JUR 209: Access to Justice and Technology

Winter 2022
Sections 5 and 6 | KHW375 | Mondays 9 AM to 12 PM

Instructor Information
● Instructor Name: Myrna Tulandi
● Office Location: via Zoom
● Office Hours: by appointment, contact via email
● Course Website: https://courses.ryerson.ca/d2l/home/570009
● Email Address: myrna.tulandi@ryerson.ca

Email Policy
In accordance with the Policy on Ryerson Student E-mail Accounts (Policy 157), Ryerson
requires that any electronic communication by students to Ryerson faculty or staff be sent from
their official Ryerson email account. Emails will be responded to within 48 hours of receipt
during working hours from Monday to Friday.

Course Description
In this course, students learn to identify barriers to justice and critically evaluate solutions.
Using a comparative approach, global similarities are identified. Students distil this learning into
a toolbox of approaches which, using an emphasis on accessible technology, they then use to
develop local solutions to make legal services more affordable for individuals and organizations
of limited means.

Course Details

Teaching Methods
You will be expected to use a number of technologies in the course, from Zoom, to flow chart
tools, wireframing tools, and legal technologies. The classes will be conducted in a workshop
style, where there will be a combination of lectures and hands-on exercises.

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Variations within a Course
The course will follow the course outline. You may find that in this section of the course that we
may cover different topics and exercises than the other sections. However, you should expect
that we will cover all of the materials in order for you to complete the final project template.

Course Materials
For required and optional supplementary course readings and media (noted in the table below),
assignment submissions, and other information, please refer to D2L. Furthermore,
announcements will be made on the course D2L and forwarded to each student’s official
Ryerson e-mail account. Please ensure you have enabled notifications. You are responsible for
being aware of course announcements, as they may contain important information related to
the course.

Required Course Text

Margaret Hagan, Law by Design, open source online: <https://lawbydesign.co/>

Recommended Text for Reference

Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (New York: Crown Business, 2011) – available at the reference library

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Course Learning Outcomes

The course involves the following learning objectives:

● Understand the issues involved in using information technology in legal settings:
students will gain an understanding of these issues, which include constraints imposed
by business processes, other information systems, security requirements, privacy laws,
interchange formats, standardized vocabularies, cultural norms, and the like.
● Elucidate the capability of technology to facilitate access to justice: students will be able
to articulate how legal information technology allows individuals who cannot afford
traditional legal services to access information.
● Learn how to brainstorm and prototype new tools: students will develop ideas for new
information technologies using storyboards, wireframing and other techniques.
Students will obtain the ability to identify opportunities for deploying information
technology in legal settings.
● Obtain a critical perspective on access to justice technology: students will be able to
critique access to justice technology. They will come to their own conclusions
(developed through coursework) on what is inherently the domain of human beings and
what is amenable to automation.

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism Detection

Ryerson’s Academic Integrity Policy [Policy 60] applies to all students at the University. The
policy and its procedures are triggered in the event that there is a suspicion that a student has
engaged in a form of academic misconduct. Forms of academic misconduct include: plagiarism;
cheating; misrepresentation of personal identity or performance; and falsifying requests for
Academic Consideration and Accommodation. It is assumed that all examinations and work
submitted for evaluation and course credit will be the product of individual effort, except in the
case of group projects arranged for and approved by the course instructor. Any submission of
work that is not the product of the individual student’s effort, with the exception of group
projects, may constitute academic misconduct. In addition, submitting the same work to more
than one course, without instructor approval, also constitutes academic misconduct.

Turnitin
Turnitin.com is a plagiarism prevention and detection service to which Ryerson subscribes. It is
a tool to assist instructors in determining the similarity between students’ work and the work of

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other students who have submitted papers to the site (at any university), internet sources, and
a wide range of books, journals and other publications. While it does not contain all possible
sources, it gives instructors some assurance that students’ work is their own. No decisions are
made by the service; it generates an “originality report,” which instructors must evaluate to
judge if something is plagiarized.

Students agree by taking this course that their written work will be subject to submission for
textual similarity review to Turnitin.com. Instructors can opt to have student’s papers included
in the Turnitin.com database or not. Use of the Turnitin.com service is subject to the terms-of-
use agreement posted on the Turnitin.com website. Students who do not want their work
submitted to this plagiarism detection service must, by the end of the second week of class,
consult with their instructor to make alternate arrangements.

Even when an instructor has not indicated that a plagiarism detection service will be used, or
when a student has opted out of the plagiarism detection service, if the instructor has reason to
suspect that an individual piece of work has been plagiarized, the instructor is permitted to
submit that work in a non-identifying way to any plagiarism detection service.

Topics and Course Schedule

Week Date Topic Readings

Jan 17 Introduction T.C.W. Farrow et al., Everyday Legal Problems
• Access to justice and the Cost of Justice in Canada: Overview
considerations Report (2016), Canada Forum on Civil Justice,
• Use of technology online: CFJC-FCJC <http://www.cfcj-
in law fcjc.org/sites/default/files/Everyday%20Legal
• Intro to legal %20Problems%20and%20the%20Cost%20of
Week 1 %20Justice%20in%20Canada%20-
design
%20Overview%20Report.pdf>

Recommended

Chapter 0 of: M. Hagen, Law by Design,

online: <https://lawbydesign.co/>

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Week 2 Jan 24 The Problem T.C.W. Farrow et al., Everyday Legal Problems
Statement and the Cost of Justice in Canada: Overview
Report (2016), Canada Forum on Civil Justice,
• Customer needs online: CFJC-FCJC <http://www.cfcj-
and pain points fcjc.org/sites/default/files/Everyday%20Legal
• Secondary %20Problems%20and%20the%20Cost%20of
research and %20Justice%20in%20Canada%20-
primary research %20Overview%20Report.pdf>
• Market research
methodologies Chapters 1 to 3, up to and including Chapter
3, Stage 2 of: M. Hagen, Law by Design,
online: <https://lawbydesign.co/>

Pragmatic Institute, 10 Tips for Getting to

Know Your Buyers and Users (July 2017),
online:
<https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resour
ces/articles/product/10-tips-for-getting-to-
know-your-buyers-and-users/>

Qualtrics, The 8 types of market research:

Definitions, uses and examples, online:
<https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-
management/research/market-research-
types/>

Recommended

A. Currie, Nudging the Paradigm Shift,

Everyday Legal Problems in Canada (2016),
Canada Forum on Civil Justice, online: CFJC-
FCJC <http://cfcj-
fcjc.org/sites/default/files/publications/repor
ts/Nudging%20the%20Paradigm%20Shift%2C
%20Everyday%20Legal%20Problems%20in%2
0Canada%20-%20Ab%20Currie.pdf>

Lessons Eight and Nine of:

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 OECD/Law and Justice Foundation of New
South Wales, Access to justice and the
COVID-19 pandemic (2020), online: OECD
<https://read.oecd-
ilibrary.org/view/?ref=136_136486-
rcd8m6dvng&title=Access-to-justice-and-the-
COVID-19-
pandemic&_ga=2.267642766.1285809917.16
37614592-987114033.1637614592>

A. Salyzyn, Literacy Requirements of Court

Documents: An Underexplored Barrier to
Access to Justice (2017), Ottawa Faculty of
Law Working Paper, online: SSRN
<https://ssrn.com/abstract=2945441>

Jan 31 Value Proposition/ J. Dugan, Design Thinking: Promoting

Project Vision Innovation (August 2013), Pragmatic
Institute, online:
• Purpose of value https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resourc
proposition es/articles/product/innovation-by-design/
• Definition of
market and users B. Henderson, The IFLP Case Study Method
Week 3 (202) (2020), online: Legal Evolution
<https://www.legalevolution.org/2020/09/th
e-iflp-case-study-method-2020/>

S.E. Cruz, Coding for Cultural Competency:

Expanding Access to Justice with Technology
(2020), Tennessee Law Review, online: SSRN
<https://ssrn.com/abstract=3421630>

Feb 7 Personas/Storyboard Chapters 4 and 5 of: M. Hagen, Law by

Design, online: <https://lawbydesign.co/>
Week 4 • User and buyer
personas M. Hagan, A Human-Centered Design
• Storyboards to Approach to Access to Justice: Generating
represent product New Prototypes and Hypotheses for

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 vision Interventions to Make Courts User-Friendly
(2018), Indiana Journal of Law and Social
Equality, online: SSRN
<https://ssrn.com/abstract=3186101>

Feb 14 Framing the Problem S. Blank, Why the Lean Start-Up Changes
Everything (2013), Harvard Business Review,
• Lean Startup online: HBR <https://hbr.org/2013/05/why-
Methodology the-lean-start-up-changes-everything>
• Differences
between market M. Hagan, Participatory Design for Innovation
requirements, in Access to Justice (2019) Daedalus, online:
Week 5 business SSRN <https://ssrn.com/abstract=3377746>
requirements,
M. Hagan, The User Experience of the
and functional
Internet as a Legal Help Service: Defining
requirements,
Standards for the Next Generation of User-
and technical
Friendly Online Legal Services (2017), Virginia
requirements
Journal of Law and Technology, online: SSRN
• User capabilities
<https://ssrn.com/abstract=2942478>
• Process mapping

BREAK

Feb 28 Product Canvas MAKO Design + Invent, Using a Product

Canvas to Create a Better User Experience
*Midterm Pitch (2021), online:
Presentations <https://www.makodesign.com/blog/2021/0
4/07/austin-industrial-design-company-ux-
tips-using-a-product-canvas/>
Week 6
S. Mehta, An MVP Is Not the Smallest
Collection of Features (June 2014), online:
Pragmatic Institute
<https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resour
ces/articles/product/an-mvp-is-not-the-
smallest-collection-of-features/>

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 March 7 Business Process M. Hagan and M. Kim, Design for Dignity and
Diagrams Procedural Justice (2017), Advances in
Intelligent Systems and Computing,
• Review market Proceedings of the Applied Human Factors
requirements, and Ergonomics International Conference,
business 2017, online: SSRN
requirements, <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2994354>
Week 7 and functional
requirements, M. Hagan, The Justice is in the Details:
and technical Evaluating Different Self-Help Designs for
requirements Legal Capability in Traffic Court (2019),
• Purpose of Journal of Open Access to the Law, online:
business process SSRN <https://ssrn.com/abstract=3475124>
diagrams
• Use cases

Mar 14 Tech Scoping G. Vidal, How to Define a Product Scope

(December 2019), online: Clutch
• Cost of solution <https://clutch.co/developers/resources/ho
development w-define-product-scope>
• Concept of
Minimum Viable R. Redman, Dream Big, Go Small, and the
Product Path to a Minimum Lovable Product (October
• Concept of build, 2018), online: Buffer
buy, partner <https://buffer.com/resources/product-
scope/>
Week 8
Review: S. Mehta, An MVP Is Not the
Smallest Collection of Features (June 2014),
online: Pragmatic Institute
<https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resour
ces/articles/product/an-mvp-is-not-the-
smallest-collection-of-features/>

Recommended

D. Henken and N. Watenpaugh, Build, Buy or

Partner? The Challenges of Product

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 Management (March 2019), online: Highland
Team
<http://www.highlandteam.com/blog/show-
blog.php?blog_id=31>

Mar 21 Regulatory Landscape R. Fletcher, Private proof-of-vaccine app

& Other Portpass continues to expose personal data
Considerations even after relaunch and updates (28 October
2021), online: CBC
• Legal landscape <https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/p
(PIPEDA, CASL) ortpass-app-proof-of-vaccination-unsecured-
• Business data-update-1.6229034>
continuity and
disaster recovery M. Hagan, User-Centered Privacy
• AODA Communication Design (2016) Proceedings of
the Symposium on Usable Privacy and
Security (SOUPS) 2016, online: SSRN
<https://ssrn.com/abstract=2981075>
Week 9
T. Scassa et al., Developing Privacy Best
Practices for Direct-to-Public Legal Apps:
Observations and Lessons Learned (2019)
Canadian Journal of Law and Technology,
online: SSRN
<https://ssrn.com/abstract=3464400>

Recommended Reading

J. McGill et al., Mobile and Web-based Legal

Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information
Gaps (2017), Canadian Journal of Law and
Technology, online: SSRN
<https://ssrn.com/abstract=2960207>

Mar 28 Wire Frames Chapter 3, Stages 3 and ff. of: M. Hagen, Law
by Design, online: <https://lawbydesign.co/>
Week 10 • Solution
wireframing
• Prototyping

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 • Tools for
wireframing

April 4 Release to Market T. Tunguz, The product qualified lead (PQL)

(January 2013), online:
• Business <https://tomtunguz.com/the-new-sales-
considerations: hotness-the-product-qualified-lead-pql/>
funding and
stakeholder buy- N. Bonfiglio et al., Improve Your Customer
in, customer Experience With a Product-Led Go-to-Market
adoption, go-to- Strategy (August 2018), online: Pragmatic
market planning, Institute
key performance https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resourc
Week 11 indicators (KPIs) es/articles/product/improve-your-customer-
experience-with-a-product-led-go-to-market-
strategy/>

D. Pierson, Pitch to Win: How to Get Funding

(or Approval) to Build Your Great Idea (May
2018), online: Pragmatic Institute
<https://www.pragmaticinstitute.com/resour
ces/articles/product/pitch-to-win-how-to-
get-funding-or-approval-to-build-your-great-
idea/>

Week 12 Apr 11 Final Presentations

Evaluation
This course is a practical skills development course where you will address an A2J concern with
a legal tech solution. In groups of six persons, you will develop a solution, the related final
project template, a pre-pitch presentation, and a final pitch presentation. You will have an
opportunity to work through the sections of the project template every week in class.

Assessment Weighting Breakdown

Evaluation Component Percentage of Final Grade

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Participation (in-class participation and 20% (15% in-class, 5% group participation)
group participation)

Final Project 60%

Presentation 20% (5% pre-pitch, and 15% final pitch)

Total: 100%

With the exception of the final project and the critical reflection pieces, dates for the
milestones inherent in this process will be discussed in class, and posted on the course website.
The final project template must be submitted by April 4, 2022.

Participation: 20%

You will work in a group for the entirety of the course. As such, your participation assessment
consists of your in-class participation and peer-to-peer evaluation.

15% In-Class Participation

Each week students are required to participate in class discussions based on the weekly
readings. Questions should promote critical discussion and draw links between course topics,
theory and practice. Students that are absent from class or attend only part of the class will not
receive the participation marks for that class (either for questions, discussion, or hands-on
work).

• Substantive contributions to class discussion means participating meaningfully through

asking questions, providing well considered points for discussion, responding to queries
raised by other students, and generally demonstrating that you have read the reading
and are doing some critical thinking around the topic.

The course will involve participating in in-class work and hands-on assignments that give
students practical experience in using and designing legal information technology. If you are not
in attendance in the class, you will not receive the participation marks for that class. Other
parts of your work will be hands-on assignments performed outside of the class and require you
to come to class with the hands-on assignment completed and prepared to discuss your
experiences. For instance, the class may:

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 • experiment with legal process mapping
• build storyboards and wireframes
• experiment with automated document generation tools
• create a business model canvas

5% Peer-to-Peer Evaluation

In order to ensure full participation by all members of a group, you will be asked to provide
confidential peer-to-peer evaluations of your group members using a rubric to be supplied. The
peer-to-peer evaluations are due on April 11, 2022 at 11:59 PM. Failure to submit these on time
will be reflected in your own participation mark.

Final Project: 60%

The major deliverable in the course is a project template for a creative design or prototype
outlining your access to justice solution (e.g., software system, mobile phone application). Final
Project Templates are due on April 4, 2022 at 11:59 PM. Late submissions will be subject to a
10% penalty per day. Final documents should be submitted via D2L or Google Drive.

The project component is intended to stimulate creativity, and thus the design/prototype may
take many different forms. More information on the final assignment will provided in class.

The final project is a group project. It MUST be completed in a group (5-6 students).

Presentations (with Pre-Pitch and Final Pitch) – 20%

Your presentation assessment consists of a midterm mini-pitch and your final pitch. You will be
evaluated individually and as a group.

5% Pre-Pitch

You are expected to prepare and deliver a five-minute group presentation in class on February
28, 2022. It will be a snapshot of your findings and work up to and including that point.

15% Final Pitch

You are expected to prepare and deliver a 10-minute group presentation in class on your final.
Presentations will take place on April 11, 2022 during class time. The presentation represents
15% of your grade.

Further details regarding the pre-pitch and final pitch presentations will be provided in class.

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University Policies

Students are required to adhere to all relevant university policies found in their online course
shell in D2L and/or on the following URL: http://ryerson.ca/senate/course-outline-policies

Important Resources Available at Ryerson

● The Library provides research workshops and individual assistance. If the University is
open, there is a Research Help desk on the second floor of the library, or go to
Workshops.

● Student Learning Support offers group-based and individual help with writing, math,
study skills, and transition support, as well as resources and checklists to support
students as online learners.

● You can submit an Academic Consideration Request when an extenuating circumstance

has occurred that has significantly impacted your ability to fulfill and academic
requirement. You may always visit the Senate website and select the blue radial button
on the top right hand side entitled: Academic Consideration Request (ACR).

● Ryerson COVID-19 Information and Updates for Students summarizes the variety of
resources available to students during the pandemic.

● Familiarize yourself with the tools you will need to use for remote learning. The
Continuity of Learning Guide for students includes guides to completing quizzes or
exams in D2L or Respondus, using D2L Brightspace, joining online meetings or lectures,
and collaborating with the Google Suite.

(December 2021)

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