This is the story of a traditional law school clinic that has evolved into much more. CHAMPS, the Carolina Health Advocacy Medical–Legal Partnership, is a legal service provider embedded in a healthcare setting. It’s also the field partner for an A2J Lab study evaluating whether legal partnerships can reduce downstream involvement by child welfare agencies in cases potentially due to poverty-related conditions.
The pervasiveness of AI has every industry looking closely at it. But are public perceptions of AI equal across industries? In this “Student Voices” blog, HLS J.D. candidate Strong Ma compares law and medicine, examining the different views of fairness when an algorithm, and not a human, makes a decision.
“Replacing cash bail: Fairer justice or robopocalypse?” This headline from a 2020 California news article encapsulates the rhetoric at the time surrounding Proposition 25, a California referendum to eliminate cash bail and provide judges making pretrial release decisions with a risk assessment instrument.
The association of ending cash bail with algorithmic decision-making embodies a complexity that members of the bail reform movement everywhere can examine in future efforts to bring greater access to justice for pretrial detainees.
What if thousands, perhaps millions, of people could stop their past—their criminal record, that is—from following them in job interviews and housing applications? What if some barriers to record clearing could be improved by policy, and not by an individual’s circumstances? Would that improve uptake in expungement? A 2025 article in the North Dakota Law Review addresses the possibilities by examining the current state of record clearing in Pennsylvania and Kansas and potential policy reforms in both states that would produce the greatest number of eligible records for clearing.
Criminal record clearing has become a prominent policy tool for improving individuals’ employment, housing, and reentry outcomes. However, too often, eligibility does not translate into actual access or successful uptake. But why? A look at the trials and tribulations of the expungement process in Kansas offers insight into the design of criminal law institutions as a whole.
A landmark study on Michigan’s expungement system found that criminal record clearing was linked to low recidivism rates, no compromise to public safety, and better outcomes for the recipients. But what does it say about the process when those promising results are not enough to entice eligible individuals?
Federal regulations impose additional requirements and restrictions on any Institutional Review Board-approved research that involves incarcerated individuals as subjects. These rules are designed to protect prisoners, a population which has too-often throughout history been taken advantage of by researchers. But how do Subpart C’s extra protections work—and do they even make sense?
Conflicting research exists to address whether consumers who “agree” to mandatory arbitration clauses have worse outcomes compared to consumers who are free to litigate in courts. Courts typically assume that by entering a contract mandating arbitration, each party freely bargained for that clause. While there are concerns about how knowingly consumers agree to arbitration clauses, HLS J.D. candidate Rachel Barkin writes about consumer outcomes, based on the dispute resolution process, and potential areas for future research.
The A2J Lab’s Mandy Mobley Li, Assistant Director of Research Innovations, was one of the future-focused visionaries featured in Bonnie D. Graham’s podcast, “Technology Revolution: The Future of Now.” Take a listen to her 2026 predictions for AI in the access-to-justice space.
Life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) is often considered a better alternative to capital punishment. But death sentences carry certain safeguards to minimize error rates including counsel at all stages of the criminal process, federal scrutiny of sentences, appeals at the state level, pro bono firm support, and media attention. And yet, about 40 percent of death sentences in a 22-year time frame were overturned. Without those same safeguards, LWOP would likely have at least similar error rates—if only we knew. HLS student Kristen Arnold argues for evidence-based research to determine whether the absence of counsel and appeals reveal errors worth reforming procedural protections for those sentenced to life without parole.
