Women of Legal Tech: Natalie Knowlton

My work at IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver, where I serve (or “served” effective Aug 1) as the Director of Special Projects, highlighted the role that technology is already playing in the access to justice space and highlighted the vast opportunities for tech solutions (in courts, in legal aid and pro bono settings, and in the private sector) to bridge our massive access to justice gap. At the time I began engaging in legal tech communities, I didn’t see many connections between those who study and research in this space and those building solutions. I wanted to bridge that gap so I started to shamelessly insert myself into the conversations that were happening in legal tech and began creating connections with direct-to-consumer startups in the space.

I find myself steeped in legal regulatory reform efforts at the moment. Conversations on reforming unauthorized practice of law (UPL) rules and amending restrictions on fee sharing and co-ownership with professionals who are not attorneys are not new. But these issues are coming to a head in states around the country, particularly because these rules are founded on assumptions and our community is increasingly interested in data-informed policy making. The innovation occurring in the direct-to-consumer space is growing, and these entrepreneurs and more broadly attorneys in the People Law sector are constrained in their abilities to scale. I am interested in creating structures that allow for experimentation and data collection to ensure that we are really empowering the creation of ecosystems that facilitate access to justice while also protecting the public.

I was a remote FTE before the pandemic, so when the rest of my team had to go remote it was a great equalizer for me. If one person on a team is distributed then really the entire team is distributed, but this reality was so much easier to sell when everyone was working in the same remote manner.

In terms of how it impacted the substance of my work, the pandemic *did* revolutionize (and I don’t use that word lightly) how courts engage unrepresented users. Those changes massively impacted, in a positive way, our family and civil process reform efforts.

I’m a sucker for predictive analytics. The tech isn’t perfect and we have to consider the many issues surrounding bias and compromised input/output. But I still see so much potential for integration of these tools in the direct-to-consumer space. We are not there yet, but I think it is an inevitable development and one that I welcome.