Law School awarded funds for technological project to improve access to Chilean civil justice system
The objective of the project “The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Access to Civil Justice in Chile: Learning from the Covid-19 Pandemic” of the Law School of the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI), which was awarded funds from the Tinker Foundation, a U.S. entity that grants financing to projects in Latin America, is to provide public policy recommendations for the use of information technologies in the judicial system to expand access to civil justice in Chile. The initiative, led by Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) Law School professor Ricardo Lillo, will last 30 months and will use comparative evidence from many of the changes implemented as a result of the pandemic.
“The focus of the project is to evaluate this access in a way that respects the right to due process of the end users of the civil justice system and especially vulnerable groups of the population and the relationship with the potential of technology, also taking into account the risks that must be considered for an effective protection of these rights. These recommendations will be aimed at supporting the civil justice reform movement, providing guidelines for various relevant actors in judicial reform, generating alliances with the Ministry of Justice, the Judiciary, Parliament, among others,” explained Professor Lillo.
It should be recalled that due to the health situation caused by covid and the periods of confinement, the management and the judicial service faced a series of challenges that involved the acceleration of the use of technologies in the midst of the pandemic. At the same time, this reality brought to light longer-standing challenges in Chile, such as the urgent need to expand access and bridge the gap between legal needs and judicial service provision. The debate on the importance of the crossover between technology and justice, the role of technological tools such as artificial intelligence in the administration of justice and under what standards they can be used was also reopened.
“In the medium term, it is expected that this project will also allow us to work from a multidisciplinary approach in the development of tools that will help us achieve the objectives set, integrating various disciplines related to legal and technological design,” said the academic from the School of Law.
As for the stages of the project, during the first year of its execution, a series of studies will be carried out focused on international standards in the field of e-justice, that is, the use of technological tools in the justice system. To this end,” said Professor Lillo, “valuable international experiences will be compiled, from the point of view of the use of technology to expand access to justice and in the use and design of tools focused on the end user. During the second year, we will focus on Chilean civil justice to understand what technological tools have been implemented and what impact they have had from the point of view of the right of access to justice. Finally, we are considering various dissemination and networking activities with national and international institutions, both to generate greater impact with our findings and to strengthen joint work in these matters”.
Regarding the expected results, Ricardo Lillo added that together with the project team, which will include different faculties of the UAI and the Center for Research in Law and Society (CIDS), they will prepare public policy recommendations in the form of reports with the results of the project “which we hope will be useful in decision-making on the implementation of information and communications technologies in the justice system. Internally, the project seeks to strengthen our capacities with a view to the implementation of a Legal Design Lab, following the model of other foreign universities, which will serve as a space for the study and creation of proposals for technological tools to expand access to civil justice for the population”.
The Tinker Foundation aims to promote the development of an equitable, sustainable and productive society in Latin America by supporting civil society organizations, including non-profit entities, research institutes and universities, to address the region’s main challenges. Funded organizations use the Foundation’s resources to test promising concepts, extend the impact of proven models, and bring stakeholders together to solve problems in novel ways.
