New Class of ABA Innovation Fellows Will Tackle Diverse Group of Access to Justice Projects

"One will work with the National Center for State Courts to help research and develop ways to make the nation’s courts more accessible and easily understood for the public. Another will research how to integrate artificial intelligence into open source legal technology.

These are just two of the six Fellows announced today who will work under the umbrella of the American Bar Association Center for Innovation, which was established in September 2016 at the recommendation of the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services. Its mission is to encourage and accelerate innovations that improve the accessibility, affordability and effectiveness of legal services and to transform how the public accesses the law and legal information.

The fellows, who were selected by the center’s Fellows Committee, recently completed a “Legal Innovation” boot camp led by industry experts at ABA headquarters in Chicago. After boot camp, each fellow will spend between three months to one year working with legal service organizations around the country. The second group of fellows includes four NextGen Fellows, who will spend a year on projects, and two Innovation Fellows, whose fellowships run up to four months.

“We’re excited to welcome these fellows to the Center for Innovation,” ABA President Bob Carlson said. “This group is embedded with some of the most forward-thinking organizations in our profession. We’re thankful for first-time sponsor, the National Center for State Courts, and its steadfast dedication to understanding how our courts function. These fellows and their host organizations will help lawyers, from Wall Street to Main Street, understand how they can leverage process-improvement methods and new technologies to better serve clients and help expand access to legal services for all Americans.”.."

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