Ryerson’s Legal Innovation Zone (LIZ) launches the Family Law Portal. This free, online service will help Ontario families involved in separation or divorce better understand their rights, their responsibilities, the decisions they need to make, and the documents they need.
“Families need a way of resolving separation and divorce issues that works for them”, said Chris Bentley, Managing Director of the Legal Innovation Zone, which managed and coordinated the project. “When you are better informed, you can spend your time, emotional energy and limited resources on the issues and decisions that matter most to you”.
Practitioners with over 160 combined years of family law and financial experience contributed their knowledge to ensure the Portal gives people the information they need. Contributing expert Barbara Landau, said “The Portal represents the start of an approach that many of us have worked toward for years – an approach that provides separating families with what they need during a difficult life transition.”
Avanti Foundation and the Law Foundation of Ontario (LFO) funded the project. “We are pleased to support this innovative approach to helping families experiencing family breakdown,” said Tanya Lee, CEO of the Law Foundation of Ontario. “Technology is part of what is needed”.
Neota Logic and YouX provided the technology and related expertise. Kim Massana, CEO of Neota Logic, commented, “The Family Law Portal is groundbreaking and creates a needed accessibility point for legal services. We are pleased to leverage LIZ expertise with Neota Logic’s no-code app building platform”.
Next Step: The Family Law Portal is the first of a new 4 part approach: Inform, Triage, Connect and Resolve. Today, we are also starting the development of a triage system for family law cases. Triage will be launched early next year.
Goal: Every year up to 70% of people go to family court in Ontario without a lawyer. Let’s ensure they have access to a faster, simpler and more affordable approach to family resolution by May 25th, 2020.
Legal Innovation Zone: World’s first incubator dedicated to legal technology. We are 4 years old. We help build better legal solutions for consumers by supporting legal startups, providing services to private and public organizations and governments, and by helping build a 21st century legal system.
About Legal Innovation Zone at Ryerson University
The Legal Innovation Zone (LIZ) is a co-working space and the first dedicated legal tech incubator. It’s focus is on building better legal solutions for the consumers of legal services, and helps support, foster and develop legal products, services and a justice system that better serve consumers.