The Access to Justice "Tripod".

• Date: 01 November 2021
• Author: Tanner, Michael G.

Across the country, including here in Florida, access to justice continues to be a focus of state bars, legal academics, and the courts. But it's often difficult to follow the discussions, in part because of the wide variety of current and proposed solutions to addressing the challenge of making legal services more available to our citizens.

If you're like me, you appreciate a good metaphor as a useful tool for conceptualizing ideas. So, think about the access to justice challenge as a tripod. A tripod has three legs, each of which carries a part of the load.

One "leg" of the access to justice tripod is the technology leg. This includes efforts to enable lawyers to better use technology, arguably enabling lawyers to lower the cost of their services to clients. The many online practice management platforms and tools to assist with remote depositions and virtual court proceedings now available are examples of this. Another aspect of the technology leg are the efforts to provide greater automation to our court...