Judicial Innovation Fellowship

The Judicial Innovation Fellowship' is a technology policy fellowship that places technologists in state, local, tribal and territorial courts. Tech experts and professionals spend one year with a court focused on improving court administration to the benefit of the public. An access to justice program, the projects JIF (pronounced "Jif", like the peanut butter)fellows focus on helping court modernize their technical infrastructure, process, and design of public facing websites and tools that are built for people who cannot afford an attorney. The program is piloted at the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown Law.

Background
The program was initially proposed in 2022 as a Day One proposal published by the Federation of American Scientists and written by Cori Zarek, Miguel Willis, Jameson Dempsey, Tanina Rostain, and Jason Tashea. Originally, the authors proposed that "Congress should create and fund a Judicial Innovation Fellowship that brings experienced technologists and service designers into state, tribal, and federal courts to improve judicial administration, transparency, and access to justice, like programs in the U.S. federal executive and legislative branches (such as the United States Digital Service and TechCongress)." Congress did not create the program. Instead, the program was seeded by the New Venture Fund with supplemental funding provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the State Justice Institute, and the Utah Bar Foundation. JIF co-founder Jason Tashea was made the founding director in 2023.

Logistics
JIF published a "roadmap" based on over 100 interviews with experts in justice sector reform, government technology, and fellowship programs. The document identified common pain points experienced by courts across the United States, including the need for improved user-centered design, cybersecurity, data infrastructure, and calendaring and scheduling.

In 2023, JIF launched a national call for proposals and fellows. Three pilot sites were chosen, which each received a fellow with a skillset pertinent to the project. Some fellows had hybrid placements, while others worked full-time in their courts. Fellows are employees of Georgetown Law and received salaries between $85,000 and $95,000.

Projects
For its first cohort of fellows, JIF placed three fellows across three courts. Those courts were the Utah State Courts, the Kansas State Courts, and the Hamilton County, Tennessee General Sessions Court. The projects in Utah and Kansas focused on bringing user-centered design to public-facing, online tools developed by the courts, like electronic court filing. In Hamilton County, the project focused on improving court data infrastructure and software documentation regarding both civil and criminal legal case management.