There is an Access to Justice crisis in the United States, and in California particularly. One of the primary challenges facing the legal system is how many people are trying to navigate it without a lawyer – particularly for problems like divorce, child custody, personal debt, housing, and small claims. It is a problem for the courts – because it requires huge amounts of resources to support lay people who are unfamiliar with court procedures and often get things “wrong,” causing efficiency and cost problems. It is also a problem for the lay people going through the courts. They are trying to solve major life problems using the legal system, but the system is confusing, expensive, and frustrating, so that they cannot use the system effectively and feel a lack of procedural justice.

This class proposes that a user-centered design approach, mixed with an agile development approach, can increase the amount of procedural justice for self-represented litigants in the California courts. User-centered design involves taking the lay person’s point of view on a complex system, and then creating new services, products, and policies that fit the lay person’s mental models to empower those people to navigate the system. Agile development means creating new services, products, and policies through rough and quick prototypes, testing them with target stakeholders and subject matter experts immediately, and then iterating and refining repeatedly until they are ready to formally launch.

In this class, the students will learn how to practice agile user-centered design by creating new interventions for California Courts – Self-Help Centers, service centers located inside the court to help people without a lawyer to understand their legal options, create a strategy, and pursue a legal process. The class is partnered with the California Judicial Council, that administers these Self-Help Centers, and the Self-Help Centers in the Santa Clara and San Mateo court systems. The class will involve fieldwork – in the form of rapid prototyping and testing — at these two courts’ Self-Help Centers. Students will work in teams to identify key failpoints and frustrations of the stakeholders of the Centers by conducting interviews and observations there, brainstorming new solutions to empower the lay people, and testing these new solutions to identify which are worth pursuing and how to improve them. Students will then present their proposed solutions, insights, and user research and testing feedback to the courts and Judicial Council for them to use as they set new policies and programs to improve Access to Justice. The fieldwork sessions will be combined with seminars in which the students learn about innovations in access to justice, agile design and development approaches to problem solving, with readings and guest experts. Students will meet leaders of new initiatives to improve access to justice using improved visual design, technology tools, and changes to policy and regulation. In the class, students will gain skills in design and product development, conducting user research, project management, and policy analysis. The class welcomes students with experience in technology development and design work, but it is not required. The class is open to non-law students as well.

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