Justice for All

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Inspiration

Equal Access to Justice.
Most people cannot afford a lawyer; all people are entitled to equal access to legal representation. Making law and the legal process accessible is our focus.

Unlike in the criminal context, there’s no federal constitutional right to counsel in civil cases.
Eighty-six percent of low-income Americans receive inadequate or no professional legal help for the civil legal problems they face.
In most of cases, people who cannot afford a lawyer are forced to go it alone and fail to make it through the process and have their case dismissed or lose what otherwise would have been a winning case.
The number of “pro se litigants” has risen substantially in the last decade due in part to the economic downturn and the relationship between poor economic conditions and issues like housing and domestic relations.

What it does

Incentivized Pro Se Litigant Learning Tool.

Hypothetical-based teaching tool that provides access to “to do” pathways specific to county, state and federal law. Using the pro se litigant’s case information, the tool provides possible options for courts in which to file lawsuits or answers, most used forms / documents, court-specific rules, statute of limitation-based deadlines, underlying statutes and relevant caselaw and legal practice tips and tricks.

How we built it

Usign elixir and phoenix framework and python. We ran out of time, and now are roadmap items 1) to use SIMBA Chain and the SIMBA Chain api for tokenization, wallet, IPFS storage, and smart-contracts, and 2) to use the bitcoin blockchain for authenticating the steps of the incentivized learning process.

Challenges we ran into

Unexpected lack of human resources; had expected additional team members and skill sets. Ran out of time to learn and ramp up on the SIMBA Chain tools.