The Justice Web Collaboratory Needs Creative Thinkers and Visionaries!

Help Shape the Future of Legal Computing!

The Justice Web Collaboratory promotes the use of the Internet in the teaching, practice and public access to the law. The JWC seeks synergy created by knowledge sharing collaborations between legal academia, the judiciary, law practitioners and consumers of the law. Harnessing the power of the Internet and utilizing cutting-edge technologies in video/audio streaming, document management, electronic communication and data base management, the JWC is building tools to provide interactive training, peer-to-peer communication, online education, news and updates, legal forms, directories and research mechanisms.

JWC Student Leadership Opportunities

Justice Web Collaboratory Externships

A JWC Externship offers you the opportunity to explore access to justice issues, including the use of technology in legal services, alternative legal services delivery models and pro se litigant assistance. Through this program, you will assist in developing an innovative model for the delivery of legal services using technology. Sign up for this program and join forces with Illinois experts who provide nontraditional legal services (i.e., help desk, hotline, web site), direct legal services and facilitate pro se litigant assistance. Exciting fieldwork assignments will include:

• Direct client service.
• Observation and assistance with supervising attorneys' client work.
• Preparation and delivery of various resources for pro se litigants - including web based educational materials and forms.
• Maintenance of pro se resources on the web.
• Legal research, writing and editing.

For more information about this three (3) credit program (requires at least 12 hours per week spent on externship activities), please contact Lisa Colpoys, Legal Content Manager, Illinois Technology Center for Law and the Public Interest at lcolpoys@kentlaw.edu or 312.906.5321.

Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants
A Consumer-Based Approach

Chicago-Kent College of Law and Illinois Institute of Technology Institute of Design are collaborating to examine court processes and recommend modifications to eliminate or reduce procedural barriers to access for self-represented litigants. This project represents a bold attempt to harness the most advanced process design technologies and the power of the Internet in order to fundamentally reengineer civil court processes in which self-represented litigants seek to access judicial services. In the first phase of the project, graduate students in law and design fanned out across the U.S. to gather customer observation of self represented litigants. Students and faculty traveled to Colorado, Delaware California and two counties in Illinois to study existing innovations and to interview members of the judiciary. In the second phase, the research teams fed this data into the latest in system design methods, to redesign civil court processes from a consumer's prospective.

Now is your chance to make a difference! Give back to your community! Help establish the groundwork for making the law accessible to all of the public! In the final phase of the project, researchers and programmers will build a Web site prototype that will incorporate the results of the design process. Five different court systems have agreed to test the prototype beginning in 2002. If you have web design and programming experience and are proficient in programs such as FLASH 5.0 and PhotoShop, we need you!

For more information or to sign up to participate in this innovative project, please contact Todd Pedwell, Manager, Justice Web Collaboratory at tpedwell@kentlaw.edu or 312.906.5328.