2015 Equal Justice Conference Proposal
Submitted by: Colleen Ball, Attorney, Wisconsin State Public Defender; Coordinator, Wisconsin State Bar’s Pro Bono Appeals Program
Title: “How to Launch a Pro Bono Appeals Program and Power it (or any program) with Apps!” This will be a two-part CLE program lasting 3 hours. It could fill either a 3-hour slot or two, back-to-back, 1.5-hour slots.
Part I: This panel will address how more than a dozen states around the country have established and operated pro bono appeals programs. No two states do it exactly the same way. Thus, this panel session will begin with an introduction to the pro bono appellate program concept and proceed to three or four 5-minute presentations by representatives from different programs. These representativeswill address (succinctly): (1) how and why their programs were launched, (2) who runs their programs, (3) how their programs line up volunteer lawyers, (4) how their programs identify appeals suitable for the appointment of counsel, and (5) their programs’ 1 or 2 biggest challenges (with an emphasis on IT challenges).
The remaining 40 minutes or sowill be devoted to a moderated panel discussion of the 5 topics just addressed. To ensure that the panel examines these topics from very different angles, the panel will include: (1)a judge from a state that has benefited from a pro bono appeals program; (2) a person who has launched and/or operates a pro bono appeals program; and (3) an attorney whose firm’s lawyers regularly volunteer for a pro bono appellate program.
Moderator: Colleen Ball (Wisconsin)
5-minute presenters:
Cynthia Feathers (New York)
Lisa Jaskol (California)
Jane Ebisch (Colorado)
Mike Truesdale (Texas)
Possible panelists:
Judge category:
___, Texas Supreme Court Supreme Court Justice (invited), or
Judge Daniel Taubman, Colorado Court of Appeals (alternate), or
Nancy Kopp, Wisconsin Supreme Court Commissioner (alternate)
Coordinator category:
Lisa Jaskol (California; willing to be panelist) or
Cynthia Feathers (New York; alternate ) or
Mike Truesdale (Texas; alternate)
Attorney category:
Wisconsin attorney (possibly from Quarles & Brady) or
Texas attorney (to be tapped by Mike Truesdale from Texas)
Part II: Appeals involve a lot of paper: forms, records, transcripts, briefs. Appellate procedure trips up pro se litigants and attorneys alike. Court clerks can’t give “legal advice” to people who call for help. Recruiting, coordinating, and disseminating case information to volunteer attorneys can becumbersome. Tracking deadlines for a crushing caseload feels overwhelming. Locating and communicating with the indigent people in need of your program’s services is challenging. Are there “apps” to solve these and related problems? Can lawyers learn how to build them?
This panel will begin with a short demonstration of the “Due Processr”—a prize-winning app at the ABA’s 2014 inaugural “Hackcess to Justice Competition.”The “Due Processr” determines whether someone is eligible for pro bono counsel or waiver of fees and performs sentence calculations. The panelists react to some of the “biggest challenges” identified during the previous panel session on pro bono appeals programs. They will also be will be given a list of “dream apps” for pro bono programs, and they will discuss: (1) how to frame a viableapp idea; (2) what is involved in building an app; and (3) where to turn for the resources to develop an app.
Moderator:David Colarusso, a lawyer with the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services, who helped develop the “Due Processr.”
Panelists:(1) David Zvenyach (General Counsel at Council of District of Columbia, author of the code that detects hidden changes to U.S. Supreme Court opinions, and co-developer of the “Due Processr.”) and (2) William Li (MIT Doctoral candidate, co-developer of the “Due Processr”) and (3) ___ a representative (invited) from Code for America, a nonprofit that offers “brigades” of coders to solve IT problems in order to make government more accessible to its citizens. Code for America has developed apps like “Promptly,” which texts San Francisco Human Services Agency clients with important information to keep them enrolled in services and “Jail Population Management Dashboard,” which helps judges and other stakeholders understand conditions in their local jails and visualize how their decisions affect programs, facilities, and inmate outcomes.