Reiling on IT and the Access to Justice Crisis

Judge Dory Reiling, mag. iur., Ph.D., Vice President of the Amsterdam District Court, has posted IT and the Access to Justice Crisis, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In her post — which is based on a chapter in her recent book entitled Technology for Justice: How Information Technology Can Support Judicial Reform — Judge Reiling discusses what we currently know about citizens’ information needs and behavior respecting access to civil justice. Judge Reiling describes the information that citizens need to resolve disputes outside of the legal system — whether without a third party or via alternative dispute resolution (ADR) — as well as the information they need in order to proceed pro se via the civil justice system. Judge Reiling then discusses how technology can be used to encourage dispute resolution outside of formal legal proceedings, as well as to improve outcomes for self-represented litigants in the civil justice system.

Judge Reiling’s post should be of particular interest to the access to justice / pro bono community, court administrators, alternative dispute resolution professionals, developers of judicial and access-to-justice information systems, and to those who provide or seek to improve legal information services to the public.