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Christy Leos edited this page Dec 14, 2016 · 7 revisions

Welcome to the JusticeHub wiki!

What is JusticeHub?

JusticeHub is a social network, technology system, and hub aimed to aid in the identification, prevention, mitigation and solving of justice issues that affect our communities. JusticeHub is dedicated to self-defined participation, open source development, attribution, and benefit.

Let's be honest - how many times have you heard of or have come up with a great idea to solve a problem and then find out months later that someone has already created (or are currently working on) that exact solution for their community or clients? It can be incredibly fustrating to have our efforts become invalidated or to have wasted time, the result usually being a project is abandoned or loses steam due to siloing that stems from competing for the same grant money or consumer dollars.

OR maybe you see injustice in your community and aren't sure how to help or who else is working on the issues you care about.

It takes everyone’s voice to improve our justice system – those in need – advocates – activists - law students – legal aid – coders - businesses – entrepreneurs – data analysts – shelter workers – government officials – anyone who realizes that it is time to change processes that no longer serve the people. JusticeHub is a space where everyone contributes and works as equals to support the creation of solutions for our communities. By adopting the open source collaboration model, we are able to build upon each other's work in a meaningful and open way.

Add your voice and experience to the effort to better understand the barriers to equal access to justice and use this platform to better coordinate with those who are creating solutions.

##Why build JusticeHub? There is a growing need across the entire legal system for technologies to be used in real time, free from limitations and access barriers created by unintended silos, and with coordinated monitoring to track justice needs, related parties, actions, and possibilities for alternative dispute resolution systems at the earliest possible stages.

Legal aid and other social justice groups have pioneered the creation and adoption of innovative technologies to increase access to the legal system and assist in their advocacy. Client and organizational needs, however, often emerge ad hoc, or pressured by short time frames between first identification and crisis stage, after cases and controversies have already taken root. This means that the legal aid system and the courts often become bogged down in inherently limited reactive modes rather than more strategic approaches likely to produce lasting positive outcomes. Without such realignment of focus, courts and the legal aid system will continue to risk being too overburdened to meet the increasing needs of low-income communities.

Additionally, legal aid organizations are further restricted by the legal profession, as a whole, due to many law firms’ and courts’ tendencies to be late adopters of innovative technologies. The current legal profession faces additional obstacles to timely and cost-effective technology systems due to outdated rules and concepts regarding unauthorized practice of law and other professional regulatory barriers. However, even with such barriers to deal with, legal aid organizations have continued to be leaders in many parts of the country for creating justice-oriented technologies. Nonetheless, the existing environment for legal aid technology development, although impressive, is not yet as robust and efficient as it could be.

The still emerging online legal industry has also been in the forefront of developing new ways for consumers to access legal help. Many consumers have taken advantage of the benefits of this new industry and appreciate the transparency that some companies have helped to provide to the insulated and often opaque American legal system. The online legal industry is consistently raising the level of legal technology, but the two-edged sword of being free from traditional ethical rules causes concern.

We feel that institutionalized "justice systems have largely remained frozen in place, locked into particular geographic places and paper." Further, there is an "immediate challenge for the profession to acknowledge not only that access to justice for the most vulnerable is restricted but also that the capacity of traditional legal institutions is lacking." Therefore, JusticeHub seeks to not only be the catalyst of justice technology solutions to repair this broken world, but create a trusted online collaborative space to begin to consciously, and actively, transform the current mechanisms of justice.

What can I do with JusticeHub?

  • host collaboration designs
  • create personal work-spaces
  • visualization of problem solving efforts and progress
  • view and contribute to solution builds
  • tag and match to quickly identify needs and opportunities
  • repositories of current justice technologies and solutions
  • integrate with other informational and problem solving spaces, such as GitHub and Trello

User Workspace:

The user workspace is a private development area. You can configure it yourself and use it to research, write, communicate, and whatever else. It is built to be safe, secure and selftagged.

Core Functionality:

To-Do

Capabilities and Features:

  • Search functionality
  • Donation system
  • Matching system
  • Triage system
  • Authenticated user functionality, capabilities and features
  • HTTPS security encryption
  • Collaboration tool integration
  • Data visualization and mapping capabilities
  • Payment system integration
  • User Commit and Comment functionality for both developer users and nondeveloper users
  • Integrated communication tools