Justice Services
Innovation is needed in the justice sector. What services are solving justice problems of people? Find out more about data on justice innovations.
The Gamechangers
The 7 most promising categories of justice innovations, that have the potential to increase access to justice for millions of people around the world.
Explore Countries
Find out how people in different countries around the world experience justice. What are the most serious problems people face? How are problems being resolved? Find out the answers to these and more.
Problems
Find out how specific justice problems impact people, how their justice journeys look like, and more.
Home Justice services
I grew up in an unequal society. Early on in my life, I saw the justice systems failing to address problems of the people. I want to solve justice problems of people. I think the best way to do that is by building innovative tools people want to use.
To solve people´s problems at scale, I want to build a platform that is scalable with a proven business model. I have a strong team with me which will execute the idea and turn that into a reality to create a better future.
Do you have any examples I could learn from?
It is a big responsibility to be a court leader. My work has a major impact on the lives of people.
Our court procedures have become too complex. We work hard, but our organisation struggles to provide timely and effective solutions to people in need of justice.
I believe that our courts should embrace innovation. We need newer ways to organise the delivery of solutions to people. This will also make our courts better.
How can I learn more about innovations that I can adopt in my court?
I am ambitious and goal oriented. I want to urgently solve justice problems of the people. I want to move quickly and need answers on how I can reach big impact numbers.
First I want to know if I am on the right track with my justice innovation? Are there any best practices I can look at?
Secondly, I want to learn about good business models. And yes, knowing about other innovators working on similar services elsewhere is always helpful.
As a court leader, my primary task is to efficiently solve the cases people bring to court. Many people solve their conflicts out of court, knowing that we are there. If they get stuck in finding solutions, they should have quick access to my court.
We cannot solve every conflict with a judgment. I want to learn how my court can assist people to solve justice problems by themselves. This requires rethinking our organisation. What innovations can I adopt that have worked in other courts and tribunals?
And oh, I see a fellow traveler with me - the innovator!
With over a decade of experience of supporting justice innovations from all over the world, HiiL has gathered significant insights into the kind of innovations that can become gamechangers in access to justice. A gamechanger is a justice innovation with a strong potential to solve legal problems fairly can deliver effective treatments consistently, is financially sustainable and is scalable as a service. A gamechanger should easily resolve the needs of over 80 percent of the people experiencing a particular justice problem. It makes justice accessible and affordable for people.
By identifying these categories of gamechanging innovations, HiiL wants to promote successful justice services. Focus on gamechangers will help innovators to design innovations that have the potential to deliver effective and sustainable justice services. The discussion will help policymakers to channel funds into viable innovations and formulate regulations in which these gamechangers can thrive. In the below section, we invite you to explore the key characteristics of 7 categories of game-changing innovative justice services.
Justice services can take shape of a privately run enterprise, or processes governed by the court system. Many other government services are also relevant: ombudsmen, tribunals or other government agencies.
To be user friendly, justice services need to be sustainable as well as scalable in their approach and simple in execution. Successful justice services need to be led by strong team.
In courts, many judges are doing pilots of innovative justice services. Teams of motivated individuals try to improve access to justice through startups. The reality is that many of them do not scale, however. There are a lot of lessons to be learnt from these pilots and startups. These people know what works and what does not.
Key ingredients for a successful justice innovation are:
In collaboration with the German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH (GIZ), HiiL developed a research under the title “Use of technologies in judicial reform and access to justice cooperation” project. As part of this research, we create an international and comparative overview of justice innovations. We study them from a variety of perspectives. This includes analysis of different digital tools,evaluating them from the lens of business models and governance structures. The map below shows the overview of the innovations studied.
The following charts show the data collected from 150 public and private justice innovations from across 68 countries.
To select these 150 innovations, we reached out to 50 international experts and asked them to share their recommended justice initiatives from their own geographies. In addition to this, we took into account high impact innovations mentioned in reputed online repositories, donor reports, members of legaltech communities as well as from the cohorts of the HiiL Justice Accelerator.
We now shift our attention to innovations in the formal justice sector. In almost every country, new justice services are being developed by courts and governments. The table shows a number of examples. In some cases, organisations champion one or more of these initiatives internationally (see links). HiiL research on this is ongoing and the first results are expected in Q1 2021.
Type of Service | In pilot phase | Dormant | Scaling up | Implemented at scale |
---|---|---|---|---|
Family courts with holistic approach
| US | |||
Judicial facilitators in villages (Programa Interamericano de Facilitadores Judiciales)
| Paraguay | Nicaragua | ||
Community paralegal programs (Namati)
| Sierra Leone, Kenya, Myanmar, USA, India, Mozambique | |||
Justices of the peace (Wikipedia) | Australia, India | United Kingdom | ||
Houses of justice | Colombia, France | |||
Employment mediation and tribunals | Sri Lanka, | UK, USA | ||
Mandatory mediation | Germany, Italy | Canada | Switzerland | |
Problem solving courts (Centre for Justice Innovation)
| NL |
US, Australia
| Ukraine | |
Land courts |
Hongkong, Philippines, USA
| Mali | South Africa, Australia | |
Village courts | Sierra Leone | Bangladesh, India, Rwanda, Uganda | ||
One stop courts combining information, facilitation and adjudication | Canada (BC) | |||
Consumer ombudsman | India | UK, Australia, South Africa | ||
No fault compensation fund personal | New Zealand |
Since the launch of its Innovating Justice Challenge in 2011, HiiL has come across hundreds of justice innovations from all across the world. Out of them, HiiL has supported 150+ innovations in the Justice Accelerator Programme. This gives an impression of what is happening in the field.
The Justice Accelerator is HiiL’s innovation programme that funds, trains and scales a cohort of justice startups each year.
The Justice Dashboard is powered by HiiL. We deliver user-friendly justice. For information about our work, please visit www.hiil.org
The Hague Institute for
Innovation of Law
Tel: +31 70 762 0700
E-mail: info@hiil.org