Meet Innovation for Justice

To serve as a catalyst for justice sector transformations that prioritize increasing access to justice for all.

Innovation for Justice (i4J) is a virtual social justice innovation lab that creates new, replicable, and scalable strategies for legal empowerment, and has been involved in the community justice advocacy space since 2019. i4J is housed at both the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business.

We are proud to partner with Innovation for Justice to facilitate both the Housing Stability and Medical Debt Legal Advocacy programs. Below you can learn more about their research methodology, and how they design interventions through collaboration with community members and subject area experts.

From i4J:

The i4J Approach

i4J applies research methodology that combines design and systems thinking frameworks with Participatory Action Research to expose inequalities in the justice system and create new, replicable, and scalable strategies for legal empowerment.

Participatory Action Research (PAR) situates systemically disinvested community members — those who are usually the “subject” of study — as co-researchers who are involved in every step of the research process from framing and scope to data analysis and dissemination. Centering the lived and learned experience of those experiencing and addressing the project challenges assumptions and biases that are present in other research approaches. This shift of power away from the institution to the community is intentional and unique to PAR projects. Using the PAR framework within design and systems thinking methodologies allows for inclusive and diverse perspectives to inform all i4J projects.

1. The i4J process begins by learning about the design challenge and its impacts on individuals within the community as well as the system at large. User research methods, such as social service landscape analysis, qualitative interviews, and moderated usability testing, may be used to deeply understand and empathize with the needs, motivations, and pain points of the system actors and community members who are experiencing the problem.
2. Large quantities of complex and nuanced qualitative data are analyzed to identify common themes. Themes are used to synthesize data-informed insights that allow the research team to define real, underlying problems and needs. Upstream causes and downstream effects as well as enablers and inhibitors within the system are also identified, providing insight into impactful intervention points as well as opportunities for improvement.
3. Many new ideas that could potentially solve the defined problems are generated through a focused creative brainstorming process. Ideas are prioritized by ease of implementation and positive impact, and developed into cohesive concepts that leverage opportunities for improvement. The concepts may be shared with community members as assumption tests or concept tests to generate early-stage feedback that will further refine ideas before prototype design begins.
4. The concepts are developed into tangible prototypes that clearly communicate the intervention’s purpose and potential for impact. Iterative testing of prototypes with community co-researchers and co-creators who provide actionable feedback empowers the research team to challenge assumptions and improve solution designs. This collaborative approach results in solutions that work because they are designed and refined by the communities that will use them.

Innovation for Justice's Vision

To build a future where the legal needs and goals of all peoples are met, where justice is realized by a diverse ecosystem of actors, and where legal power is accessible, usable, and shapeable by everyone.

Innovation for Justice's Values

• Crossing Boundaries: Housed at both the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business, Innovation for Justice (i4J) is the nation’s first and only cross-discipline, cross-institution, cross-jurisdiction legal innovation lab. Our research and legal empowerment efforts with and in service of communities across the U.S. positions i4J as an incubator and driver of actionable social change across multiple states.
• Reaching Across Silos: As an interdisciplinary community of students, faculty, staff, alumni, partners, and collaborators committed to access to justice, we apply design and systems thinking methodologies to expose inequalities in the justice system and create new, replicable, and scalable strategies for legal empowerment. Our projects cut across traditional human service, legal, and technological sectors to engage system actors from diverse areas of work and life in disrupting the justice crisis.
• Challenging the Status Quo: We believe legal knowledge is not the exclusive province of attorneys. We create opportunities for legal advice and assistance to be delivered by trusted community-based advocates with specialized legal training. In reimagining the site and leaders of justice-making, i4J’s work across Impact Areas seeks to democratize legal power by building the bench of individuals who can know, use, and shape the law.
• Working With and Within the Community: Our participatory action research engages lived experience experts in the community as well as diverse system actors in the nonprofit, government, and private sectors to advance fair and equitable civil justice problem-solving. Recognizing the inherent worth, dignity, and value in community regardless of circumstance, our approach situates systemically disinvested community members as co-researchers who are involved in every step of the research process. In practice and organizational policy, this translates to a commitment to the compensation of and deep respect for the shared time and expertise of co-researchers, co-creators, collaborators, and project partners in our work.
• Developing Future Changemakers: Our graduate students are prepared to learn and work with and within the community, lead with empathy, check their assumptions, creatively problem-solve, test new ideas, embrace and learn from failure, iterate and co-create solutions, and engage in data-driven decision-making. Pedagogically, this includes a focus on methods of design thinking and systems thinking, confronting bias, and community-centered collaboration in the future of justice work.
• Advancing a Trauma-informed, Human-centered Justice System: We believe that well-designed, accessible, usable, and useful interventions can mitigate existing access to justice barriers and create a more equitable and simplified justice system. Implementing trauma-informed and trauma-responsive practices among staff, student, and community interactions in designing and building these interventions mitigates the risk of retraumatization when interacting with the justice system. This includes learning about trauma, the associated impacts, and paths to recovery.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

i4J prioritizes values of diversity, equity, and inclusion as essential parts of increasing access to justice for all. Learn more here.