Demos for Democracy, featuring A2J Author

The GovLab presents Demos for Democracy, an ongoing series of live, interactive online demos featuring designers and builders of the latest innovative governance platforms, tools or methods to foster greater openness and collaboration to how we govern.

“A2J Author: making the law work for everyone”

On December 18, 2014, we had a conversation with Alex Rabanal and John Mayer about A2J Author, a cloud based software tool that delivers greater access to justice for self-represented litigants by enabling non-technical authors from the courts, clerk’s offices, legal services organizations, and law schools to rapidly build and implement user friendly web-based interfaces for document assembly. Read more, HERE.

What: Watch our video to find out what A2J Author is, how it works, the process of its design and how can the platform be used for social good.

About Alex: Alexander Rabanal is the Access to Justice Fellow at the Center for Access to Justice & Technology at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.  In this role, Alexander provides training in A2J Author, coordinates student involvement with the Center and assists in two courses at Chicago-Kent, including the Justice & Technology Practicum, which teaches students how to create Guided Interviews in A2J Author to be used by partnering legal aid organizations.  Alexander also holds a J.D. from Chicago-Kent and is interested in the ways in which technology can be leveraged to meet the legal needs of underserved communities.

About John: John Mayer has been the Executive Director of the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) since 1994.  CALI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit consortium of almost all US law schools that does work at the intersection of legal education, technology, ebook publishing and access to justice.  CALI is the developer behind A2J Author used by over 2 million self represented people in the past 5 years.  CALI also publishes over 900 web-based tutorials in 44 different subject areas (CALI Lessons), runs eLangdell Press which publishes law school casebooks under Creative Commons licenses and has hosted the annual Conference for Law School Computing since 1991. John has a BS in Computer Science from Northwestern University and an MS in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology and has worked in legal education and technology since 1987.