Robert Richards - Recherche en IA spécialisée au MIT

Robert Richards

Open, Generative, et
User Centered
The Potential of SMS-Based Legal Technology
for Development

Discussion de cas sur les innovations:
mLegal

mLegal seems to be an especially promising means of improving access to justice
in developing countries. The significant potential of its approach to legal client
technology stems in part from its consistency with several current trends in devel-
opment policy: e-government, and legal informatics.

First and foremost, mLegal constitutes a technological means of empowering
citizens of developing countries to participate more fully in the legal system. Ce
empowerment accords with the general tendency of many governments in the late-
modern period to decentralize power, largely due to technological forces.1
En outre, such an application of technology is consistent with the broad con-
temporary emphasis in development policy on empowering individuals.2 Within
the theoretical frameworks of information societies and of development policy,
technologically enabled citizen empowerment encompasses greater citizen
involvement in, and access to, public administrative functions generally, comme
expressed, Par exemple, in models of “collaborative government”3 and the legal sys-
tem in particular.4

In the legal domain, the phenomena of devolution and citizen empowerment
are manifested notably in the “decomposition” of legal services—including the
offering of legal services in an “unbundled” manner5—and the rebalancing of the
lawyer-client relationship to facilitate the client’s empowerment.6 To date, many
efforts related to service decomposition and client empowerment have centered on
government conduct—measures undertaken by the state to empower citizens
respecting the justice system. Such measures primarily concern “basic electronic

Robert Richards is a PhD student at the University of Washington Department of
Communication. He studies legal communication, with a focus on technology-medi-
ated communication. His current research includes a study of free, public, digital
access to law—including access by mobile devices—in India.

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Robert Richards

publishing”7 or “information push”:8 providing access via the Internet to more
legal information, such as the texts of statutes, règlements, and court decisions, comme
urged by the “free access to law,” “open government data,” and “Law.gov” move-
ments.9

In a different and equally salient dimension of the tendency toward the decom-
position of legal services and the empowerment of clients as enabled by technolo-
gy, the client takes the central role in legal reform. This dimension of reform
includes trends such as the user-
centered design of legal informa-
tion systems10 and technological
innovation within the “access to
justice” movement, especially in
the areas of online public legal
education11 and interactive docu-
ment-assembly services.12 In the
client-centered approach, le
first step is to ascertain the
client’s needs for legal informa-
tion and the technological means
by which the client can most eas-
ily and affordably access infor-
mation. Based on this knowl-
bord, services and tools are
designed to meet the client’s
needs, with technology that max-
imizes the client’s access, in terms of cost and ease of use, to the relevant informa-
tion. mLegal embodies this approach in its principle of “meet[ing clients] où
they are.”

mLegal pursues a client-centered legal services delivery model by means of two
technologies that are highly accessible—in terms of both cost and ease of use—to
low-income individuals in the developing world: mobile telephony and SMS.
Aujourd'hui, these technologies also constitute core components of legal services deliv-
ery. Par exemple, in the most recent survey of technology use by U.S. lawyers, 76
percent reported using smartphones, 21 percent reported using cell phones, et 3
percent reported using text messaging in their legal practice.13 Much legal technol-
ogy innovation in developed countries has recently concerned the creation of
Internet-based legal applications (or “legal apps”) for smart phones. These “legal
apps” allow lawyers to use mobile devices to perform legal research and document
management, and to access certain information resources provided by law firms.14
Many of these “legal apps,” available at no or low cost and easy to use, can also be
used by non-lawyer citizens to access to legal information.

Such applications, cependant, are not suitable for many areas of the developing
monde, where Internet access is inconvenient or unavailable.15 Yet mobile telephony
is widespread, if not abundant, in most developing regions.16 A key challenge for

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Open, Generative, and User-Centered

technologists seeking to enhance legal service provision to low-income individuals
in the developing world, alors, is to create technologies that run on mobile devices
unconnected to the Internet, and that offer improved access to legal information
resources—access comparable to that afforded by Internet-based “legal apps.”

When one considers the high levels of mobile phone access in the developing
monde, along with the ease of use and relatively low cost of SMS technology, text
messaging seems to be a highly suitable way to deliver improved legal information
services to low-income communities in developing countries. At least with respect
to hardware and software platforms, the SMS-based legal information services
offered in developing nations are user-centered.

The client-centered focus is evident in the initial plan for the development of
mLegal. The needs of clients are foregrounded, particularly in the functions that
manage intake and referrals, and case management, scheduling, and reminders;
these are among the first components of mLegal to be implemented. Intake/refer-
ral applications available via SMS could substantially increase citizens’ direct access
to legal professionals. Some researchers report that in developing countries, at least
certain categories of clients—such as women who suffer from domestic violence—
have experienced access to legal services via mobile devices as empowering.17 Upon
this foundation, in which mobile technology enables particular types of clients to
initiate communication with lawyers, mLegal proposes to create a means of direct
access to legal services for a much broader client community.

In subsequent stages of development for mLegal, other functions—suitable for
the SMS medium and suggested by development policy research, or by technology
for development, law, or other domains—might be considered. Par exemple, con-
sistent with the recommendations of the Commission on Legal Empowerment for
the Poor, the mLegal intake/referral module might be adapted to allow citizens
with legal needs to communicate via SMS with a broader range of sources of legal
connaissance. These sources might include non-lawyers trained to assist individuals
with legal issues, and peers or neighbors who have gained particular legal knowl-
edge through experience.18

Additional functions, requiring no human mediation and designed to assist
self-represented citizens, are suggested by the interactive data collection system at
the heart of the mLegal intake/referral module. Par exemple, interactive docu-
ment-assembly systems designed for unmediated use by non-lawyer citizens, tel
as the A2J Author system created by the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal
Instruction,19 might be adapted for the SMS environment. If electronic forms for
litigation papers or legal-transaction documents frequently requested by the citi-
zens of a particular developing region could be incorporated into such a docu-
ment-assembly system, and if an SMS-based user interface and menu system were
created for such a system, non-lawyer citizens could complete such forms via
mobile phone.

Such a document-assembly system might also incorporate an SMS-based
application for direct digital submission of completed electronic forms to courts
that accept electronically filed documents. Where such SMS-based electronic sub-

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Robert Richards

mission is not available or the citizen does not desire it (Par exemple, if transac-
tional forms are being created), the SMS-based document-assembly system could
allow citizens with access to the Internet and printing facilities to have the com-
pleted digital forms emailed to them. Entre-temps, citizens who lack such access
could be provided with ways to create and mail printed copies of completed forms.
Legal information retrieval is another foreseeable capability of mLegal.
Although character limits and cost constraints render SMS an inappropriate medi-
um for retrieving full-text information, text messages could enable the retrieval of
key metadata related to legal documents, such as title, jurisdiction, citation, date,
document type, subject headings, and abstract. Existing SMS-based health infor-
mation retrieval technology might furnish suitable models for legal information
retrieval.20 Further, descriptive legal metadata standards such as CEN MetaLex,21
AKOMA-NTOSO,22 OAI4Courts,23 or the forthcoming Law.gov metadata schema24
could form the basis for stores of SMS-accessible metadata describing statutes, reg-
ulations, and decisions of tribunals.

En outre, lawyer-client communication applications developed for mLegal
might be adapted for law-related research purposes. Par exemple, the Open Data
Kit SMS-based technology has been used to create mobile-phone based survey sys-
tems for collecting data on human rights abuses in African nations.25 Similar tech-
nology might be developed within the mLegal framework to gather survey data
about substantive legal issues of concern to clients, or about client satisfaction or
other parameters related to services provided via mLegal.

These and other possible extensions of mLegal systems would be facilitated by
another attribute of mLegal that accords with a current theme in legal technology:
the use of open source software.26 Key benefits of open source software include the
absence of license fees, great flexibility to adapt and extend the software for new
uses, the ability to allow anyone to contribute to the software, and substantial free-
dom to distribute one’s product.27 Systems developed with open source software
thus have the potential to serve as what Jonathan Zittrain calls “generative sys-
tems.”28 These benefits make open source software particularly well suited for use
in resource-constrained environments, where software modification and innova-
tion are priorities, and where obtaining creative input from many sources and
maintaining the capability to distribute code widely are highly desired: precisely
the kinds of environments in which mLegal is to be developed.

One potential drawback to an SMS-based approach like that of mLegal con-
cerns the lack of information access by illiterate citizens. Research on the use of
mobile phones in developing countries shows that literacy constitutes a barrier to
accessing services delivered via text message.29 The relatively high rates of adult
illiteracy in many developing nations30 suggest that legal information services
delivered via SMS may need to be supplemented by voice services.

For those desiring to create user-centered means of improving access to justice
for low-income citizens of developing countries, SMS-based systems seem
extremely promising. Development of such systems seems consistent with several
trends in legal technology, including the unbundling of legal services, the empow-

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Open, Generative, and User-Centered

ering of legal clients, the prioritizing of citizens’ legal information needs and access
capabilities in the design process, and the use of open-source software.
En outre, legal-practice systems rooted in text-message technology could be
extended to encompass a range of innovative law-related services and functions,
including interactive document creation, e-filing of court documents, information
retrieval, survey data collection, and online conferral with non-lawyers who pos-
sess relevant legal knowledge. By “meet[ing clients] where they are” and cultivat-
ing open systems, developers of open-source, SMS-based legal technologies such
as mLegal exhibit great potential to enhance access to justice for low-income indi-
viduals in developing nations.

1. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford: Presse universitaire d'Oxford, 2009), p. 40.
2. Deepa Narayan, éd., Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook (Washington, CC: Monde

Bank, 2002), pp. 2–8.

3. Beth Simone Noveck, Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better,
Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful (Washington, CC: Brookings Institution Press,
2009), p. 41.

4. Commission on Legal Empowerment for the Poor, Making the Law Work for Everyone (New York:
United Nations Development Programme, 2008), 1:64, 2:56–57; Narayan, Empowerment and
Poverty Reduction, pp. 66–68.

5. Fern Fisher-Brandveen and Rochelle Klempner, “Unbundled Legal Services: Untying the Bundle

in New York State,” Fordham Urban Law Journal 29 (Février 2002): 1107–1124.

6. Richard Susskind, The End of Lawyers? (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp.

42–52, 238–245.

7. Helen Margetts, “Public Management Change and E-government: The Emergence of Digital-Era
Governance,” in Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics, éd. Andrew Chadwick & Philip N.
Howard (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 114–127, 116.

8. Dory Reiling, Technology for Justice: How Information Technology Can Support Judicial Reform

(Leiden, Netherlands: Leiden University Press, 2009), p. 202.

9. Graham Greenleaf, “The Global Development of Free Access to Legal Information,” European
Journal of Law and Technology 1, Non. 1 (2010). Available at http://ejlt.org//article/view/17 Accessed
Avril 12, 2011; Philip M. Napoli and Joe Karaganis, “On Making Public Policy with Publicly
Available Data: The Case of U.S. Communications Policymaking,” Government Information
Trimestriel 27 (Octobre 2010): 384–391; Carl Malamud, “Law.gov: America’s Operating System,
Open
à
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/lawgov-americas-operating-syst.html Accessed April 12, 2011.
10. Manpreet Kaur et al., “Search History Tools for User Support in Information Retrieval Systems:
Evaluation Results from an Iterative, User-centered Process,” in Proceedings of the Annual
Conference of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 42, Non. 1 (2005), pp.
1–8.

(Octobre

Available

Source,»

O'Reilly

2009).

Radar

15,

11. Reiling, Technology for Justice, pp. 184–208; Community Legal Education Ontario, Exploring the
Expansion of CLEONet: Final Project Report to The Law Foundation of Ontario (Ontario:
Community
à
http://www.cleo.on.ca/english/pub/onpub/PDF/cleonetexpand.pdf Accessed April 12, 2011.
12. Ronald W. Staudt, “All the Wild Possibilities: Technology that Attacks Barriers to Access to

Éducation

Available

Ontario,

2009).

Legal

Justice,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 42 (Été 2009): 1117–1145.

13. ABA Legal Technology Resource Center, American Bar Association Legal Technology Survey

Report (Chicago: American Bar Association, 2010), pp. II-27, IV-36.

14. Jim Calloway, “Legal Apps for Smart Phones,” NALS: The Association for Legal Professionals

(Mars 15, 2011). Available at http://www.nals.org/?p=2646 Accessed April 12, 2011.

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Robert Richards

15 International Telecommunication Union, The World in 2010: Facts and Figures (Genève:

International Telecommunication Union, 2010), p. 4.

16. International Telecommunication Union, The World in 2010, p. 2.
17. Voir, par exemple., Amina Tafnout and Aatifa Timjerdine, “Using ICTs to Act on Hope and Commitment:
The Fight Against Gender Violence in Morocco,” in African Women and ICTs: Investigating
Technologie, Gender and Empowerment, éd. Ineke Buskens and Anne Webb (Londres: Zed, 2009),
pp. 88–96.

18. Commission on Legal Empowerment for the Poor, Making the Law Work for Everyone, 1:62–64,

2:56–57.

19. Staudt, “All the Wild Possibilities,” pp. 1117–1145, 1128–1137.
20. Paul Fontelo et al., “Txt2MEDLINE: Text-Messaging Access to MEDLINE/PubMed,” in
Biomedical and Health Informatics: From Foundations to Applications to Policy: AMIA 2006
Annual Symposium Proceedings (Béthesda, MARYLAND: American Medical Informatics Association,
2006), pp. 259–263.

21. Alexander Boer, Radboud Winkels, and Fabio Vitale, “Proposed XML Standards for Law:
MetaLex and LKIF,” in Proceedings of JURIX 2007: Conference on Legal Knowledge and
Information Systems, éd. Arno R. Lodder and Laurens Mommers (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2007),
pp. 19–28.

22. Gioele Barabucci et al., “Multi-Layer Markup and Ontological Structures in AkomaNtoso,” in AI
Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems: Complex Systems, The Semantic Web, Ontologies,
Argumentation, and Dialogue, éd. Pompeu Casanovas et al. (Berlin: Springer, 2010), pp. 133–149.
23. Legal Information Institute, “OAI4Courts.” Available at http://oai4courts.wikispaces.com/

Accessed April 12, 2011.

24. Thomas R. Bruce, “Suggested Metadata Practices for Legislation and Regulations,” LexCraft

(2010). Available at
http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wiki/lexcraft/suggested_metadata_practices_for_legislation_and_
regulations Accessed April 12, 2011.

25. Carl Hartung et al., “Open Data Kit: Tools to Build Information Services for Developing
Regions.” Paper presented at ICTD 2010: The International Conference on Information and
Communication Technologies and Development, Londres, England, December 13–16, 2010.
à
Available
http://www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/ict4d/ictd2010/papers/ICTD2010%20Hartung%20et%20al.pdf
Accessed April 12, 2011.

26. In the latest survey of U.S. lawyers, 29 percent reported using the Firefox open-source Web
browser, et 8.8 percent reported using the Mozilla open-source Web browser. Data on usage of
other kinds of open-source software were not reported. ABA Legal Technology Resource Center,
American Bar Association Legal Technology Survey Report, pp. II-50.

27. Dan Woods and Gautam Guliani, Open Source for the Enterprise: Managing Risks, Reaping

Rewards (Sebastopol, Californie: O'Reilly, 2005), pp. 91–92.

28. Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It (New Haven, CT: Yale

Presse universitaire, 2008), p. 79.

29. Voir, par exemple., Kazanka Comfort and John Dada, “Rural Women’s Use of Cell Phones to Meet Their
Communication Needs: A Study from Northern Nigeria,” in African Women and ICTs:
Investigating Technology, Gender and Empowerment, éd. Ineke Buskens and Anne Webb
(Londres: Zed, 2009), pp. 44–55, 52.

30. United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 2010: The Real Wealth of
Nations: Pathways to Human Development (New York: United Nations Development Program,
2010), pp. 194–195.

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