A2J Author® has been selected as a finalist in the international Hague Institute of Internationalization of Law (HiiL) 2014 Innovating Justice Awards. It is competing against 14 other global innovations in the “Successful Innovations” category. The top three nominees, based on voting, will go on to the final round, with the winner selected in November 2014. The software was developed by IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Center for Access to Justice and Technology (CAJT) and CALI®, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction.

Voting is now open and ends on Wednesday, September 17, 2014 at 5 p.m. CDT. View A2J Author’s innovation page and vote here.

A2J Author logoA2J Author® is the first court form automation software designed to be pro se user-friendly. This allows non-technical law students, legal aid attorneys, and courthouses to build customer friendly interfaces that help self-represented litigants complete necessary forms. The A2J Guided Interviews® ask questions in plain language and process the information provided by the user to be assembled into a savable and printable document.

A2J Author is the most widely used document automation tool by pro se litigants to address their legal needs. There are more than 1,000 A2J Guided Interviews that are live on the LawHelp Interactive national server. These 1,000 Guided Interviews have helped almost 2.5 million people in less than 10 years.

A2J Author is jointly owned by IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI). It is managed by IIT Chicago-Kent’s Center for Access to Justice and Technology.

The Center for Access to Justice and Technology was established at IIT Chicago-Kent to make justice more accessible to the public by promoting the use of the Internet in the teaching, practice, and public access to the law. The Center conducts research, builds software tools, teaches classes, and supports faculty, staff, and student projects on access to justice and technology.

CALI, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, is a non-profit consortium of law schools whose mission includes promoting “access to justice through the use of computer technology.”