Legal experts joined the latest episode of Legal Services Corporation's (LSC) "Talk Justice" podcast to consider how events of 2021 shaped access to justice issues, the continued adoption of new legal technologies and legal regulatory reform. Jason Tashea, a member of LSC's Emerging Leaders Council, hosted the discussion with Bob Ambrogi, a lawyer and legal journalist who founded the award-winning blog LawSites; Zac DeMeola, director of legal education and the legal profession at the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System; and LSC President Ronald S. Flagg.
While 2020 brought about swift changes to court proceedings and legal aid practices that many believed were long overdue, the pandemic has outlasted original expectations, putting these new digital practices to the true test of time.
"I was hugely optimistic at the end of 2020, and in 2021 I'm just feeling a little bit like 2021 has not seen the kind of progress or adaptation around these new technologies that I thought we might be seeing at this point," Ambrogi said.
He cited the recent Pew report that found that while increased integration of legal technology in many cases improved participation in court proceedings and made them more efficient, it also disproportionately benefited those who had lawyers and further disadvantaged those who did not.
Flagg explained that as the initial excitement around new technology wanes, the legal community is wrestling with the realization that one size does not fit all.
"Hopefully we're going to get past the pandemic, and then the question will be: where is technology the answer?" he said. "Those answers are not as satisfactory or clear-cut as they were when there was really no choice but to go forward remotely."
On the topic of regulatory reform, DeMeola said meaningful progress is underway. He suggested that recent rapid adaptations to courts and legal service providers have demonstrated that change is possible.
"Regulatory reform prior to the pandemic was going to be disruptive," he said. "The pandemic put us all in an environment of disruption and I don't think that disruption is necessarily normalized but the possibility of change is far less distant."
Other highlights of the year include the Biden administration's reinstitution of the Office of Access to Justice at the Department of Justice, and renewed discussions in the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable. Flagg is hopeful that this will bring increased awareness and opportunities for legal aid funding in the new year.
Talk Justice episodes are available online at www.lsc.gov/media/podcasts and on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple and other popular podcast apps. The podcast is sponsored by LSC's Leaders Council.
Future episodes of Talk Justice will discuss the issues facing rural Americans who often reside in "legal deserts," and review the major themes that arose during LSC's Innovations in Technology Conference.
