 Welcome again everyone to our first presentation of the 2017 ATJ Tech Fellows program training sessions. Our guest presenter today who will be presenting Design, Thinking and Legal Service is Dan Jackson. Dan directs the new law lab at Northeastern University School of Law a four-year-old interdisciplinary laboratory that is merging art and law to further legal empowerment. This current work includes partnering with the Massachusetts Trial Court and the Design Consultancy IDO to tackle a fundamental redesign in Massachusetts housing court. The project is a five-year effort to use tested service and system design methods to approach the challenge from the perspective of four range of end-users of the court. We hope our results and I'll let Dan take it from there. Sounds good thank you Miguel. Hello everybody my name is Dan Jackson. First of all most importantly congratulations on your selection as the inaugural class of Access to Justice Tech Fellows. It's a pretty exciting program I got to say a couple years ago I think was Miguel a couple years ago that you hit the you hit the ground running as a first year in your law school program and started immediately networking with a lot of folks out there in the Access to Justice community and with a particular emphasis on technology. That's when Miguel and I first met at least digitally and I was particularly excited by the fact by his vision for a student run initiative that would embed law school students into legal services organizations with the mission of helping them to develop some technology tools that would advance our ultimate goal of justice for all one way or another. So I'm particularly excited I'm particularly psyched to be the first one before you guys are sick of webinars so I'm very happy about that. I would encourage everybody to ask questions either in the chat box that Miguel has already opened up or by speaking up if the audio is working. I'm usually used to speaking in front of human faces where I can see whether or not somebody has a question popping up and I can call on them or you know sort of have a little bit more of a dialogue. So do everything you can to get my attention as I run through a lot of content in a very short period of time but I am thrilled to be part of this new program. I'm hoping that this continues its trajectory and becomes part of the really accelerating pace of using technology to create new ways of connecting people to their legal rights and self-activating them. My goal here is to give you a primer on how you can use human-centered design methods to unlock what I think is the potential for your fellowship organization. I sent some advanced reading. Hopefully you all were able to read it in advance. I always feel really embarrassed about sending around an article that I wrote but nevertheless it actually speaks to our very topic here today which is the imperative of using human-centered design when lawyers design technology tools. So before we get into the slides and into the content I want everybody to just take a moment close your eyes if you're in a space where there's lots of noise and whatnot and to think about the most frustrating experience you've ever had with technology. And now I want you to think about the most frustrating experience you've had in law school and I want you to merge them now and think about what that would look like if lawyers were allowed to run amok in the world of technology and technology solutions for people who are trying to access their legal rights without regard to how real people actually interact with technology. I actually think that it would be sort of like an IKEA flat pack instruction manual from hell. I've seen it. You know 15, 25 years ago a lot of lawyers were designing websites to give a lot of people a lot of information about their legal rights and it was way way too much information. More information than any human could possibly digest. So I'm here to hopefully give you some tools and some techniques and some opportunities that you will be able to use during the course of your fellowship this summer to unlock potential within your organization for a better way. And this is really really a 30,000 foot overview so I want you to keep that in mind and know that at the end of the presentation I'll be sharing with you all of my contact information so that you can reach out to me over the course of your summer if you have any questions if you want to run your plan by me anything like that I'm here to help all of you because I think this is an awesome thing. So the new law lab this is where I'm coming from. Hold on a advanced slide. All right new law lab we are a four-year-old, I just want to give a sort of a bit background on who I am, where I'm coming from so you know how strange of an initiative. We are a four-year-old interdisciplinary innovation laboratory. We are particularly focused on merging creative arts methods with law to come up with radical new ways of giving people the chance to self-activate their legal rights without regard to hiring a lawyer. Now a lot of people look at me like I have three heads when I say that especially coming from a law school and it's like why are you trying to train lawyers when you're trying to give people the opportunity to actually self-activate their legal rights and the fact of the matter is that if the lawyers don't get involved right now in the growing movement towards legal empowerment in particular digital legal empowerment we will be left. It's already happening in continents like Africa and Asia. It's already happening in parts of the United States and so our lab here at Northeastern University School of Law is an attempt to get lawyers involved in that process as well. Some of our work you know our work overall is structured around three basic concepts. The first is collaborative design where we work directly with the end users to design the project or service itself. The second is a interdisciplinary approach where we try to merge with as extreme of other disciplines as possible so we don't go for political science. We go for theater or creative arts. You know we try to actually bridge a gap that is much larger than the usual interdisciplinary gap. And the third thing is that we're doing it all at law school because we actually want to give law students the tools to become the legal inventors of the future. Some of our project work which puts a little bit of a finite point on it. On the upper left-hand corner you will see a screenshot from Represent which is the first digital game to teach people how to represent the selves in court. It's right now in Connecticut and we designed that with Connecticut Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut. It was funded by Legal Services Corporation Technology Initiative grant program. You will hear from Glenn Rodden next I believe and he I love Glenn. He is a master of this. And the you know LC had the foresight to actually give us money three years ago to start this crazy idea of trying to create a digital game to give people the education they need to represent themselves in court. On the far right you also see a Statewide Legal which is a screenshot of a mobile. What's the best word to describe this? We worked with Pine Tree Legal Assistance of Maine to take their Statewide Legal Women Who Serve program turn it into something called Women with Military Service and Better Connect Low-Income Women with Military Service to their benefits and rights. And I'll doing all that again through a mobile tool and doing all that through code design which I'll talk about in a little bit. In the middle you'll see our new law maps program where we developed a platform that we would allow us to embed multimedia content into geographical waypoints so we could we'd like to think of this as the warm data and the cold data where we can merge storytelling digital storytelling into geographical waypoints and heat maps and the like to tell the stories the human stories behind lack of access to justice and on the far left and the bottom you'll see a screenshot of a prototype for our digital civil rights restorative justice project where we're trying to crowdsource restorative justice through our CRJ program here in northeastern. The biggest program that we've got and Miguel mentioned this is a five year five million dollar effort to redesign housing court for the age of self-representation. We are partnered with IDEO on doing that we're working hard to raise the funding to get it actually started. So with that I'm gonna jump into some of what we're gonna actually do for you. So our agenda today I'm gonna walk through design design thinking the difference between the two things I'm gonna talk a little bit about the design process itself it's a process I mean lawyers love process if you can structure it into four different things that you have to work through it's actually a pretty easy way to engage with ideas I'm gonna talk a little bit about end user engage design and co-design and the difference between the two and what you can expect to accomplish during your few very few months very little limited time in your sponsor organization I'll then hit prototyping which is the most difficult thing for lawyers to do shocking that we would be uncomfortable with incomplete ideas but it's true I'll talk a little bit about how you can actually get around that I'll then talk about some tools and resources that you can use over the course of these next couple months and then finally I'll close out with some insights that I've taken from four years of designing with legal organizations it's not easy because legal organizations lately like certainty they like precision they are not necessarily comfortable with a lot of mushy gushy stuff that is about human-centered design and empathy and all that kind of stuff I'm gonna hopefully give you some insights on how you might be able to navigate that a little bit about my background just so you know who the heck you're listening to I am I started my career as a theater designer with a degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois worked for a number of years doing that before I came to law school here at North Eastern for three years then did a one-year clerkship at the first circuit court of appeals which was an amazing experience and then worked for 13 years at the law firm of Bingham and Cutchin before I came here to start the new law lab Bingham is not part of Morgan leaders so let's move on here okay so design as a concept if you had a chance to read the advanced reading you'll know there are some abstract concepts which actually rather helpful to think about design in the abstract notion I'm not talking here about aesthetics aesthetics are important they actually they actually impact in a big way the user experience especially when you're dealing with a digital interface but design as a noun if you will it's about object creation it's manifested by an agent you all are the agents for this purpose to accomplish a goal or goals yet to be determined because you've yet to really embed into your organizations although you may have started some conversations that have started to articulate what those are and where the object satisfies a set of requirements the design requirements it's often often caused called a design brief where you actually say here's what we need to accomplish and where the creation of the actual object is subject to certain fixed constraints so you actually have limitations around you that you can't ignore unfortunately as much as we would like to be able to accomplish so many things so little time and so little money you actually do have constraints design constraints are probably the most important part of design now that's a very abstract definition I actually think Margaret Hagen does a much better job with the definition she says the practice of making things that are useful usable and engaging if you are not yet following Margaret Hagen on Twitter you should do so she is a legal design pioneer here in the United States she's at Stanford I adore working with her we had her out here at Northeastern about six months ago for a sort of senior design seminar and she does a fantastic job of really drilling things into very basic concepts that we can all absorb and understand and she we I'm thrilled that the fact that my lab is one of really only two labs two or three three four maybe maybe four maybe four so a couple of out there sort of still in there in the process of becoming legal design labs Margaret is one of them with her Stanford law lab and let's talk a little bit about design thinking first I want to call out actually my friend from MSU because I noticed that we have three MSU students and you all got started with reinvent law back in the day way back in doesn't seem like that to you but it does to me when I first started here at Northeastern you all were out there doing a lot of great stuff and now you have the legal R&D labs so I count you guys as one of the one of the handful of legal design labs out there in law schools that are trying to make all this happen so kudos to MSU I'm from Michigan myself born and raised in Detroit all right so let's talk about design thinking so design thinking is a mindset that's derived from those concepts right this is a Venn diagram that many of you have probably already seen we've modified it a little bit to work for the law design thinking tries to inculcate all those ideas into a mindset as opposed to a process a way of just working through problems working through ideas and doing so in a way that is diffuse in terms of the it's not one two three it's kind of one ish two ish three ish right so you've got desirability you have to work directly with people to understand what their human need is feasibility you know what is the actual technological capability and price point very important one of the most amazing things recently is the fact that the price point is coming down on so much technology it's so much more off the shelf now than you we were able to do just three or four years ago and that's a fantastic thing to see and the viability so usually you see viability as the business or economic model right or do we have a viable business so my pals that idea when I have changed this to say viable the law because again one quick thing here and we had somebody asking what Margaret Hayden's handle was for Twitter I put that into the cat where everybody should be able to see that now also if you have any questions we please type them into the question box or raise your hand on the control panel and we can unmute you so that you can ask audio questions that's not thank you for flagging the question I did not see it so I'm gonna move the bar over a little bit yes Margaret Hagan is at Margaret Hagan Twitter I'm also more than happy to make a personal introduction for anybody to her she's got a very busy schedule but then again she's also really dedicated to this concept so viability again you know going back to the concept of viability usually it's a business model is the business model going to take off is there a foundation for us to say that we can actually make this viable and the law is where this really fits in you know what can we actually do with the solution and the law right that's a very important concept that needs to be addressed and needs to be examined you all are actually in a really good place to do that because you're closest to the doctrinal and the professional ethics aspects of this work so that's so design thinking as a as a mindset it basically embraces deep understanding the viability often referred to as empathy it relies also on iteration and rapid prototyping which we will get to shortly and those are really challenging concepts for lawyers and we'll get to that in a little bit but it's a mindset that actually works really well I'm acting say after four years of doing this now at Northeastern and I started out I was very I came from a large law firm environment so I was very structured in my thinking to say the least and yet I was a designer if you just I still do it I still design sets for theater productions in Boston and Provincetown Massachusetts and so I still have designed the static design concepts you know near to me but my law brain was pretty rigid and it took me a while to sort of open my mind up to where we might be able to go here and so I'm hoping to give you some insights that you might be able to use in this summer process for your organization so I'm going to go on to the next slide yeah alright so here the force four phases of design process now when we move away from sign of the noun but more towards design as a prop as a verb if you will there's four stages inspiration synthesis ideation experimentation and implementation so inspiration is about understanding the human experience of the people that you're trying to help and often that is boiled down to the word empathy and if anybody else on the call it's sick and tired of hearing the word empathy it comes to design raise your hand your digital hand if you'd like inspiration is about in my opinion for lawyers shutting up and showing up you have to suspend the natural inclination and the fact that you've been trained to pursue fact investigations in a very linear way with a deliberate purpose to get to certain facts with inspiration and empathy you want to be able to pull back and understand what the human experience is and the best way to do that is to keep your mouth shut and to listen and hear what people are experiencing and to do it in a way you can ask a question or two but the questions should be things like so what's going on not tell me more about this particular situation early inspiration is really important to keep as much open as possible and to keep it as unstructured as possible and to really open up all of your senses I often bring students to the housing court in Boston for just a morning of listening and I instruct them to sometimes just close their eyes and listen to the pressure in people's voices as they're talking in front of a judge without the assistance of a lawyer and what they hear in that experience is radically different from what they hear if they were sitting across from somebody conducting a fact-based interview right so that's inspiration and that can take a lot of different and we'll get I'm going to get to the end I'll talk about some additional resources for you to draw from to get a deeper understanding of all these ideas but inspiration for lawyers really will requires you to zip it and just listen and hear synthesis is the second piece that's where you start seeing patterns and start putting together the patterns into actionable ideas this comes really naturally to lawyers no surprises there it we are actually trained and trained relatively well to separate the material from the immaterial the wheat from the shaft whatever you want to put it and so synthesis is actually a pretty straightforward approach for lawyers that will come very naturally to idea ideation is parent experimentation now ideation is actually you know it's coming up with as many ideas as possible that's not so difficult for lawyers experimentation is and we will get to I mean I have a whole part on prototyping at the end of this presentation that we will talk about but it is don't discount how difficult that is for all of you experimenting for lawyers we don't do it we're not trained to do it we actually are trained to come out with the best possible result at the earliest possible time we are not about experimenting we're not about prototyping we're not about incomplete ideas I will hopefully by the end of this convince you that you can actually use some of that to get to a better product in the final analysis implementation is the last phase of design and that is really easy for lawyers because that's what we do but very very straightforward so now I want to drill into two ideas that I think are things that as you look at your summer ahead of you that you will want to consider using the first is what I refer to as end user engaged design and the second is co-design these are both ways of getting at the ultimate empathy that you should have as a legal designer with the people that you are hoping to help now the goal should be this this is kite surfing do we have any kite surfers on you never know kite surfing if you don't know it it's a pretty amazing sport in 2001 so 16 17 years ago an MIT student named Saul Griffith started a website dedicated to kite surfing and kite surfing is where people started to take these kites that you would see on the beach that grab the wind in a really impressive way and they sort of merged it married it with surfing and with windsurfing which is you know we have a like a almost like a sunfish small sailboat but but you're surfing on it so but this guy named Saul Griffith started a website because people were starting to take those surfboards and the kites and merge them into this new sport site users actually soon started posting patterns for self-designed kites and boards that we're working with the unique angles and stresses and whatnot to make it really work and the collective design effort actually soon proved more effective than a 100 million dollar commercial industry that was trying to capture this so the manufacturers around the world started to begin to download and build user designs off of sets or solves a website rather than design their own so Erich von Hippel who's a sort of end user-based design guru from MIT first sort of articulated this as the ultimate example of end user-based design and that basically is your goal right if you will for the work that you're going to be doing this summer is to find something that actually works for the people that you intend to help and does it in a way that is really native you know something that is organic and it comes naturally and it works for the people are not the lawyers right so this is a picture of a session that we had in Connecticut with a bunch of legal aid lawyers and librarians and some game designers and some self-represented litigants for our game represent of that is an example of end user-based design where we're actually we had some basic ideas you can see on the table there sketched out some scenarios and we had some markers and we wanted people to get some we wanted some feedback on the basic structure of what we were proposing and that's one way to get at that information is to sit down early and often with the people that you are hoping to help and also with the people who are already helping that population and start testing testing early testing often testing as much as you can whenever you can right so co-design is a slightly deeper engagement you will not be able to get to co-design in two and a half three months as much as I wish that you could co-design is where you are collaboratively designing a solution with a group of people who are not at experts in the work that you're engaged in but you're doing it collectively and this is a photograph of a session in 2013 which I can't even like how many years ago was that so many it seems very early on for my lab with law students and Massachusetts based domestic workers brainstorming around a idea that eventually became a hotline for domestic workers in Massachusetts that would educate them about their new legal rights under the Massachusetts domestic worker bill a right and about it's about half and half in that picture of between domestic workers and and and law students and that project that co-design project actually evolved over many many years so we had three years so far three and a half years of that project that has evolved and there's a real co-ownership of the idea this co-ownership of the solution as well and that is a that's taking end user-based design to a very extreme and ultimate and actually a very valuable and very desirable I think and where the community that you're hoping to help is actually a co-owner of the conflict there's a lot out there that is actually very uncertain in that space in terms of actual ownership of ideas intellectual property ownership where actually my lab is pursuing a few ideas and few grants to pursue that come up with some template agreements and the like that might be actually able to facilitate this a little bit further you won't be able to get to co-design but I want you to keep your eyes and ears and senses open for the possibility because you will come across opportunities for co-design during your summer that I want you to alert your sponsor organizations to it's hard for legal services organizations to develop the resources next necessary to actually do a deep dive into that kind of work but you should actually be have your antennas up for that because you never know where you're going to be able to find prototyping lawyers don't prototype we don't you are not trained to prototype you're trained to get it right the first time because we don't do it a second time unless you're in move court right move court is one example or other you know sessions where you might be able to have a chance to do a dry run that's maybe a prototype but for the most part lawyers don't prototype the challenge is pretty significant in that you will have ideas over the course of the summer that you think are good ideas you will want to develop those ideas further so that when you present those ideas they are manifest as a complete idea with all of the questions answered as much as possible basically what you've been trained to do I want you to resist that and I want you to think about instead sharing your ideas as early as soon as possible so that the people that you're hoping to help or the client you're hoping to serve can have an opportunity to actually reflect and respond and give you some insight and give some give you some information that you might people then incorporate down the road it's you know for anybody who's on the call who's actually done some design work as a lawyer you know exactly what I'm talking about every time I run into other folks doing this work in legal education I asked what's the biggest channel that everybody says prototyping prototyping oh my god it's so difficult because people can't wrap their head around it it's very difficult for lawyers to do and I just want you to just sort of you know push through that what we do at our lab here in Boston we have a seminar we run every quarter so we have a quarterly system so four times a year I teach a lab seminar that teaches law students how to work with human-centered design techniques in legal problem-solving and we always tackle the design question so for example this summer's design question I'm looking up at my whiteboard right now is how might a board game facilitate constructive dialogue across political difference we're going to dig into that question using human-centered design techniques and this is a photograph of an early lab seminar that we had where we prototyped ideas using construction paper and the like right and that is a very uncomfortable space for lawyers I can't overstate it I'm probably beating up being it to that beating into the ground here I just urge all of you to work through that and to think about ways you might be able to test your ideas early and often with as many people as possible so that the ultimate solution is actually one that works for everyone so understanding the concept of prototyping right here's a little bit of a little bit of text to interrupt all these photographs prototyping can actually be a best effort because you're actually creating an opportunity for people to have an input into the process of creation and if you plan it appropriately it can merge it can bring you great results it is difficult sometimes to present ideas to a group that you are hoping will embrace them and you will be received with rejection and it hurts just hurts the human pain you have to find a way to listen to the rejection and understand it as a response to your idea that gives you an opportunity to build on it and create more as a concept run your all of your ideas as you get them past users as soon as possible it cannot it can be your friends first do a dry run with classmates on the phone send them a sketch literally a sketch and say what do you think what do you think if you were this person what would you do so try it do a dry run with friends at first it will be hard will definitely be hard but you need to own that because that's the process of being a designer legal designer as well that's where I always often refer to the shut up and show up concept which is you know listen and hear as opposed to direct the interview and never ever underestimate value of paper so prototyping when I first started this job four years ago I thought oh my god digital prototypes we have to have this you know we got to have some digital tools for people to work with no you can do it on paper right your client is not going to expect you to come in the door with technology right away but you are going to need to find a way to get feedback on your ideas before you have the technology I have some ideas at the end of this for technology you can use some of you are probably already using it but you can use paper a basic iPhone or Android phone template printed out on paper and markers and tape and construction paper it's amazing what you can actually accomplish with that and don't forget to use that at every possible term sketch sketch sketch as early as possible as quickly as possible there is a great digital tool called proto.io it's P-R-O-T-O dot I-O and it's a great interactive tool that allows you to mock up a mobile technology solution and it's operational it's not it's not actually doesn't have the content but it gives you the basic screens you can run through it all it's a really wonderful tool. Additional tools so I'm segging into the additional tools and resources as we turn the corner towards the end of my presentation. Two books on the left Creative Confidence it's a fantastic book by Tom and David Kelly these are the guys who founded IDEO and the D school at Stanford where Margaret Hagan works and came from called Creative Confidence it's a great book that really walks you through the basics of using human centered design techniques and methods in a way that will allow you to do tackle just about any problem or question it's very very easy to get through it's got a wonderful appendix with a lot of exercises and tools and ideas and it's actually the book that we use in my lab seminar as our textbook so it's a really great resource and I would encourage each of you to jump on Amazon and buy a copy of that if you are interested in using these techniques in your summer internship and then innovating justice from Hill so this is the Hague Institute for the Internationalization of Law I've been around for a while. Innovating Justice is a fantastic book that demonstrates the application of this in the context of more human rights international human rights focused work but they're an amazing organization it's actually a wonderfully designed book that really walks you through their process in a really sort of granular way so if you want an example of application of these ideas in the real world in some pretty hardcore issues I will say this is a good book for you you can go on their website again I can provide all the information on that and links to this and it's a great book it's I think 20 came out 2012 2013 so it might be a little bit dated just a little bit this is an organization that actually ended up we were a finalist my lab was a finalist for an innovative idea award in 2014 for represent the game before we had a single line of code written we were one of three finalists including we were joined by John Mayer and Callie you'll hear from John as part of this training program and Callie an ATJ author he was a successful innovation finalist and that was a great event to fly over to the Hague and meet with all of our fellow wizards on the right the little book of legal of design research ethics is a fantastic resource if you want to do a pretty deep dive into working directly with vulnerable populations and I would encourage each of you it's a free available on the website idea idea com and it's a great book if you want to really do a deep dive into this kind of work with directly with people who are you're hoping to to assist so let's see what's next so the last thing I want to cover it's just some insights on what I've learned over four years of working in this space when I first started doing this work I would go out to a lot of law-centered organizations in the region here in Boston talking about the work we were doing and saying that we were in you know a lab trying to merge creative arts and law and come up with radical new ideas and everybody looked at me like this literally like all that what are you talking about you have no idea what you're doing but we actually did and we did because we we studied up we read up and we actually have we're practiced at what we were doing what I want to share with you in this final little bit is a little bit about my advice on working with legal services organizations in this area using human-centered design the first thing I would say is understand the ethical rules that govern lawyers obviously I'm sure all of you are facile with that I'm being much closer to professional responsibility necessarily than I am at least textbook examples they are slightly different from legal design ethics and that's where I think ideas little book on research ethics is really valuable and I would encourage each of you to read it it's really really short it's a 30 minute read max be prepared to disclose your role with any organization that you are working with and being clear that you are there in the design function and not functioning as a lawyer whenever you work with populations of people who need legal help which are the folks that we're hoping to assist here people are gonna want legal help you're a law student they are going to assume that you will be able to help them be abundantly clear with the limitations of your role just articulate it at first I will tell you I started with a bunch of written disclaimers on paper that people signed and I came from a big ball for what I should probably do and it was not very successful so if you can record video record or audio record session I would encourage you to do so it started early and just get everybody's agreement that you are functioning in the role of a designer and not that of a lawyer and that's the approach that we've taken since the signed disclosure agreements tended to shut down all conversation second thing I want to share is I think right now we are with legal tech in a space where we have to be really careful about the bright shiny object problem in that a lot of funding comes in to deliver the next really promising tech tool and there's lots of promise for technology and digital technology out there right now a digital tool not necessarily going to solve all the problems so when we started working with pine tree legal assistance of Maine three years ago our first goal was to develop a mobile tool outreach tool that would better connect low-income women with military service to benefits and rights because only 10% of women with military service actually registered for benefits these days and they can come in rather handy for folks of limited means and we did that process and over the course of the process we started to pick up on some interesting things and our next grant from LLC tag was to then develop a triage tool for non-legal case workers to do the same thing to connect these women to their benefits and rights and so we started that process we picked on some more of these interesting things and the interesting things basically boiled down through the fact that women with military sexual trauma are not going to turn to a digital tool for help they are going to turn to another woman who has been in the military and has experienced sexual trauma so we are now pivoting a bit away from the digital tools to start embedding legal information access to legal services into existing peer-to-peer mentoring networks already existing around the country for women with military service low-income women with military service don't be afraid of the non-digital solution in fact your technology tool that you ultimately develop with your client if you will is going to be best served is enhanced and supplemented by a network of something a human something on the other end of the technology tool that serves as a foundation for person-to-person contact so don't be afraid of that don't be afraid to identify that to clarify that but be aware that most legal services organizations and this will not surprise any of you don't have a lot of money for additional staffing additional foundational support for additional people coming in to the system or to the organization for help it's one of the reasons why we think digital technology is really a fantastic addition to the to the puzzle a great addition to the solution is because we actually have a chance to scale out ideas and and resources and help in a way that does not necessarily rely on one more person sitting behind a computer journal but don't be afraid of voicing the fact when you need that your organizations that you're working with will need to know in a very clear eyed way what individual personal people resources they're going to need to bring this idea to its full potential so don't be afraid of those analog solutions maybe sacrilege for me to say that technology fellowship but it's an important thing that you need to keep in mind as you go forward to a lot of those organizations are going to be needing that the last thing I'm going to say is here's my contact information my name is Dan Jackson I'm the executive director of the new law lab my email my phone number I believe in this program I believe in all of you I'm excited about all of your partnerships that you've got going on if you have questions about this approach about human-centered design if you have ideas you want to run by me if you have a co-design plan or any prototyping plan that you want to run by me by all means drop me a line give me some advanced warning I need about three to four days business days to turn something around for you just given the fact that my schedule is rather cramped pack but I think this is an amazing opportunity for all of us I'm thrilled that this came really developed grassroots from law students and I'm available to help you in whatever way I can with that open up to questions so one quick comment here the little design book is free and available to download online I dropped a link to that download in the chat and I highly recommended it's a great book it's fantastic and entertaining too oh in the last I will actually add one thing on that the interesting that this this can be fun there's not enough emphasis on fun in the law and then that may I don't I'm not trying to sound flip but there is a value among humans to fun and I would encourage each of you to try to capture the fun in what you're doing if anybody wants to ask audio questions just hit the raise hand button and we can unmute you definitely first I just want to say thank you Dan really appreciate you taking the time I think I'll ask the first question and that question is why why don't they teach legal design in our law school curriculum American Bar Association I think of the accreditation standards are a huge problem for innovation in legal education we are our law schools right now are still in the midst of a significant decrease in admissions and applications and our admission our accreditation standards have us really tight in terms of what we can do in there's no there's no free cash rolling around my lap I raise all of the money for this initiative through grants and donations right we don't have free cash rolling around for this and the law schools that do are already packed full in their curriculum because of accreditation standards so I actually think the ABA is a problem in that regard and you can tell them I said so thank you now I completely agree with Dan there that the way that law school and credits are set up they don't emphasize these wonderfully practical classes that are interdisciplinary right and they're also at the I think at the I mean at bottom the reason why we're at a law school here is because we believe that our students need to be the legal inventors of the future not just legal service providers but inventors right and our law school accreditation program doesn't see that as a possibility because it's because it was built from a different era and a different time that doesn't mean that each of you aren't able to do it though and to do it in a really creative way use your independent studies as much as possible we if you want to come co-op at my lab come and do an internship at my lab for your next summer if you want and there's Stanford Margaret has a fellowship program of her own at Stanford's legal design lab Michigan States R&D lab there's lots of opportunities to do this work if you can you know sniff them out yeah fellowships internships anything where you can get that practical hands-on with an organization that is going to give you the freedom to do work like this is much more valuable than any area-dike class the questions or comments or rotten tomatoes so could you talk a little bit about how you can go after funding or support for projects like this because it's just so untraditional of what law firms and especially legal services are used to so I think I do think that that's actually a really challenging topic and it takes a really long time to do that you have to build these relationships with funders if you're talking about foundation funding I've spent years building relationships with foundations that I'm only now getting to actually be funded by and that's a four-year process and that's a really challenging thing individual donors are the thing that slays me the most is when I make a pitch to a donor or foundation or individual otherwise and the response I get back is I'm not going to fund this because this has never been done before and I always look at them I said it's not you who but it's still a problem because people see the law legitimately so and appropriately so as a very conservative profession a very conservative field again appropriately so slow change stability we like these things on many many levels and people have a hard time wrapping their heads around how you can do rapid prototyping in law it can be done but we just need the resources to do it in the time to do it we've had the benefit of doing that I think here only because we've been supported here by the law school and by a generous alum the donor who got it started a couple years ago an additional grant making primarily from the Legal Services Corporation Technology Initiative grant program who have seen that they are and when you hear from Glenn Mac you'll hear plenty of support for the use of design processes in this work I remain of the I always say to funders who cast a skeptical view towards this you know creativity in law oh my god and I would say you know no the law as a concept is the single most creative concept that humankind has ever come up with and we are simply falling behind the curve when it comes to leveraging our creative abilities and our creative talent we have to stay actually out ahead of it as opposed to behind it we've fallen behind but you are all making it forward so we've got two questions here the first of which I'm going to read out it's from Andy here with the combination of lack of funding for programs and lack of innovation in the legal field do you think that innovation has to start with law schools no no Andy you're at MSU right no I don't think that innovation has started law schools and I think that we're actually playing a bit of catch up I think that it's already happening I mean if you look at the work that is being funded in Africa and India around community paralegal programs that are using GIS mapping to resolve property disputes among community members using community paralegals who are not lawyers but are people who are trained in the issues and the disputes and then the GIS if the lawyers don't step up soon we are going to be lapped I believe that fully I don't think I have to start with law schools I mean our effort is an effort to catch up there a lot of law schools have a lot of reservations about this I think that funding strapped nonprofits if they're able to get a grant to try this stuff are very very willing to but it's a matter of making it financially feasible for them okay and then I'm gonna be unmuting somebody here oh hi good afternoon so I guess my question is just related to whether or not you think it's actually better to try to work with tech companies in terms of like cultivating this type of space and reaching out to them for support whether it be funding or just like the structural needs around coding and design to help with you know putting or I guess like moving these ideas forward so that's a good question it's an excellent question actually the um so my keep in mind my experience working with tech companies is at the very sort of high level trying to get funding for major programs right so I'm asking them to contribute $500,000 or whether and um but I think that there's a little bit of a trickle down here for-profit companies are going to want to know what the for-profit part is they need to have a business reason to collaborate with you so keep in mind when you go out to for-profit companies to do this work that you will need to deliver to them a profit motive to get it to get them in there right that is not to say that there are not tech quote-unquote companies out there benefit corporations nonprofit organizations code for America organizations that are committed to using technology to advance social justice are a major source of re of additional resources for all of y'all to make this happen there is no shortage in whatever wherever you're going to be doing your summer internship there is no shortage of undergraduate and graduate coders ready to partner with lawyers I have been consistently thrilled by the fact that when I knock on people's doors here at the Eastern University we're a large research university in Boston right and I say who I am and where I'm from and they're like I am so happy the law school is finally come calling because we've been waiting for you right they are hungry for opportunities to clap these are the these are the social justice coders I'm talking about they are hungry for opportunities collaborate with lawyers law brings the teeth to it we have the benefit of the law on our side and that actually can move entire societies in ways that other disciplines can't and so you actually have more of a value that you bring every time you knock on someone's door digitally or otherwise then you might think so practically if students if the fellows here want to get an experience in doing this type of rapid design would what do you think about attending a hackathon or other event like that do you think that's valuable in this process or I think there's no doubt in attending a hackathon if you're attending it for an educational experience I think that you have to be very careful about devoting hackathons often tend to and appropriately so generate opportunities for people to continue to remain connected and volunteer their time towards a greater purpose and I think you need to keep your focus very clearly and very focused on the work that you're going to be doing with your sponsor organization this summer and focused on that if the hackathon is supplemental to that and will actually help drive that forward by all means do it if the hackathon does not attend but do it is an observer as a educational experience but do not devote your time to moving that idea forward I our lab is a little bit of a skeptic on the hackathon movement only because we are very very invested in long-term co-design because we've learned so much more from that than from the short term stuff and so I think hackathons have to be scaled appropriately and you have to select them very carefully I think they can create really fantastic incentive and movement forward and a lot of incredible tools have come out of hackathons but I think those are unicorns and I think we have to be careful about putting too much of our time into those I think you had on a really interesting one there how do you really foster the sustainability for projects like this the fellows are going to be doing awesome stuff this summer what do they need to do to try to turn that into a long-term institutionally supported project understand your client spend the time on the front end of your time with your group the organization you're working with that really understand what makes them tick what they really need what resources they have you you'll be law school interns so you won't have necessarily access to the executive director's files you may who knows if you play your cards right spend time talking to the people that know really what the organization can do and that and and and here's where you again really need to just pick up your senses listen here spend time in the hallways spend time listening to the conversations of the co-workers what are the what resources does the organization actually have to devote towards this and what do they not the last thing I would want any of you to do is to spend your entire summer focused on the most fabulous technology tool ever that is brilliant beyond compare and that cannot be supported by the organization that's where design constraints come in so early on the slides I talked about you know the concepts of the design as a abstract concept design constraints are incredibly important understand the human power in their organization that can support the ultimate tech tool if you understand that as a constraint you will be able to develop a tool that the organization can sustain into the future and develop further and that will be a major win for everyone anything else for me I guess we'll call it I would just want to thank you again Dan I know the fellows are thrilled to have listened to you and thank you again for taking the time to volunteer and I know they will be connected over to summer please do I again I'm psyched that I got to go first I'm still really excited about that but yeah find me you know where I mean my contact information will be on the slides destiny has all those you can pop them up online and Brian did a great job of supplementing with some links to the idea of stuff and some other resources and I remain available throughout the summer to help all of you achieve your dreams here because at the final in the final analysis it's about your creative vision it's the reason why you applied to the reason why we're all supporting it yeah thank you so much and I greatly appreciate it this is gonna be a wonderful training for people long term