Cartoon of effect of Zoom court on failure to appear rates

Student Voices: What Effect Does Zoom Court Have on Failure to Appear Rates?

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The COVID-19 pandemic thrust online court into a mainstream alternative to traditional in-person court hearings. Zoom has shown mixed results, both in its ability to capture the needs of a court hearing (including sticky notes passed between attorneys and clients) and its role in reducing failure to appear rates in court. This makes online court a prime candidate for a randomized control trial to test its impact on court appearances.

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Outside Research: Simple Solutions to Courts’ Failure-to-Appear Rates

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Can we do anything about failure to appear in criminal cases? According to Alissa Fishbane, we can, and for once, what we can do is cheap and easy. Her research has shown that low-cost interventions such as redesigning summons and traffic tickets have been highly effective at reducing missed dates, resulting in fewer penalties for defendants, more efficient adjudication, and savings for the justice system as a whole.

Cartoon depicting legal information programs' role in supporting unrepresented noncitizens navigating the U.S. immigration system

Student Voices — Legal Information Programs: A Possible Way to Reduce Harm for Unrepresented Noncitizens in Immigration Proceedings

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Legal information programs aim to support pro se noncitizens navigating the high stakes and extreme inequities of the U.S. system. Given that 63% of all noncitizens and 83% of detained noncitizens proceed without counsel, these programs could act as necessary stopgaps. It is worth delving deeper into the nature of these programs and the evidence that these programs promote access to justice for unrepresented noncitizens navigating the complexities of our immigration system.

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Student Voices: Non-lawyer Legal Services in Agency Immigration Litigation

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Two-thirds of people facing deportation lack legal representation, and 86% of immigrants being detained do not have a lawyer. Without counsel, many will be deported to face persecution or violence – regardless of their legal right to stay. One partial solution may lie in empowering non-lawyers to take a larger role in representing individuals facing deportation.

Cartoon depicting pro bono attorneys getting legal information and advice from AI

A2J Lab Project in Development: AI Assistance in Provision of Legal Information & Advice 

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The OpenJustice project, now just a year since inception, has gained interest due in part to its hot topic: combining access to justice and artificial intelligence. The project addresses whether AI allows volunteer pro bono attorneys and staff to provide legal information and advice (without a traditional attorney-client relationship) more effectively and efficiently than status quo operations, which do not use AI assistance.

Cartoon reflecting whether legal services can help families avoid child welfare involvement

A2J Lab Study in the Field: Could Holistic Legal Services Help Families Avoid the Child Welfare System?

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Conducting randomized control trials in the law can be a decade-long (or longer) process. Our “Child Welfare” project evaluates whether families with children who face poverty-related legal and social challenges can avoid unnecessary entries into the child welfare system with the assistance of holistic legal services – a combination of social worker services and a traditional attorney-client relationship. The study is five years in the making and still just half-way through completion, but we’re sharing its origin and process anyway.

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We’ve launched the Proof Over Precedent podcast

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Come take a listen to Episode 0: Get to Know Us Again. This is an intro episode, but each week we’ll bring you updates on RCTs we’re working on in the field or have completed, ethics around RCTs, interesting people we work with both at the lab and in the field, and study successes and failures.

A2J staff 2025

Get to know us again

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We’d like to reintroduce ourselves. We’re the Access to Justice (A2J) Lab, a research entity within Harvard Law School, that’s been around since 2016, courtesy of a starter grant from Arnold Ventures (nèe the Laura and John Arnold Foundation). Our mission is to transform law into an evidence-based field. That transformation will likely take decades, so we’re focused on starting a movement.

Renee Danser discusses a randomized control study of the Toledo Municipal Court's Community Diversion Program

Study of Community Diversion Program Launches

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The Access to Justice Lab has partnered with the Toledo Municipal Court to conduct a randomized control study of the Court’s Community Diversion Program. This randomized control study, supported by Arnold Ventures, is considered the gold standard in empirical research.

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