Access to justice initiatives are a major talking point among legal practitioners and technologists, but efforts thus far haven't managed to slow the increasing gap between legal help and underserved communities.

The Escambia Project, a co-sponsored initiative of the Florida Bar Foundation, Legal Services of North Florida, and social services nonprofit Pathways for Change, found that integrated systems can be a huge asset in helping people identify their legal issues and get connected with assistance. The project established a channel between Pathways and LSNF's intake systems, allowing Pathways to push any potential legal needs over to legal aid attorneys who can assist.

Melissa Moss, deputy director for the FBF, explained that the foundation in 2008 paid to standardize the client intake systems used by Florida's legal service organizations. “It was probably the most prescient thing we've ever done,” she said. “Just having everyone on the same case management system is absolutely critical and really what enabled this.”

The project drew data from a series of small pilot projects across community service providers in the area using LegalServer, a web-based case management system used in legal service organizations across Florida. The project's Smart Intake tool applies predictive modeling and artificial intelligence to this data so that social service providers can use typical intake questions or a written narrative to gauge whether a client was likely struggling with a potential legal problem. Those results then get pushed directly over to that client's local legal assistance organization to conduct its own intake system.

Leslie Powell-Boudreaux, executive director of LSNF, explained that the Smart Intake tool can help nonprofit groups without specific legal expertise flag potential legal concerns sooner, which may give legal advocates a better chance of dealing with them.

Moss explained that the Pensacola-based project was inspired in part by Margaret Hagan, director of the Legal Design Lab at Stanford Law School's Center for the Legal Profession. Hagan facilitated a 2015 statewide summit funded by the Florida Bar Foundation for legal aid attorneys and staff about participatory design thinking, which calls for stakeholders to be involved in the design and implementation of technology. Escambia County, where Pensacola is located, volunteered to act as a kind of community laboratory in trying to implement some of these design principles.

The Escambia Project helped the FBF identify other areas for potential intervention. To help other nonprofits connect their work to legal resources without having to use LegalServer, the bar foundation hopes to develop a portal to help nonprofits run predictive models on their own intake systems. Looking further ahead, Moss hopes that these predictive models can be used on client's language directly.

“The big dream here really is to at some point get to the natural language part, where instead of doing a very static intake for a database, you can have someone tell their story, and you can ask leading questions, and that the key words are picked up and you can do all kinds of predictions on that,” Moss explained.

These next projects are big and expensive. While the bar foundation is hoping to find partnerships and funding that will allow it to begin work developing these portals, applying natural language processing to more unstructured client intake meetings would likely take big corporate resources.

“I think you're going to have to talk about a bigger partnership, that's really going to have to be about a Microsoft or a Google or someone like that,” Moss said.

For now, the Escambia Project is hoping that building evidence around these methods could bring in some greater funding and partnerships down the road. “We're working on the 'if we build it, they will come' premise,” Moss noted.

Access to justice initiatives are a major talking point among legal practitioners and technologists, but efforts thus far haven't managed to slow the increasing gap between legal help and underserved communities.

The Escambia Project, a co-sponsored initiative of the Florida Bar Foundation, Legal Services of North Florida, and social services nonprofit Pathways for Change, found that integrated systems can be a huge asset in helping people identify their legal issues and get connected with assistance. The project established a channel between Pathways and LSNF's intake systems, allowing Pathways to push any potential legal needs over to legal aid attorneys who can assist.

Melissa Moss, deputy director for the FBF, explained that the foundation in 2008 paid to standardize the client intake systems used by Florida's legal service organizations. “It was probably the most prescient thing we've ever done,” she said. “Just having everyone on the same case management system is absolutely critical and really what enabled this.”

The project drew data from a series of small pilot projects across community service providers in the area using LegalServer, a web-based case management system used in legal service organizations across Florida. The project's Smart Intake tool applies predictive modeling and artificial intelligence to this data so that social service providers can use typical intake questions or a written narrative to gauge whether a client was likely struggling with a potential legal problem. Those results then get pushed directly over to that client's local legal assistance organization to conduct its own intake system.

Leslie Powell-Boudreaux, executive director of LSNF, explained that the Smart Intake tool can help nonprofit groups without specific legal expertise flag potential legal concerns sooner, which may give legal advocates a better chance of dealing with them.

Moss explained that the Pensacola-based project was inspired in part by Margaret Hagan, director of the Legal Design Lab at Stanford Law School's Center for the Legal Profession. Hagan facilitated a 2015 statewide summit funded by the Florida Bar Foundation for legal aid attorneys and staff about participatory design thinking, which calls for stakeholders to be involved in the design and implementation of technology. Escambia County, where Pensacola is located, volunteered to act as a kind of community laboratory in trying to implement some of these design principles.

The Escambia Project helped the FBF identify other areas for potential intervention. To help other nonprofits connect their work to legal resources without having to use LegalServer, the bar foundation hopes to develop a portal to help nonprofits run predictive models on their own intake systems. Looking further ahead, Moss hopes that these predictive models can be used on client's language directly.

“The big dream here really is to at some point get to the natural language part, where instead of doing a very static intake for a database, you can have someone tell their story, and you can ask leading questions, and that the key words are picked up and you can do all kinds of predictions on that,” Moss explained.

These next projects are big and expensive. While the bar foundation is hoping to find partnerships and funding that will allow it to begin work developing these portals, applying natural language processing to more unstructured client intake meetings would likely take big corporate resources.

“I think you're going to have to talk about a bigger partnership, that's really going to have to be about a Microsoft or a Google or someone like that,” Moss said.

For now, the Escambia Project is hoping that building evidence around these methods could bring in some greater funding and partnerships down the road. “We're working on the 'if we build it, they will come' premise,” Moss noted.