Law without the legalese

The problem

For most of us, navigating the legal system is impossible without help from a qualified solicitor. This, combined with cuts in legal aid, means more and more people are turning to the RCJ Advice Bureau for help.

RCJ Advice Bureau has access to a limited number of pro-bono solicitor hours. The complexity of court forms means otherwise straightforward civil cases such as divorce consume much of this time.

RCJ decided to create an online tool to solve this problem, and turned to Electric Putty for help. Electric Putty in turn hired me.

The solution

Working with RCJ Advice Bureau, Electric Putty walked through the entire divorce process. They removed the jargon and compiled a series of simple questions that any layperson can answer.

I then created a web application that enables clients to answer these questions. The application supports conditional logic based on previous answers, further reducing the number of questions a client must answer.

At any point in the process, a client can request feedback from a qualified solicitor. Solicitors log in to the application and review feedback requests. If there is a problem, they can attach comments and guidance to the question.

Once everything is approved, we generate the court-ready legal documents as PDFs.