Early Advocacy Support Platform - Useful?
I am developing OpenDefender, a free early advocacy support platform for criminal/immigration enforcement targets and their families + supporters. It is primarily focused on providing logistical and grounding support in the first 24 hours after arrest, and helping with the non-legal fallout from a case (e.g. employment, childcare, healthcare etc).
It's in beta, but given that I myself have never been a public defender or a case support rep for defendants, I was hoping to get feedback from front line practitioners. My basic questions are:
- Is this useful (i.e. is this addressing a real gap in early advocacy)
- Is it easy to use (i.e. is the site navigable? is the language accessible?)
- Is it accurate?
- What's missing (i.e. what are day-to-day issues defendants face that may not be obvious to a non-practitioner)?
Full disclosure - there the site has a few AI-powered features (personalized guidance generator, document summarizer, notification letter creator). I understand the skepticism around AI for legal and have tried to gate/limit these features to prevent giving actual legal advice and/or hallucinating.
The site is fully open sourced/forkable. For all of its shitty use cases (there are many), I think AI can also be a tool to create public goods, and that's the goal here. Any and all feedback appreciated!