The Access to Justice Lab
The Practice
September/October 2017
Transforming U.S. law into an evidence-based profession by implementing and publishing rigorous, empirical studies to create credible evidence about what works and what doesn't.
September/October 2017
The Access to Justice Lab
Did you do your client any good (not did your client have something good happen)? Did you do your client any good, meaning did your services make a difference in what the client experienced? If you worked hard and the client achieved a good result (and was happy and thankful), of course you did good. But what the last question asks is not whether a good thing happened, but whether you had anything to do with it.
Drawn to Action
While using an RCT or similar rigorous methods to test an intervention is critical to assessing whether it actually works, designing an intervention is far from a passive undertaking. Indeed, designing an intervention is a complicated process involving ample research, collaboration among different disciplines, pretesting, and continuous tinkering.
Redesigning the User Experience in Legal Aid
Hackathons are becoming increasingly common, and those specializing in legal technology are far from unheard of. But while these hackathons tend to focus on potential disruptions in the legal marketplace—for instance, the use of AI and how that might disrupt traditional law firm models—the Seattle Social Justice Hackathon was primarily concerned with overcoming the barriers that vulnerable populations face in the justice system.
Judging from Empirical Research
While the A2J Lab uses a number of research methods, one of the most important (and often misunderstood) is the randomized control trial (RCT). Perhaps best known for its application in the medical field, the RCT is rarely associated with the law, let alone access to justice. The A2J Lab is working to change that. To demystify what risks being an overly technical concept, this article explores what goes into an RCT within the legal profession.
A Syllabus for Empirical Methods in Law
The application of rigorous empirical research methods in the law is increasingly moving from the journals and into the classrooms, and the Access to Justice Lab (A2J Lab) is at the forefront of facilitating this process. Most notably, the A2J Lab is in the process of designing a short course dedicated to randomized control trials (RCTs) for an audience of legal researchers.
Lessons from the Poverty Action Lab
Rachel Glennerster, the executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, recently sat down with Jim Greiner, faculty director of the Access to Justice Lab, for a one-on-one conversation on the application of rigorous empirical research methods to help answer policy questions.
