Improving Access to Justice for the Average Singaporean
The Judiciary’s Office of Transformation and Innovation and SMU’s Pro Bono Centre both collaborated with Asst Prof Lim How Khang's students on two projects, focussing on improving access-to-justice for the average Singaporean using digital tools.
The first project, Virtual Legal Clinic, involved developing a prototype platform for legal clinics to operate more efficiently. The prototype was designed to allow volunteer lawyers to provide legal advice or assistance to persons online at pre-scheduled time slots. Integration with SingPass to verify the applicant's identity, means testing and a triaging process to match the applicants with volunteer lawyers were considered and tested by the students.
The second project, Probate Helpers, sought to reduce the friction encountered when lay persons seek to file court documents to apply for a Grant of Probate (a court order to distribute a deceased person’s assets according to his or her will). The current process involves filling up multiple forms and repeat physical attendances at the filing service bureau. The students produced a prototype that presents an intuitive and user-friendly online questionnaire, avoiding the reliance on court forms and ‘legalese’ that can be difficult for lay persons to understand. This 'guided process' significantly streamlines the entire process and is similar to a system that the Courts have been working on to allow for ""simplified-track"" divorce cases to be filed by applicants more easily, whether with or without engaging a lawyer.
“The students had a very short runway but did a phenomenal job. All of them started with virtually no experience with the legal processes they were trying to improve but they did a tremendous amount of research and learned to use different design and software tools to develop their eventual solution. Looking at the apps they developed, it was evident that they spent a lot of time trying to understand the user experience, demonstrating deep empathy for the layperson end-user. To have developed a complete solution of this level of detail and thoughtfulness within a busy semester demonstrated great teamwork and project management skills, and the students deserve all the commendation and praise from the project sponsors who were highly impressed. And congratulations to the Probate Helpers team who eventually went on to represent SMU and won a podium finish at the Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational with their solution!” - Asst Prof Lim How Khang, Yong Pung How School of Law