In the 2010s, before the pandemic struck, a capacity to provide legal services remotely was seen as somewhat exotic and heralding the arrival of new entity, the ‘virtual lawyer’. ‘”Virtual law firms” are redefining how legal practices operate and the services they offer,’ announced publishers Wolters Kluwer in a blog published in a pre-Covid January 2019. Most … Continue reading Remote working and access to justice
The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HIiL) occupies a unique position in the access to justice field. It was once best known for its online dispute resolution package, the Rechtwijzer, which it developed with the Dutch Legal Aid Board and vigorously promoted to similar legal aid providers in developed countries. It then detached itself … Continue reading HIIL: from Palace to Laptop – the 2021 Innovating Justice Forum
A number of access to justice organisations are experimenting with the use of video programmes, like Zoom, to replace traditional outreach work impeded by the pandemic. This was, for example, a topic raised by a speaker from Sheffield Law Centre in the December Law Centre Network conference. But the world leader in this field must … Continue reading Outreach by Zoom: the experience of the People’s Law School of BC
Remember the Legal Access Challenge? Its sponsors, Nesta and the Solicitors Regulatory Authority published their final reports on it last week. It was won jointly – as readers will know from previous posts – by a chatbot developed by Mencap and a collaborative approach to dealing with domestic violence, FLOWS. The Nesta report gives more … Continue reading Lessons from the Legal Access Challenge
On Thursday last week, the doyen of US legal tech commentators, Bob Ambrogi, assembled a panel from some of his country’s heaviest hitting commercial law firms. The title of his LawNext:Live broadcast was ‘The Innovation Advantage – Driving Client Value in the Midst of COVID-19’. So, we had representatives of Shearman and Stirling (Meredith Williams-Range), … Continue reading What can #BigLaw tell #LittleLaw: lessons from Law Next Live