Public Interest

Hacking Away At Injustice In Louisiana

Using technology to spread justice.

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Last week, I wrote about layoffs, compensation cuts, and caseload growth facing Louisiana public defenders. The most recent news on the Louisiana PD system’s challenges hasn’t been any better. But as Louisiana PDs prepare to “deprive most or all of their clients of their right to counsel by taking on an unethically high caseload,” other justice-minded individuals are planning to convene on the campus of Loyola University New Orleans College of Law for “Hackcess to Justice NOLA” in hopes of thinking up new ways to improve legal services for Louisiana’s indigent population.

You may be familiar with “hackathons” from their origins in the tech and biomedical fields: groups of engineers, programmers, researchers, doctors, and business professionals come together to cure the world’s ills in a weekend. Generally these accomplished people are briefed on an issue or issues, given an opportunity to mingle and discuss ideas, and then form teams to generate new ideas or prototypes and pitch their innovations to judges. There’s often a cash prize for winners, but more importantly pitches and prototypes sometimes turn into lifesaving technology — and sometimes serious businesses too.

And that’s great, but how in the world can this concept improve access to justice in Louisiana?

I suspect the organizers of Hackcess to Justice would say that it’s impossible to know the answer until all the hackathon’s participants are in a room together next weekend. The hackathon’s driving idea is straightforward enough: according to the event’s website, participants will use “legal, entrepreneurial, coding and other skills to help Louisiana’s legal aid community by creating a technology-enabled solution for the numerous challenges faced by citizens who cannot afford a lawyer and the lawyers trying to serve them.” There will be Louisiana legal aid lawyers on hand to lend helpful context. What types of solutions might emerge — and what problems they solve — will depend on the participants and are impossible to predict.

Last year, the inaugural Hackcess to Justice took place in Boston.  The winner was Bill Palin, a Massachusetts attorney, developer, and artist who also dabbles in teaching at Suffolk Law and MIT. His product, PaperHealth, is a free app that allows Massachusetts residents to create healthcare proxies and living wills a la Legalzoom. Second prize went to Disastr, an app that provides information on legal issues likely to arise as a result of natural disasters (think FEMA claims after Hurricane Katrina). And the third prize winner was Due Processor, an app that performs sentencing calculations for Massachusetts criminal attorneys.

Given the hits that Louisiana’s PD system has taken lately, it seems to me that Hackcess to Justice NOLA is well-timed. I would imagine there must be some way to make Louisiana PDs’ lives a little easier with technology — and, in doing so, to reduce the likelihood that their clients are effectively deprived of their right to counsel. I’m also sure Louisiana’s civil legal aid lawyers could use some help too.

Of course, there’s a benefit to the winning participants, too: cash prizes of $1500 for the winner, $1000 for second, and $500 for third.

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So far, there are 30 people, including last year’s winner, signed up to participate in Hackcess to Justice NOLA. The more smart people sign up, the better the end products are likely to be, and the better justice will be served (or so we can hope). You can even be one of those smart people, provided you register “no later than the start of the hackathon at 9 am on Saturday, March 21, 2015” and attend in person. (You can find a full schedule here, and you can register here.)

If you have anything to offer, why not give it a try?

Sam Wright is a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government. If you have ideas, questions, kudos, or complaints about his column or public interest law in general, send him an email at PublicInterestATL@gmail.com.

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