{"id":20958,"date":"2018-06-27T11:02:40","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T15:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/its-cuthemedev1.carleton.ca\/law\/?p=20958"},"modified":"2025-06-23T11:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T15:43:10","slug":"law-researcher-wins-grant-to-study-private-apps-in-public-courtrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/2018\/law-researcher-wins-grant-to-study-private-apps-in-public-courtrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Law Researcher Wins Grant to Study Private Apps in Public Courtrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        Law Researcher Wins Grant to Study Private Apps in Public Courtrooms\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<p>Recently retired Chief Justice Beverley MacLachlin, among other jurists, has drawn attention to a crisis situation where Canadians cannot get effective access to justice. As a growing number of people in separation, divorce, and child custody matters, are \u201cself-reps\u201d, (parties who represent themselves in courtrooms), and as online technology grows in its capacities and ubiquity, judges in Ontario\u2019s Family Courts have started to Order parties to use privately operated, for-profit, US-based apps to manage their conflicts concerning custody and access issues. Rebecca Bromwich of Carleton\u2019s Department of Law and Legal Studies has received a $45,000 research grant from the Law Foundation of Ontario\u2019s Access to Justice Fund to take a closer look at the practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThese apps raise a set of legal questions because these are Canadian courts ordering people to use American apps,\u201d explains Bromwich, who is the Director of the Graduate Diploma in Conflict Resolution program. \u201cWe don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going and whether it\u2019s being tracked. It\u2019s a bit of a black box in terms of what\u2019s in them. And we don\u2019t know how the use of these apps is affecting levels of conflict between co-parents, or impacting the best interests of children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bromwich says the apps are being used because of a confluence of events: online technology, including AI, has made it possible for tech solutions to be proffered to a growing variety of legal problems, and, the majority of people in family law cases simply can\u2019t afford lawyers, so are now unrepresented in Court. Parties are voluntarily using these apps, and, sometimes the Courts are turning to requiring parties to use apps to help them manage ongoing custody issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This law and society research is linked to a collaboration with Carleton\u2019s software engineers to develop a nonprofit application that could benefit Ontarians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe have a mixed team of Law and Legal studies students who are finding out what people need and what\u2019s going wrong,\u201d she explains. \u201cOur findings will be made publicly available. At the same time, we are working with software engineering students who are looking at the parameters of possible not-for-profit, Ontario-based technical solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bromwich says the results of the study should be available by next summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently retired Chief Justice Beverley MacLachlin, among other jurists, has drawn attention to a crisis situation where Canadians cannot get effective access to justice. As a growing number of people in separation, divorce, and child custody matters, are \u201cself-reps\u201d, (parties who represent themselves in courtrooms), and as online technology grows in its capacities and ubiquity, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"mobile-2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20959,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20958\/revisions\/20959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}