Well, if the public defender doesn't know Spanish using software which helps them to understand their client is a start.
I definitely agree with you on just how bad existing legal research software is at finding factually on-point results. This was part of my motivation to help found ROSS Intelligence, which is building better legal research software with ML and NLP at its core.
And while pessimism and skepticism does help identify the difficulties in implementing different solutions, it's optimism that helps find the opportunities imbedded in the difficulties found :)
Agreed. Measurable improvements means data that could not be refuted which is key.
Check out Clio for project management, Beagle for contract review, Ironclad for automating contract creation, Legaler for better lawyer-client communication, and the company I helped found, ROSS Intelligence, which is building an A.I. lawyer to help streamline the legal research process.
There’s a ton of exciting LegalTech projects which help augment lawyers abilities out and in the pipeline. Not all of them will directly help public defenders but some definitely will. What is great is that they will all help improve the legal system as a whole – which is a huge win.
Perhaps legal technologies in their current forms are not as applicable to the work public defenders do but to say all LegalTech is inapplicable to the work public defenders do is a stretch.
To use your example, you could actually build technology that would help with the interview process and aid in mapping out a detailed timeline of their version of the events.
While repeat offenders may offend in the same pattern the same cannot be said about all offenders.
Public defenders develop their list of handy relevant cases through experience on the job. Tech can help train new hires quicker so that they would be able to jump in and start giving proper legal representation sooner. The system clearly needs more public defenders.
Legal research does play a key component when it comes to the sentencing of offenders. Two offenders can be charged with the same crime however it could have occurred in two entirely different circumstances with the offenders having starkly different backgrounds and motivations. Due to these differences, public defenders should do a deep dive in research in order to provide proper representation rather than relying on only their own personal list of applicable cases. Effective legal research software would go a long way in helping over-worked defenders such as Tina Peng.
We both agree that the decision makers have to increase funding public defenders and that their numbers should not be reduced with the uptake of technology. This dilution would simply bring us back to square one. It’s about augmenting with technology not replacing.
If done correctly we wouldn’t run into the bigger backpack scenario as the underlying reason for bringing in technology to help fix the justice system would mean ideas have changed and they would know what is essential to carry – to use your analogy.
The justice system is deeply flawed but technology can help repair it.
Let me explain.
Legal work can be split up into two buckets – process based work and advisory work.
The advisory work revolves around analysis, comparison and collaboration – distinctly human (for now) tasks.
The bulk of legal work however is process based, which is repetitive, routine, administrative and could actually be done through the use of machine learning and AI. Examples of process-based work are document review and legal research. Document review is when parties to a case sort through and analyze the documents in their possession to determine if they are relevant to the case at hand. Legal research is the process of identifying and retrieving the necessary information lawyers need to support legal decision-making.
If LegalTech was to do the lions share of a public defender's process based legal work, they would be able to focus their advisory work. This would allow a public defender to not only to defend more individuals but most importantly, to provide proper legal help to everyone they are defending.
The inequalities and problems in the justice system could be seriously helped/fixed with better adoption and implementation of technology. The problem is that tech must be embraced not just by individual lawyers and defenders who it would help the most, but also by the decision makers themselves, government agencies/law firms, who have the final say on whether to bring tech into their organizations.
The good news is that there are strides being made towards bringing in tech to augment lawyers capabilities with technology, the bad news is that no speed is fast enough as there are a ton of people who require proper legal representation right now that are missing out.