With a dual mission of leveraging technology to power access to justice and exposing law students to different legal services roles, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) on Aug. 23 named Pocket VAWA Self-Petitions its first Justice Innovation Challenge winner.

Pocket VAWA Self-Petitions is the brainchild of 3L Columbia Law School student Emilie Schwarz, whose prize included $15,000. Pocket VAWA Self-Petitions assists immigrant domestic violence survivors in filing Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) self-petitions for legal status in the U.S. After completing the web portal's questionnaire, the applicant is informed if they are eligible for VAWA, the types of evidence needed to file a VAWA petition and a timeline of the petition process.

Georgetown University Law Center student Anna Stone's My Legal Needs was the runner-up and won $10,000 with an app that seeks to solve the LGBT and nonbinary community's specific challenges that intersect medical and legal needs. In third place was University of Miami School of Law student Talia Boiangin's Cyber Civil Rights Resource Guide, an app that places non-consensual pornography statutes and tips for removing such images at victims' fingertips. Boiangin won $5,000 for her app.

LSAC president and Justice Innovation Challenge judge Kellye Testy said the projects were assessed on their ability to meet a compelling need in the community and if community partners were involved with the project. Testy noted a solution's community partnerships were important "because you can have the greatest project ever, but if people don't know about it, it won't have an impact."

Along with the cash prizes and assistance in finalizing projects for public use for all three top placers, Testy also said the innovation challenge and fellows program seeks to demonstrate the many ways lawyers can provide their legal expertise.

"When we first started this idea of innovation fellows and projects, the main reason, one of the driving motivations for us, is we want prospective law students and current law students to see the myriad ways you can provide access to justice," Testy said. She added, "You can make that difference through the innovation of the projects you make up yourself and partner up with other organizations."

Testy said she's also observed more law school programs leveraging lawyers' expertise and technology to solve legal challenges. Such courses "encourage law students to know how to marry technology with law to promote access to justice and to create opportunities for legal work that—again—may not exist. They are bridging that access to justice gap that is so severe in our society."

Indeed, Pocket VAWA Self-Petitions creator Schwarz, who is also president of the Columbia Law Legal Technology Association, said she was previously interested in the intersection of law and technology and "jumped" at the opportunity to create a tool that makes legal counseling efficient.

"I think technology is a great way to streamline processes and get all information in one place," she said.

Schwarz's mindset mirrors law schools that incorporate legal tech into their curricula. For instance, a Columbia Law School Legal Technology Association project tasks students with creating legal tech solutions to assist real-life litigants with their legal challenges. Columbia's business school has also tackled legal technology's necessity on a business's bottom line when a MBA course studying automated contract manager Evisort. Likewise, Cornell Law School offers a course where students develop automated apps to assist legal aid organizations' workloads.

As Schwarz and other legal tech proponents see it, technology can automate repetitive tasks that allows an attorney to do more counseling.

"Technology is a great way to create something so you don't have to spend resources to do something over and over," Schwarz said.