LawyerMatch

Connecting immigrants with legal aid

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Inspiration

Over 52,000 individuals are being detained across the US, and only 14% of those will be represented by an attorney. Language barriers and lack of knowledge are contributing to a potentially unfair, life-changing outcome for these people. Detainees have their phones confiscated and are only given a list of approved phone numbers for legal aid, thus lack the ability to find necessary help in a streamlined and centralized platform.

What it does

LawyerMatch quickly connects detainees to appropriate legal representatives through an efficient automated platform. Since detainees have their phones confiscated and can only access a payphone, they may dial to an automated assistant, which asks for information used to file their case on our system. Lawyers can access and search through their profiles relevant to their location and urgency to find the individuals that need the most help, or those that they can help best. They can then visit those detainees at their detention centers.

How we built it

We used Twilio to create an automated voice assistant. We created a web app using Firebase and regular front-end tools, such as HTML/CSS, JS, and frameworks such as Bootstrap.

Challenges we ran into

It was difficult to use Twilio for our specific purposes, especially to extract voice information to be stored in Firebase. We also experienced many challenges in setting up environments. We were unfamiliar with Javascript and Firebase, so it was a large learning curve involved.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We successfully connected our front-end with Firebase, and created a clean interface for the web app. We also successfully set up an automated voice system accessible by phone. You may call (424) 342-5871 to experience an abbreviated version of the detainee survey.

What I learned

We learned previously unfamiliar skills, such as Node.js, Flask and Python integrations, Firebase, Bootstrap, and secure tunnels using ngrok. We also learned to be flexible in our project timeline and to consistently reevaluate our goals based on our abilities and time constraints. We learned to ask appropriate and pointed questions to stakeholders, such as Emerson Collective, the sponsor of the immigration challenge.

What's next for LawyerMatch

We would like to internal features such as security, UI, a more robust detainee search function, and more. Moving forward with that would also mean promoting this to necessary non-profits, governmental organizations, and potential immigrants across the border.

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