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<\/p>\nBarendrecht: Innovation in legal space potentially lucrative<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Most people around the world cannot find a just solution to their legal problems, so a new \u2018value proposition\u2019 is necessary that provides user-friendly justice at scale, is not based on litigation for resolution, and has legal aid lawyers joining with innovators, according to a massive study.<\/p>\n
However, the future of justice was not \u201crobotic judges or artificial intelligence layered like frosting on a poorly baked cake\u201d, it said.<\/p>\n
To produce Understanding justice needs: the elephant in the courtroom<\/em><\/a>, Netherlands-based HiiL \u2013 the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law \u2013 used United Nations data collected from interviews with 70,000 people in 12 countries.<\/p>\n The elephant in the room, according to HiiL, is the present \u2018justice gap\u2019. \u201cIn order to live in just, peaceful and inclusive societies, we need to make litigation less burdensome and more responsive to human needs\u201d, the report urged.<\/p>\n The authors, led by HiiL\u2019s research director Professor Maurits Barendrecht, calculated that over 70% of the estimated 1bn people globally who had a new justice problem each year did not find a satisfactory resolution and almost half of them took no action at all.<\/p>\n But at the same time, the authors predicted potentially lucrative rewards for innovators who could deliver affordable justice, not least because people were willing to pay for fair solutions to their urgent problems.<\/p>\n They estimated the 1.25bn people in OECD countries would pay up to $1,000 (\u00a3787) for solutions to \u201clow impact\u201d problems and up to $10,000 for \u201chigh impact\u201d problems.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, during a transitional stage towards a new justice model, the authors estimated resources of $5.7m per country per year were necessary.<\/p>\n They pointed out over-burdened legal aid lawyers and innovators had a common interest: \u201cCourts, small NGOs and legal aid lawyers have more clients than they can serve. Innovators developing apps, online platforms, or user-friendly court procedures need clients. They share the same ambition.<\/p>\n \u201cTogether they can scale. So they should merge, partner and learn how to create justice journeys together.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to create a lively, open ecosystem and market. Where courts buy new procedures. Where legal aid lawyers become a partner in a brand of innovative bridge-building services.\u201d<\/p>\n A crucial factor in forcing legal professions to open up to new models of justice was an active legal regulator that would enforce \u201cmarket transparency\u201d.<\/p>\n The report concluded: \u201cScaling processes that deliver more justice requires\u2026 respectfully saying goodbye to ancient traditions and accepting new ways of working, suggested by start-ups, by judges turned innovators, and by experts in user-centred design\u201d.<\/p>\n While \u201cchange cannot be forced\u201d, it was still necessary to create a new system: \u201cNot delivering burdensome litigation, but aiming processes at agreements and understandings\u201d.<\/p>\n It acknowledged that \u201cparting from adversarial forms of litigation will be painful for many judges and lawyers\u201d.<\/p>\n Observing which legal innovations had already taken root, the authors noted that apps aimed at avoiding future legal problems were doing well: \u201cThe most prominent innovations in this trend aim at contracts and other documents clarifying relationships such as company registrations, land registration and wills.<\/p>\n They added: \u201cPrevention is king.\u201d<\/p>\n HiiL\u2019s flagship justice project for several years was Rechtwijzer \u2013 the online dispute resolution portal which folded in 2017<\/a> after failing to achieve sufficient traction with divorcing couples.<\/p>\n It was given only two brief mentions in the report, one of which was to observe that the \u201ctechnological and human interaction challenges\u201d of online settlement and adjudication had been solved, with high user satisfaction being recorded for those who did participate.<\/p>\n However, the report included an example where an online family justice portal with many of the characteristics of Rechtwijzer which, while not envisaged to have a \u201cmonopoly\u201d, would nevertheless have \u201ca substantial market share\u201d, serving one in five people with family disputes.<\/p>\n HiiL was optimistic that technological solutions were helping to transform justice. It said: \u201cOnline platforms are a promising way to support the supply of fair solutions at scale\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cJudges are being released from courthouses and overly legalistic procedures so they can bring fair, authoritative solutions to the table when needed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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