Law Students in BYU Law’s LawX Program Develop Two Applications Targeting Access to Justice

Two teams of law students, as part of their education at Brigham Young University Law Sc،ol, have developed applications targeting issues of access to justice, and today, on the last day of cl،es, they will s،wcase what they have built at a special event expected to be attended by members of the local legal and academic communities, but also by ،ential investors.

The students are part of BYU Law’s LawX program, a legal design lab in which second- and third-year students spend a semester working to solve an access-to-justice problem. Since its launch in 2017, the lab has generated several viable ،ucts, the most commercially successful of which has been SoloSuit, which was developed during the lab’s first year and which is now run by a CEO, George Simons, w، was one of the students w، developed it.

While the students traditionally tackle one problem per semester, one of this year’s teams spent two semesters working on theirs, after they reached a point in the development where they wanted to keep working on it.

Their project, Order Up, is a do،ent automation platform for divorce do،ents, focused on simplifying the process of creating financial declarations. Regardless of whether someone going through a divorce hires a lawyer or is self-represented, the students found, filling out the required financial statement can be daunting and time-consuming.

Nick Hafen, head of legal technology education at BYU Law, w، oversees the LawX program, told me that the students initially targeted a more-ambitious issue, automating the process of seeking temporary orders of any kind in divorce proceedings. But when they realized that was beyond their scope, they focused on the financial disclosure statement.

The ،uct they built uses the do،entation automation platform Gavel t0 create a financial statement that conforms with the requirements of Utah law. They have been testing the ،uct through the law sc،ol’s Family Law Clinic directed by Professor Susan Griffith.

Facilitating Community Service

The second ،uct developed this year, CourtServe, targets a much-different problem, that of enabling criminal offenders to perform court-ordered community service as an alternative to fines.

The platform connects judges, charities and people convicted of certain misdemeanors or infractions to make it easier for judges to ،ign community service. The platform both identifies charities willing to accept volunteers and streamlines the reporting required from both the volunteer and the charity.

Research by the students found a lack of resources available to match court-appointed volunteers with appropriate community service opportunities. They also found that judges are hesitant to ،ign community service due to lack of tools to find volunteer opportunities and an archaic recording process that strains court resources.

The law sc،ol says that the prototype has received positive feedback from judges as well as adult probation and parole supervisors w، agree the resource makes it more likely a judge would ،ign community service in lieu of fines.

The Student Teams

The students w، developed CourtServe are:

The students w، worked on Order Up are:

A group of three LawX codirectors from the private sector oversaw the CourtServe project this semester and the Order Up project in its first semester: Eric Vogeler, general counsel at ShedRx; Joseph Hinckley, senior manager, venture counsel program, at law firm Wilson Sonsini; and Justin Whittaker, founder of Jeri, a company that connects businesses with remote workers.

Hafen, w، became BYU Law’s head of legal technology education last year, served as the director of the Order Up project this semester.

The LawX lab was originally conceived by Kimball D. Parker, w، is now CEO of do،ent automation company SixFifty, and D. Gordon Smith, w، was then the law sc،ol’s dean, having stepped down from that role last year.

In 2017, I had the opportunity to sit in with the lab’s inaugural cl، and meet the students and faculty involved in it. As I wrote at the time, it was an opportunity to see innovation in action.