Mobile technologies are changing the way that governments deliver services. Whether it’s coordinating local medical treatment or crowdsourcing disaster assistance, innovators everywhere are harnessing the power of mobile phones to reach entire populations who live outside the traditional reach of their governments.  As the FrontlineSMS community demonstrates, many of the barriers to service delivery are based on communication problems, not the services themselves.  The law is no different.

Legal systems, perhaps more than any other government service, rely on in-depth communication.  It makes sense, then, that a lot of the challenges involved in legal systems are about communication, as opposed to the legal system itself.  At the same time, the UN estimates that there are (currently) 5 billion active mobile phones in the world, making them the single most popular communication platform ever. SMS technology, with its unparalleled ability to reach citizens, can be used to coordinate and improve the links between formal and informal dispute resolution providers.

Some countries go even further, adopting alternative justice models.  For example, India has created mobile courts to bring services to the people.  Other places, like Colombia (with some help), have set up Justice Houses, which are one-stop shops, where people can take care of all their legal needs at once.  All of these systems have had unique successes and challenges in reaching the “last mile.”

FrontlineSMS:Legal uses mobile technologies to lower the barriers to communication between legal systems and the people they serve.  So, for India’s mobile court system, for example, FrontlineSMS:Legal could enable people to learn when the court was going to be in their community, file a claim, or schedule a hearing. Additionally, after the court left town, court administrators would have a digital case record that they could use to follow-up with people whose claims weren’t able to be resolved in one visit.

In Colombia’s case, FrontlineSMS:Legal could work with Community Conciliators and local leaders to use SMS as a referral system for cases that require the attention of the formal legal system.  Additionally, FrontlineSMS:Legal can use these referrals to begin digital case records that can be forwarded to more than one service provider, such as social workers, lawyers, and hospitals, for people with multiple needs.  Lawyers can also use FrontlineSMS:Legal products to stay in touch with clients over SMS, informing them of important events, such as hearings, depositions, or filing deadlines.

In addition to this core platform, FrontlineSMS:Legal is developing additional plug-ins that will add value to local organizations working to provide legal services. FrontlineSMS:Legal products offer several key functionalities:

• FrontlineSMS:Legal users are able to enter data into digitized legal forms from remote locations via mobile phones. These digital legal records are stored centrally, searchable by identifying information, and aggregated to display trends.

• FrontlineSMS:Legal enables easy two-way distribution of information such as court information, hearing scheduling notifications, reminders, referrals, and intake forms wherever there is a mobile phone signal.

• FrontlineSMS:Legal develops customized case management systems that facilitate case and client management for legal service providers, automating workflows, such as client intake, form completion, elements of client maintenance, and, where necessary, information transfer.

Legal systems are complicated and we don’t think that SMS can ever replace the extremely important person-to-person communication that makes them work.  We do believe, however, that the world’s most popular communication platform will play an important role in reaching the 4 billion people that the law doesn’t.  FrontlineSMS:Legal can help. 

Project Details

Project url: 

http://legal.frontlinesms.com

Project image: 

Supporting organization: 

The Kiwanja Foundation

Location