Talk Justice, an LSC Podcast: Creating Legal Access Points in Rural Louisiana

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Carl Rauscher
Director of Communications and Media Relations           
rauscherc@lsc.gov 
202-295-1615            

WASHINGTON – Founder and Executive Director of Lagniappe Law Lab, Amanda Brown, talks about her research on the justice gap in Louisiana and creating legal access points on the latest episode of LSC’s “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. Talk Justice Co-host Cat Moon, who serves as director of innovation at Vanderbilt University’s Law School, interviews Brown about the project’s origins and outcomes.  

A graduate of the University of Louisiana Loyola Law School, Brown began her career as a legal aid attorney with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. She served as a Microsoft NextGen Fellow with the American Bar Association in 2017, and then joined the Louisiana Bar Foundation as a Legal Technology Consultant prior to founding the Lagniappe Law Lab.  

“I really saw the power of technology and design and its ability to address or at least support all the work going on to address the access to justice gap,” says Brown.  

To understand the gaps in Louisiana’s justice system, Brown’s team began by launching a geographic information systems research project to map people’s access not only to courts, but to resources like transportation and internet.  

“It’s a rural divide issue, and I think we all as a nation recognize that once we started dealing with the impacts of COVID, [we saw] how geography plays into people’s ability to have meaningful access to services,” she says. “Thirty-three percent of Louisianans are potentially eligible for legal aid, but don’t have meaningful access anywhere in their community, so that number is 600,000 people that we’re really not effectively able to serve.” 

The implementation of this research took shape in the Access Points project, which has two parts: an online legal navigator database, and physical booths where Louisianans can access computers, educational materials and self-help forms for pro se litigants. 

In developing these tools, Brown prioritized community partnerships and human-centered design. The Access Points project engages with local libraries, social service agencies and community action groups to inform the needs of their local communities and house the booths. By placing the legal resource booths in public spaces, Brown realized they could also serve as outreach.  

“In addition to the technology that we outfitted it with that really simplifies the activities that we wanted people to be able to accomplish in the booth itself, we also thought outwardly about how people experience and interact with that really intriguing booth—we looked at this as an opportunity to create some type of lead generator to help people get their feet wet,” says Brown.   

Talk Justice episodes are available online and on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple, and other popular podcast apps. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Counsel. 

The next episode of the podcast will highlight efforts to promote the use of plain language in court systems.