A group of 10 third-year law students at Loyola University’s College of Law have developed three apps and one search engine to help hack Louisiana law, making it easier for law professionals better represent clients in court in addition to improve law practices.
“Working on the projects was very insightful,” said College of Law alumnus John Love Norris IV, J.D. ’13. “Basically, the class was designed to take a bunch of law students and teach a crash course in computer science, coupled with the fact that professor Mitchell taught us how to survive in Orleans Criminal Court.”
Photo courtesy of Loyola University New Orleans.
According to Loyola, students represent clients in real cases each fall and use those experiences as inspiration for tech-law projects to develop in the spring. Last year was the inaugural program through the College of Law’s Litigation and Technology Clinic.
Four applications have been developed. Norris and fellow classmate Ryan Guadet developed the Multiple Bill Calculator, an app which calculates minimum and maximum sentences under Louisiana’s Habitual Offender statute. The other three projects are: an app aimed at replacing the large and pricey handbook of Louisiana criminal laws, LaCrimBook; DocketMinder, an app that monitors the Orleans Criminal Court Docket Master and notifies users of real-time entry changes; and Huey, a search engine and interface for Louisiana statutory law.
The apps are available for free download at the clinic’s website.
“It was an unusual thing at first to teach law students how to code, but we saw a need for it and now the program is being extended for a second year,” said Director Judson Mitchell.