LawAid

Inspiration

Problem

We believe in free, universal legal information. The unfortunate truth is that free and accurate legal information is not in reach for many individuals. Members of our team have witnessed first hand desperate individuals seeking legal information, often having to wait weeks before receiving it. Yet, it was clearly apparent that hundreds of experienced students were not just available, but extremely excited to help.

We recognise that the largest problem is that our community legal centers (CLC's) struggle with limited physical capacity. There is also a misconception that law students are not experienced enough to give legal information. However, Monash University for example, runs the pro-bono Monash Law Clinic, almost all the information is given by students under the supervision of lawyers.

What is missing?

There is an outdated and inefficient conduit between the CLC's and clients. Often, a majority of a legal volunteer's day is taken up by paperwork, waiting rooms and other administrative/research activities which an optimised platform would solve. We wanted to create a concept, where at the click of a button, regardless of where an individual is, they can receive tailored and personal legal information.

Something more.

We didn't only want to create a platform between legal volunteer and client - we wanted to create a system which learns as time goes on. McKinsey & Company estimates that the automation of knowledge work would be worth between $5 and $7 trillion within 4 years. We believe there is nothing more suited to learning from precedent and past legal advice, than a deep learning machine. Through time, this would be able to relieve stress placed upon CLC's, work that can be done by a machine. These include anything from completing paperwork, to extracting relevant information, once properly fed, could begin giving legal information which could be then reviewed by human oversight.

What it does

Phase 1

Our program provides a high speed conduit between experienced legal volunteers and clients. This will alleviate stress placed on our CLC's. It will offer a friendly interface and the ability for legal volunteers to process information much faster. A large portion of information given by clients is often unneeded, having everything laid out before the volunteer begins reading will allow them to effectively sort through relevant information more efficiently.

Phase 2

Every time tailored information is given, every time new precedent is set, an AI will process this data to become smarter and more efficient. The second phase of our program will proceed to fill out paperwork, extract relevant information from extremely long statements, police reports, court filings and more. Eventually, it will be able to provide limited legal information and statements, which can then be proofread by experienced professionals who will then send it out. We believe, for the near future, machine learning will not be able to provide absolutely accurate and relevant information without a bionic approach.

How we built it

We used android studio for the skeleton of the app. The app allows the general public and legal professionals and volunteers to sign in to their respective accounts. Once there, users can then submit new cases or review cases. For UI we used inDesign, Photoshop and illustrator.

Challenges we ran into

Viability

At first, we found the largest issue was the viability of an Ai which could provide legal information. However, upon further research, we found that there has been a recent push towards using Ai, in addition to human oversight to streamline the process. It is becoming more and more universally accepted that Ai can reduce human error and greatly increase the efficacy of legal information. Additionally, we found several studies which concluded even the most basic acts such as highlighting would reduce human error and increase efficiency, something we believe an Ai can, and has already been proven to be great at.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First time creating an app together we managed to create a design and UI we are proud of.

What we learned

We learnt about UX design, what comprises good UI decisions and how to design an app. We also learnt the practical and logistical limits to our ideas.

What's next for LawAid

The next step for LawAid would be completing the UI design. Right now, our app is just the skeleton, and our proper completed design hasn't been implemented. We would also begin implementing designs to help volunteers and their efficiency in reviewing client's. We would begin with things such as critical text highlighting and displaying relevant legislation/common law for each respective case.

As our app runs, legal volunteers will continue to resolve incoming cases. Our AI then reads these cases and solutions and learns from them. Through various testing stages the AI will be given practice cases and the solutions provided will be reviewed and hopefully approved by legal professionals. The further our app and AI progresses, the faster life changing information will be supplied.