Appointment of Counsel Request Bot

By [Bianca Crockett]

User Testing

You can find my final project herewith code here

My Partner was initially Melissa Rothstein from the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. Unfortunately as I was progressing in my project, Melissa becamse unavailable due to a vacation trip. I was, however, able to acquire information through a phone call, concerning what she wanted to see my project. She first wanted the bot to be a tool for people to use to fill out a form to bring to the Court Commissioner. This is because, as she explained it, that the Commissioner makes the final decision. She pointed me to (http://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2017RS/Chapters_noln/CH_606_sb0714e.pdf) (http://mdcourts.gov/district/forms/general/dc099.pdf) and (http://www.courts.state.md.us/district/forms/general/dc099br.pdf) for this information. She informed me that there would be no definitive way of determining eligibility for the appointment of counel that would be satisfying to the client, and instead to find a way to give the client information about what they would need. She also was unfamiliar with fee waivers and gave me the option to just focus solely on counsel as to not cause confusion. Through this suggestion, I turned the determination bot into a request form bot. After speaking with Melissa Rothstein, I was directed to speak with Cathie Copper who has yet to provide me feedback in our correspondence with eachother. I did not acquire any additional information from Cathie and proceeded as Melissa and I discussed earlier. Emails of my correspondence from both parties have been forwarded to Professor Colarusso with subject lines Intro Melissa <> David Student Project and Intro Melissa <> David dated 12/19/17.

Framing

As described by Melissa Rothstein, this bot helps individuals understand what they need to do to confirm if they are eligible for appointment of counsel. I felt the best way to accomplish this was to have questions likely to be important to the Court Commissioner on a form generated by the answers a person gives. This makes the task much easier and less daunting instead of a person having to go through the lengthy process of doing their own research.

Real-World Viability

This bot as it is now can be used for bringing information to the court to determine if someone is eligible for appointment of counsel. A person could go through the steps of answering all the questions, print a form, and bring it down to the Office of the Court Commissioner along with any relevant forms as described and await approval.

Intro Pitch

My powerpoint presentation can be found (https://www.codingthelaw.org/Fall_2017/work/bcrockett3/p4/Bianca%20Final%20Project%20Part%201.pptx)

Refinement

In terms of incorporating feedback, I had to work with what Melissa Rothstein gave me and go from there. She only saw the project that I created from Project 1, so no feedback was taken into consideration as I progressed other than what she told me from our initial phone call. Cathie Copper who took over for Melissa Rothstein was unable to give any feedback, and therefore I had to take the intiative and put in what I felt was most important from our conversation.

Documentation

The language of the bot is straight forward. I made sure to match the questions up with the form along with small explanations of certain parts in parenthesis such as examples of liquidated assets. The questions are simple enough where a normal person would not need aid in answering them.

Ideation and Prototyping

I originally thought I was going to make something similar to my first project, where it would be a bot that determines indigency. After speaking with Melissa Rothstein, I determined that a better way to build this project would be to start over and think about what questions would be needed for a Court Commissioner to know if a person qualifies for appointed counsel in Maryland. More feedback and actual guidance from my partner would have been better to flesh out more ideas of how to push the bot to its full potential.

Complexity

I would have liked for there to be a way to give permissions for access on the public defenders website, but I am unsure of how Qna allows this. Concerning the system, the coding was smooth and most errors were due to not knowing what the next step would be or how to generate the document from the answers. For the form generation, I used this and this

Impact

I would find it hard to imagine this would impact a massive number of people, but I do believe it would help such groups that have trouble understanding the process of appointment of counsel and wish to know what is the first step to figuring this out. I think this serves as the first step and can help educate and inform people to use technology as an aid in such tasks as filling out a form for a counsel request.

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