New on VoxPopuLII: McDonald on Law in the Last-Mile: The Potential of Mobile Integration into Legal Services

[Rob Richards]

Sean Martin McDonald, JD, MA, of FrontlineSMS and FrontlineSMS:Legal has posted Law in the Last-Mile: The Potential of Mobile Integration into Legal Services, on the VoxPopuLII blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In this post, Mr. McDonald describes the obstacles preventing many people in developing countries from accessing legal services. He then argues that new technologies, based on text messaging via mobile phones, can overcome many of these obstacles and substantially improve access to justice for low-income persons. He describes one such technology, FrontlineSMS:Legal, which uses text messaging to improve legal client intake and referral, client and case management, and caseload allocation functions for organizations offering legal services to individuals in developing nations.

This post should be of interest to the access-to-justice community, the information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) community, developers of mobile technology, and the legal technology community.