[New Feature]: Build out a probono module for the Litigant Portal or as a standalone Justice Initiatives tool

[JessicaFrank]

Probono Module Added to Litigant Portal or Probono Tool Developed by the Justice Initiatives Division

What is the Feature?

Idea came from a discussion Mike had on social media today.

"Pro-bono classifieds" Some district courts have emails that go around asking their pro bono panel attorneys to pick up cases. The suggestion was to create a place where litigants could post a brief description of their case and why it would be a candidate for pro bono representation.

The listings would be searchable and also categorized by type of litigation for the attorneys.

What Problem Might it Solve?

Attorneys who are willing to take up pro bono cases, but don't have the time to go look for them or vet them. This would give them 1 place to search. Also gives litigants the chance to present their case to potential attorneys to take on pro bono. Convenience for the attorneys and exposure for the litigants.

Technical Requirements

• How hard is it to make, subjectively? Seems like a medium hard to make. The hard isn't in setting up the technology though. It'll be in creating the community around the "classifieds" - people willing to post their legal problems and then attorneys willing to actually take them. We'll also need to create a safe space for posting this (people should share relevant info in a guided interview manner, but not too free form to allow them to share too much or too much PII).
• Best guess, how long would it take to make, roughly? a couple months
• What would it require that we do technically? Host a website, create a webform for adding new litigant posts, add AI indexing/case type sorting (using knowledge base from Litigant Portal), create a way to display the posts, user account management for verifying licensed attorney status (ARDC API for verifying if someone is actually an attorney before allowing them to see/comment/claim a litigant "case"), ability to "claim" a "classified" by the attorney, some method for follow up to ensure the litigant's classified wasn't claimed and then never acted upon, ability to delete a "classified" by us + litigant; ability to gather user stories of how this was successful/helpful; advertising

Existing Systems or Alternatives?

Is this niche already being filled? If so, by whom? How is ours different?

Maybe Probono.net or Paladin.

Any Additional Information?

-Bluesky discussion Mike had 12/2/25

[mlissner]

Three thoughts, thanks for writing this up:

• Having monitoring/alerts would be useful so that you can watch for cases you care about.

• This invokes the two-party problem, which is really, really hard to fix. The whole thing fails if you don't have enough lawyers (those seeking help never get it), or enough litigants (lawyers would come looking, give up, and never return).

  Most systems with this problem have a way of putting their thumb on the scale. For example, Uber has surge pricing to dissuade people from using their network when there aren't enough drivers; dating websites make fake women (I kid?), etc.

  Getting both sides using this system is the key, and the hard part all rolled into one. The tech is easy, the matchmaking is hard.

• Speaking of matchmaking, now that I'm thinking of dating websites, it occurs to me that there's probably some other lessons to learn there. E.g., if we know the cases somebody has done in the past, we can probably tell them "here's one you would be good at."

[akivamcohen]

You also want space for the litigant to link their docket and upload pleadings, so that an attorney considering the case could review the actual filings

[mlissner]

That's a good call. I didn't imagine most folks would already have a case filed, but we would want to support that as well as the ability to upload anything that's not filed yet (and maybe summarize both with AI???)

[akivamcohen]

That's a good call. I didn't imagine most folks would already have a case filed, but we would want to support that as well as the ability to upload anything that's not filed yet (and maybe summarize both with AI???)

I think it's likely that more will have a filed case than not

[JessicaFrank]

The uploading of pleadings gives me pause for two reasons - 1. PII - who knows what potentially sensitive documents could be uploaded by a person desperate for an attorney. 2. The security aspect on our side of allowing anyone in the world to upload to our site.