A2J Author Nominated for International "Innovating Justice" Award

A2J Author® has been selected as a finalist in the international Hague Institute of Internationalization of Law (HiiL) 2014 Innovating Justice Awards. The software, developed by IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law's Center for Access to Justice and Technology (CAJT) and CALI®, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, is competing against 14 other global innovations in the "Successful Innovations" category. The top three nominees, based on voting, will go on to the final round, with the winner selected in November 2014.

A2J Author® is the first court form automation software designed to be pro se user friendly. This allows non-technical law students, legal aid attorneys, and courthouses to build customer friendly interfaces that help self-represented litigants complete necessary forms. These A2J Guided Interviews® ask questions in plain language and process the information provided by the user to be assembled into a savable and printable document.

A2J Author is the most widely used document automation tool by pro se litigants to address their legal needs. There are over 1000 A2J Guided Interviews that are live on the LawHelp Interactive national server. These 1000 Guided Interviews have helped almost 2.5 million people in less than 10 years.

It is the only free tool available to legal aid attorneys and court staff to automate court forms for people without lawyers. Other software tools and services on the market charge authors to create their automated forms or charge end users to access them. A2J Author is completely free for any non-profit organization to use for non-commercial purposes.

A2J Guided Interviews offer "Just in Time" learning features like pop-up explanations of legal terms, hyperlinks to additional information, videos, and graphics that help the end user (the person without an attorney) fill out the complicated court forms. The method of service delivery is also unique. CAJT and CALI partner with attorneys and court staff at the local level to create customized A2J Guided Interviews. A2J Author provides the software tool and the local legal staff provides the heuristics and legal knowledge to guide those who cannot afford an attorney.

A2J Author is jointly owned by IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI). It is managed by IIT Chicago-Kent's Center for Access to Justice and Technology.

IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, also known as Illinois Tech, a private, technology-focused, research university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, science, architecture, business, design, human sciences, applied technology, and law. The Center for Access to Justice and Technology was established at IIT Chicago-Kent to make justice more accessible to the public by promoting the use of the Internet in the teaching, practice, and public access to the law. The Center conducts research, builds software tools, teaches classes, and supports faculty, staff, and student projects on access to justice and technology.

CALI, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, is a non-profit consortium of law schools whose mission includes promoting "access to justice through the use of computer technology."