SESSION FOUR – Access to Data as Access to Justice

This final session will focus in on a concern that is gaining momentum among civil justice experts: that relatively few actors within the legal system have privileged access to the data necessary to develop and refine effective legal tech tools. Put more concretely, high data costs and the failure of federal and state judicial administrators to make court data available in bulk means that large, corporate-facing tech companies and defense-side BigLaw firms—and typically not plaintiff-side firms, access-to-justice groups, or civil justice institutions—have the data and technical know-how necessary to make effective use of potent new analytics. This session will educate actors within the system—from judges to advisory committee members—about the challenges of access to court data and its uses and abuses and consider innovative new ways to expand access to court data while protecting privacy interests.