The Document Assembly Line, the LIT Lab’s platform for building self-help legal tools, began as a solution to a pandemic problem: how to help people get access to court services when courthouses are closed. When courthouses are closed, so are self-help clinics and filing windows, making it harder to complete and file court forms.
The Document Assembly Line was the LIT Lab’s solution.
Where it Started
We gathered 200+ people from around the world to build online guided interviews to help people complete and file court forms without going to a courthouse. We used the free and open-source Docassemble software, and the LIT Lab also developed software of its own, including a customizable online interview portal, extensions for Docassemble, and an open-source e-filing service provider.
The Document Assembly Line helped preserve access to courts during the pandemic, but the problem didn’t go away when the pandemic ended. Sometimes people still need access to court services when courthouses are closed. Sometimes people can’t get to the courthouse. And many people struggle to fill out court forms correctly. So the Document Assembly Line didn’t go away, either.
But the Document Assembly Line has evolved between then and now.
The Document Assembly Line Now
The Document Assembly Line is a system for building expert systems—online guided interviews for self-represented litigants to complete and file court forms and other documents. The Document Assembly Line speeds up the interview-building process with shared tools and standardized components.
During the pandemic the challenge was to build interviews with hundreds of volunteers with varying technological abilities and time commitments. Now the challenge is a bit different: to train and support committed interview builders at courts, legal aid organizations, and students in the LIT Clinic. But our goal for the Document Assembly Line remains the same. We are still helping courts and orgs build the digital infrastructure of the court system.
Online guided interview portals like CourtFormsOnline: MassAccess, Missouri Tenant Help, and Illinois Legal Aid Online are critical digital infrastructure. They are a key component to courts’ user interface.
And we strongly believe digital infrastructure should be free and open-source software—just like the infrastructure of the internet. We don’t think the court system’s user interface should be subject to vendor lock-in. That’s why the Document Assembly Line is free and open-source.
Overview of the Document Assembly Line
The Document Assembly Line is built around guided interviews that are built with Docassemble. Docassemble itself is free, open-source software developed and maintained by Jonathan Pyle, a lawyer and software developer at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. The Document Assembly Line adds:
- CourtFormsOnline, a user-friendly, mobile-first, customizable online portal website for Docassemble interviews.
- Assembly Line Software, a collection of extensions for Docassemble that add a library of pre-built and pre-translated questions, automated testing, form stats, the Weaver, a Docassemble server dashboard, and more.
- E-filing, with a free and open-source e-filing service provider (EFSP) that enables people to e-file completed forms directly to established e-filing systems, including Tyler eFile & Serve.
- Community support, meetings, workshops, and an online forum for sharing knowledge and troubleshooting problems, plus training, documentation, and other resources.
That last part—community—is what makes the Document Assembly Line fundamentally different. If one option is to pay a vendor to build an online guided interview portal for your jurisdiction and another option is to do it yourself, the Document Assembly Line offers a third option: build it with help from a community. That’s how we help courts and legal aid organizations build their internal capacity to create and maintain online guided interviews.
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How the Document Assembly Line is Funded
Since the Document Assembly Line is free and open source, anyone can use the software and tools and join the community for help building interviews, setting up portals, maintaining Docassemble servers, etc.
Of course, it takes time and money to develop software, maintain servers, and support the community. For the initial work of building the Document Assembly Line, Suffolk University received a Pew grant and a gift from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Our current work is funded by a grant from the State Justice Institute and a funded partnership with the Massachusetts Trial Court.
But our long-term goal is to make the Document Assembly Line a sustainable project by securing ongoing funding from courts that use it. The Massachusetts Trial Court is our first funded partnership, and we are actively seeking out additional courts and legal aid organizations to partner with and secure the future of the Document Assembly Line!
(Interested? Email us!)
What We Are Working on Now
Besides exploring new funded partnerships, here are some of the things we are working on now:
- Actively developing the core Document Assembly Line components based on community feedback.
- Planning to roll out a new version of CourtFormsOnline with an improved user experience and search-friendly site structure.
- Hiring a full-time developer to work on e-filing.
- Creating a training plan for new interview builders.
- Hosting a monthly workshop series for ask-an-expert-style Q&As.
- Updating and expanding the documentation website’s training materials, templates, and best practices.
- Creating a development roadmap that incorporates community input.
And we are continuing to host weekly meetings for the community of interview builders to share information and troubleshoot issues. And our online forum is always open for asynchronous troubleshooting. Plus, the students in the LIT Clinic are working on interviews with the Massachusetts Trial Court and other Document Assembly Line projects.
How to Get Involved
If you want to start building your own online guided interviews, use the Document Assembly Line website to get started, and email us to join the community!
If you are with a court or legal aid organization and are interested in building guided interviews with Docassemble, email us and let’s talk more!