Announcing Free Law Project's Justice Initiatives Division

At Free Law Project, our mission has always been to make the legal system more fair and accessible through technology, data, and advocacy.

Over the past few years, our team has taken on new roles that go beyond publishing data and building research tools. We've been talking with courts, collaborating with justice system stakeholders, and imagining what the future of access to justice could look like if the right technology existed to support it.

To bring this work into focus, we're excited to announce the creation of a new division at Free Law Project: Justice Initiatives.

Justice Initiatives brings together our advocacy, our partnerships with courts and justice system leaders, and our commitment to building technology that can improve how people experience the legal system. By combining these threads into a single division, we can be more deliberate about shaping the tools and conversations that will define the next chapter of access to justice.

Our focus is both local and national. Free Law Project has been a leading voice in advocacy efforts such as neutral legal citations, which make the law easier to find and cite, and the Open Courts Act, which would modernize PACER and make federal court records freely available online. These advocacy examples reflect the same values at the heart of the Justice Initiatives division: openness, accessibility, and fairness in how the legal system is structured and experienced. We will continue to push forward these initiatives as we incorporate new ones.

I'm honored to serve as the inaugural Director of Justice Initiatives. In this role, I'll be leading our outreach to courts and justice system partners, continuing to advocate for open and equitable legal data, and guiding the development of technology that directly supports people navigating the courts.

The first project under the Justice Initiatives umbrella is the Litigant Portal. This ambitious new tool is designed to support self-represented litigants. Every year, millions of people go to court without a lawyer. They are expected to understand complex legal processes, locate and complete the right forms, and file them with the court—tasks that are daunting even for trained professionals. The Litigant Portal is designed to meet this challenge head-on.

The Litigant Portal is a web-based platform that helps self-represented litigants understand and manage their interactions with the court. It combines:

• Plain language explanations of court procedures, legal rights and remedies, and next steps, tailored for the jurisdiction and the self-represented litigant.
• Guided form filling assistance, so litigants can complete the required paperwork through step-by-step questions, instead of wrestling with dense legal forms.
• Court integration, enabling electronic filing directly from the Litigant Portal in jurisdictions that partner with us.
• Reminders sent via text or email, about court dates, follow ups needed, or next steps to ensure that self-represented litigants are as prepared as possible to tackle their day in court.

By bringing these features together in one place, the Litigant Portal represents a new way of thinking about legal technology: not as a set of disconnected tools, but as a unified pathway that lowers barriers, reduces mistakes, and builds confidence for people navigating the system alone. Courts too benefit from clearer filings, fewer errors, better prepared litigants, and a reduced strain on frontline clerks and staff.

And the Litigant Portal is just the beginning. Justice Initiatives will be a home for projects that push the boundaries of what's possible in justice tech and legal data. Whether that means working with courts to expand eFiling, advocating for more open and interoperable systems, or prototyping new solutions for persistent access to justice challenges, this division will be a place where we put ideas into action.

We're looking forward to sharing more about our progress in the months ahead. If you're a court leader, legal aid advocate, or technologist who wants to collaborate, I'd love to hear from you (Jessica@free.law). Together, we can reimagine how technology serves people in the justice system.