Chap 9. Making a Racism Reporting Tool: A legal design case study

This chapter describes a project by student volunteers to build a racism reporting tool for a local charity, The Monitoring Group (TMG). It grew out of a final year module on Law and Technology, which we have been running for Law students at London South Bank University since 2018/2019. The 20 CAT, one semester, Level 6 module runs in parallel with a Computing Sciences final year module called ICT Project Management in Practice and the students are taught and assessed together.
The modules aim to introduce students to the increasing impact of technology on the professions and professional careers, particularly in the field of legal services, and to help them develop and demonstrate new core skills that are likely to be in demand from employers. In the first few weeks, we explore and discuss LawTech, Legal Design and Project Management. Students engage in a short design project rethinking how to present social media contracts to users. They then work in multi-disciplinary teams to design a digital Access to Justice resource for a real client. Clients include members of our Legal Advice Clinic team and local lawyers, charities and organisations. Students are assessed by an individual piece of self-reflection (Coursework 1 – Careers, Skills & Personal Development Planning) and a group work report (Coursework 2 – which includes a recorded demonstration of the working prototype of their proposed resource).
It has always been our ambition to see potentially viable prototypes taken on and developed for use in the local community. The Law and Technology module is too short for this to be a realistic outcome. The volunteer project for TMG was our first attempt to realise our goal. In the long run, we hope to establish a LawTech clinic to create further opportunities for our students and support for local access to justice initiatives.