With five new students and two returning students from the last winter semester, the LawX Incubator has its participants working on the nonprofit CourtServe, which connects judges, charities and court-appointed volunteers with the goal of making it easier to assign community service to people convicted of crimes.
BYU Law says its prototype was well-received by judges and adult probation and parole supervisors. The school plans to start testing it with Utah charities later this semester.
The emphasis on community service reflects the culture of the Beehive State: Utah leads the nation in volunteer service, according to a report released last year from the Volunteering and Civic Life in America. State residents contributed an estimated $2.7 billion in economic value to the state in 2021 alone, the report found.
"Utahns are deeply committed to community service, and it's a core principle of BYU Law's mission," said professor Nick Hafen, the head of legal technology education at BYU Law, to Law360 Pulse in an email Friday. "This cultural foundation makes a program like CourtServe especially promising."
Utah courts have the option to impose what they refer to as compensatory service for certain offenses, with each hour of service being valued at $10. The volunteer work can be performed for a state or local government agency, a nonprofit or an entity that gains prior approval from the court.
Hafen said the idea for the course came when a law student working for a local judge last winter noticed how rarely community service was assigned during sentencing hearings.
"He asked why and discovered that assigning community service creates significant administrative burdens — offenders must navigate complex requirements to find qualifying organizations, complete service, and provide compliant documentation," he said. "This can discourage both courts and offenders from pursuing the option."
"The CourtServe team spent a semester in the design lab investigating the problem and testing possible solutions. The incubator course has allowed them to further develop their solution so it can be put into practice. While LawX was established to teach our law students how to work in a fast-paced, startup-type environment, we recognize that some projects require more time to test and take to market."
The incubator will run alongside a new design lab project focused on water rights through a collaboration with Salt Lake City-based tech company WETx, which uses blockchain technology to manage and transact water rights. The company is collaborating with the LawX team to automate water rights management.
Like many Western states, Utah uses a priority system to appropriate water rights, but BYU Law says regulatory hurdles have made it difficult for the holders of those rights to make changes to them. The project comes as many states in the region grapple with water scarcity.
LawX was launched in 2017. Its first-ever project focused on helping self-represented defendants respond to lawsuits.
"Since its launch in 2017, the LawX program has grown in scope and impact," Hafen said. "We've expanded student participation and tackled more projects addressing a broader range of access-to-justice challenges. Advances in low-code and no-code platforms, such as Gavel, have empowered students to rapidly prototype and develop solutions, even without technical backgrounds."
--Editing by Andrew Cohen.
Update: This story has been updated with comments from Hafen.
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