BYU LawX program expands, empowers students to fine-tune legal system resources | News, Sports, Jobs

Students studying law at Brigham Young University continue to work toward innovative approaches that connect Utahns with legal resources via technology and other means of providing assistance.

On Wednesday, BYU Law announced the expansion of its LawX legal design lab program that will include an incubator course.

This fall, the law school at BYU is offering two classes simultaneously: a new LawX Design Lab focusing on water rights and the LawX Incubator, which is centered around community service, according to a press release from BYU Law.

The LawX Legal Design Clinic at BYU, introduced in 2017, aims to help students develop innovative legal solutions through design thinking and technology.

“They use the design thinking process to investigate that problem, learn more about it, think about some different solutions, test those out, see what works, and then build a prototype,” said Nick Hafen, head of Legal Technology Education at BYU Law.

This incubator course was introduced in the current semester and gives students additional time to further define and implement their access-to-justice innovations.

Hafen said there was a demand for the addition from students who wanted to continue building out solutions they may have started in a previous semester.

This semester, two returning students, along with five others, will continue work on a prototype for the nonprofit program called CourtServe that connects judges, charities and court-appointed volunteers in order to simplify the process of assigning an offender to community service.

The idea was birthed by a student, according to Hafen, who worked for a judge and discovered the difficulties courts experience in designating community service.

“It turned out that assigning community service is an administrative hassle for the court,” Hafen said. “It’s very difficult for them to deal with the offenders because there are documentation requirements, and they have to work with a charity, they have to get things signed, and everything has to have the right information.”

Feedback on the initial prototype was positive from judges as well as adult probation and parole supervisors. They believe the resource makes it more likely that a judge would issue community service rather than impose a fine.

The LawX team is fine-tuning its CourtServe prototype and looks to ease the burden on offenders and the courts through providing an efficient way to match court-appointed volunteers with appropriate community service opportunities.

Students this fall are also working with WETx, a tech company based out of Salt Lake City with a focus on water management.

The company’s mission is to make it easier for Utahn’s to conserve more water without requiring them to give up their water rights.

Hafen said they were approached by the tech company to help find innovative ways to solve the issue. “The LawX team is working with guidance from Justin Whittaker, WETx CEO and a LawX director, on automating water rights management to help contribute to saving the Great Salt Lake,” the release states.

For the past seven years, LawX projects have generated several technology-based legal solutions, including SoloSuit to fight debt collections in court without a lawyer, Hello Landlord to improve landlord-tenant communication, and Goodbye Record to address flaws in the expungement process, according to the press release.

“It’s inspiring to see how much our students have been able to accomplish in such a brief time, creating solutions that have made a real difference,” Hafen said in the release. “Since 2017, student and community interest has flourished, and we’re scaling up LawX to tackle a greater variety of projects and to provide continuing support for students’ solutions.”

He added that the program is open to other ideas from community members and organizations about issues in the legal system that need to be addressed.

“Myself, the co-directors and the students can’t be aware of everything, and so we’re always open to people giving us suggestions on problems that we can help address,” Hafen told the Daily Herald.