Access to Justice Network Conference 2026

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9:00am EDT

People-Centered Data and Reform: From Court Records to Community Feedback

Wednesday October 21, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am EDT

Every year, approximately 66 million cases flow through state courts — but we rarely reach out to the people behind those cases for feedback on their experience with the system and how they feel they could be better served. Traditional court research is organized around institutions: cases, dockets, judicial decisions. This "courts-first" approach obscures how the same individuals move through and across court systems over time, making it harder to identify patterns like frequent court involvement, multi-system entanglement, and the cumulative toll of repeated legal crises. It also fails to adequately identify the specific procedures or aspects of a case where self-represented litigants struggle most or what type of help could help bridge that gap. This session presents a different starting point: what happens when you reorganize court reform around people instead of cases, and what happens when you go beyond court data entirely and ask communities directly about their legal needs?
Two complementary approaches anchor the session. The first uses a novel person-centered framework, employed by Pew in partnership with the South Carolina Judicial Branch, that links court records across case types to reveal how individuals navigate multiple parts of the justice system —traffic court, debt collection, ordinance violations — often simultaneously. The project focuses on three rural counties where legal gaps are even more pronounced and research on court interactions and processes is particularly limited. Panelists will share the methodology, key research findings, and discuss how these insights are being translated into actionable policy solutions in South Carolina.
The second approach comes from the District of Columbia, where access-to-justice leaders went to communities to solicit feedback on a new idea – a regulatory reform concept that could invite community justice workers into the civil justice system. Through this process, leaders learned more about legal needs, service gaps, and barriers — and also heard from social service and other professionals who were often called upon to support individuals facing legal crises. Their process of identifying stakeholders, engaging unexpected partners, grounding recommendations in user feedback, and navigating the most challenging questions offers a replicable framework for any jurisdiction ready to start thinking how to ground legal reform in the user experience.
Together, these approaches represent a fundamental shift in how justice systems can understand the people they serve. One reorganizes data that already exists; the other generates feedback and uses it directly in guiding court reform. Whether you're a court administrator with access to case management data or a community organization wondering how to make the case for reform, you will leave the session with concrete ideas on how they might design user-centered strategies to address justice challenges in their own jurisdiction.

Speakers

Ingrid Gillies

Pew Charitable Trusts

Ingrid Gillies is an associate for Pew’s courts and communities project, providing research and technical assistance to courts and state partners. Before joining Pew, Gillies worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on the data science and analytics team where... Read More →

Hannah Honeycutt

Executive Director, South Carolina Access to Justice

Erin Larkin

Director, Access to Justice Unit, District of Columbia Courts Self-Help

I lead the Access to Justice Unit at the DC Courts, where I focus on reducing barriers that prevent people from accessing the justice system. My work includes initiatives such as community justice workers, court navigators, self-help services, digital accessibility, and plain-language... Read More →

Reena Shah

Executive Director, Maryland Access to Justice Commission

A long-time advocate of social justice and social change, Reena has served as Executive Director of the Maryland Access to Justice Commission (A2JC) since 2015. She was named by former Attorney General Frosh to chair the legislatively mandated Access to Counsel in Evictions Task Force... Read More →

Nancy Drane

Executive Director, DC Access to Justice Commission

Nancy Drane has served as Executive Director of the D.C. Access to Justice Commission since 2016, leading efforts to expand access to civil legal help for District residents. She previously spent 13 years at the Children’s Law Center, representing children and families and later... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Research

1:30pm EDT

Interconnected Legal Needs: Finding Patterns Across Domains

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm EDT

Cincinnati Convention Center

Speakers

Juliet-Nil Uraz

London School of Economics

Juliet-Nil Uraz is an applied economist completing her PhD at the London School of Economics and currently serves as a Visiting Research Fellow at Opportunity Insights at Harvard. Her research lies at the intersection of public economics, public finance, and empirical legal studies... Read More →

Chloé Sudduth

Rutgers University

Will von Geldern

Stanford Law School, Rhode Center on the Legal Profession

Anne Groggel

St. Mary's College

Christina Plakas

University of South Carolina

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Research

3:15pm EDT

University Labs as Justice Innovation Partners: Different Models for Academic-Community Collaboration

Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:15pm - 4:45pm EDT

Cincinnati Convention Center

Universities have resources that justice organizations need — student labor, technical expertise, research infrastructure, and the luxury of experimentation.
This session presents several fundamentally different models for university-community justice partnerships. Ohio State's JusticeTech initiative pairs law students and computer science students to co-develop AI-assisted online dispute resolution tools for the Franklin County Municipal Court Self Help Center, with a focus on eviction proceedings. Students conduct field research, attend hearings, and build tools informed by Dispute System Design principles — navigating the line between innovation and unauthorized practice of law while producing systems that real litigants can use. The program offers lessons on interdisciplinary collaboration, ethical AI deployment, and how to build courses that produce lasting infrastructure rather than disposable prototypes.
UIC Law's legal technology partnership with direct representation clinics takes a different approach: students use Docassemble and JosefLegal platforms to build guided interview tools that scale the capacity of pro bono and clinical programs. The model demonstrates how law school classes can produce real, deployable technology — not just learning exercises — when they partner directly with legal services providers who define the need. Attendees will test-drive tools built by students and explore strategies for replicating this model in their own states.
Stanford's Legal Design Lab also has examples of it building justice AI co-pilots for legal aid and court teams, through its class AI for legal help.
Northeastern's NuLawLab and its East Boston Spatial Justice Lab represent the most community-embedded model. For over seven years, the lab has partnered with East Boston residents, local artists, and community organizations to address housing insecurity through popular education, legal empowerment workshops, and art-based advocacy. The Neighborhood Eviction Defense project treats community members as co-creators of knowledge, using participatory methods drawn from popular education to build collective understanding of tenant rights and displacement. This model challenges the assumption that justice innovation must be technology-driven — sometimes the most powerful tools are cultural.
The University of São Paulo's Legal Design Studies Core (NELD) brings an international perspective and a different methodology entirely. Working with USP Law School's Legal Aid Department — a longstanding institution providing free legal assistance to the community while training law students — NELD applied design-based methodologies to map the department's operational and institutional challenges and propose user-centered solutions. Over the past decade, the Legal Aid Department had struggled with structural problems that hindered service quality and accessibility. Rather than building a technology tool, NELD used journey mapping, service design, and participatory methods to redesign how the organization itself works. This model challenges the assumption that justice innovation requires new technology — sometimes the most impactful intervention is redesigning the systems and workflows that already exist.
A facilitated workshop will follow the panel presentations. Tables of participants will sketch concrete partnership ideas and ideate the details with the panelists. Panelists will circulate among the workshop tables to discuss how their unique models would approach each table’s partnership ideas. Participants will leave with concrete ideas for launching their own university-community partnership, and a good understanding of which models are best suited to each partnership.

Speakers

Amy Schmitz

The Ohio State University

Professor Amy J. Schmitz is a full professor at The Ohio State Moritz College of Law and Program on Dispute Resolution as the John Deaver Drinko-Baker & Hostetler Endowed Chair in Law and Director of JusticeTech at The Ohio State University. She also is affiliated with The Ohio State... Read More →

Dan Jackson

Executive Director, NuLawLab

Dan Jackson has directed the NuLawLab at Northeastern University School of Law since 2013. Dan is a 1997 graduate of Northeastern Law and a 1990 graduate of Northwestern University. He recently served as Chair of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal... Read More →

Claire Johnson Raba

Assistant Professor of Law, University of Illinois at Chicago

Isabella Nobre Brant

University of São Paulo Law School

Isabella Brant is a lawyer graduated from the University of São Paulo (FDUSP). Completed a Zertifikatsstudium in Deutsches Recht (German Law) and Privatrechtstheorie (Theory of Private Law) at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Legal Designer at Studio Mater. Co-founder of the... Read More →

Nora Al Haider

Assistant Director, Stanford Legal Design Lab

Nóra Al Haider is the Assistant Director at the Stanford Legal Design Lab. Nóra is a multilingual lawyer and interdisciplinary researcher. She combines the fields of law, design, data and tech to increase access to justice.

Mindy Yocum

Justice Mobile

Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:15pm - 4:45pm EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Research

Access to Justice Network Conference 2026

From $62.13

Tickets

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Access to Justice Network Conference 2026

9:00am EDT

Ingrid Gillies

Hannah Honeycutt

Erin Larkin

Reena Shah

Nancy Drane

1:30pm EDT

Juliet-Nil Uraz

Chloé Sudduth

Will von Geldern

Anne Groggel

Christina Plakas

3:15pm EDT

Amy Schmitz

Dan Jackson

Claire Johnson Raba

Isabella Nobre Brant

Nora Al Haider

Mindy Yocum

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