we need it, and some of the amazing examples of it out there.  The field of legal tech is fascinating, because it combines all different types of law under one umbrella, as well as providing a new way to realize access to justice.

The name “Beta Phase” comes from the world of software.  The beta version of a piece of software is when the software is released before it’s finished, to let users play around with it and to let developers to find bugs they wouldn’t have even thought to look for. This is the phase that legal tech in general is in. We’re nowhere near a finished product, and we have a lot to learn about what’s possible with it!

Hopefully you enjoy what you read here and stick around for more!