This chapter examines the case of institutional design for urban data governance in the City of Seattle as a collective action problem, referencing three prominent theoretical frameworks for examining institutional change and institutional economics. This work centers on the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework, which is adapted from Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework for natural resource commons and developed to study institutional arrangements for overcoming various social dilemmas associated with sharing and producing information, innovation, and creative works. Furthermore, this chapter notes the foundational integration of the IAD framework with Oliver Williamson’s transaction cost economics (TCE), highlighting the role of transaction costs in understanding the externalities associated with the governance of data.

Although proponents of online dispute resolution systems proclaim that their innovations will expand access to justice for so-called “simple cases,” evidence of how the technology actually operates and who is benefitting from it demonstrates just the opposite. Resolution of some disputes may be more expeditious and user interface more intuitive. But in order to achieve this, parties generally do not receive meaningful information about their rights and defenses. The opacity of the technology (ODR code is not public and unlike court appearance its proceedings are private) means that due process defects and systemic biases are difficult to identify and address. Worse still, the “simple cases” argument for ODR assumes that the dollar value of a dispute is a reasonable proxy for its complexity and significance to the parties. This assumption is contradicted by well established research on procedural justice. Moreover, recent empirical studies show that low money value cases, which dominate state court dockets, are for the most part debt collection proceedings brought by well-represented private creditors or public creditors (including courts themselves, which increasingly depend on fines and fees for their operating budget). Defendants in these proceedings are overwhelmingly unrepresented individuals. What ODR offers in these settings is not access to justice for ordinary people, but rather a powerful accelerated collection and compliance technology for private creditors and the state. This chapter examines the design features of ODR and connects them to the ideology of tech evangelism that drives deregulation and market capture, the aspirations of the alternative dispute resolution movement, and hostility to the adversary system that has made strange bedfellows of traditional proponents of access to justice and tech profiteers. The chapter closes with an analysis of front-end standards for courts and bar regulators to consider to ensure that technology marketed in the name of access to justice actually serves the legal needs of ordinary people.

Pittsburgh is arguably one of the great twentieth-century urban success stories, but in the twenty-first century, Pittsburgh is unexceptional. That makes Pittsburgh a good case for examining governance of smart city technology, because Pittsburgh is neither behind some imaginary urban technology curve nor ahead of it. Like many cities, it doesn’t aspire to be celebrated as a “smart city”; instead, it merely hopes to do well, even to thrive. Pittsburgh has steadily accumulated and deployed a broad range of technology systems as part of its public administration practice, celebrating its advances as often and as much as it might. The case study documents what might be referred to as “ordinary” or “normal” governance of smart city technology and governance via smart city technology. The chapter offers a broad historical take on ICTs and smart technologies in Pittsburgh. It also dives more deeply into some specific examples. Its research and presentation are pluralistic in tone, style, and method.

Smart cities require much more than smart tech. Cities need trusted governance and engaged citizens. Integrating surveillance, AI, automation, and smart tech within basic infrastructure, as well as public and private services and spaces, raises a complex set of ethical, economic, political, social, and technological questions that requires systematic study and careful deliberation. Throughout this book, authors have asked contextual research questions and explored compelling but often distinct answers guided by the shared structure of the GKC framework. The Conclusion discusses some of the key themes across chapters in this volume, considering lessons learned and implications for future research.

To further explore the issues discussed in previous chapters, this chapter uses the city of Bloomington, Indiana, and its open data portal as a case study. As open data portals are considered to be an instantiation of digital commons, it is assumed that its design and governance would support cooperation and community participation and at least some forms of communal ownership, co-creation, and use. To test these assumptions, the GKC framework and its concepts and guiding questions are applied to this specific case to understand the actions around the portal and their patterns and outcomes.

Smart city technology has its value and its place; it isn’t automatically or universally harmful. Urban challenges andopportunities addressed via smart technology demand systematic study, examining general patterns and local variations as smart city practices unfold around the world. Smart cities are complex blends of community governance institutions, social dilemmas that cities face, and dynamic relationships among information and data, technology, and human lives. Some of those blends are more typical and common. Some are more nuanced in specific contexts. This volume uses the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to sort out relevant and important distinctions. The framework grounds a series of case studies examining smart technology deployment and use in different cities. This chapter briefly explains what that framework is, why and how it is a critical and useful tool for studying smart city practices, and what the key elements of the framework are. The GKC framework is useful both here and can be used in additional smart city case studies in the future.

America’s market for legal technology presents a puzzle. On the one hand, America’s market for legal services is among the most tightly regulated in the world, suggesting infertile ground for a legal technology revolution. On the other side of this puzzle is America’s advanced and free-wheeling market for legal tech, which is likely the most robust in the world. This chapter explains this seeming puzzle and then uses that explanation to make some predictions about where legal technology will continue to flourish in America and where legacy players—lawyers, law schools, and judges—will instead stymie its development. In order to predict the future we first must understand the present and the past, so the chapter presents a brief overview of lawyer regulation, the structure of the American market for lawyers and legal services, and the current state of legal tech. This more granular view of the innovation ecosystem can explain why some tech sectors are booming, while others remain stubbornly behind, and also where we’ll see continued and even accelerated legal tech growth and where we won’t.

Should the justice system sustain remote operations in a post-pandemic world? Commentators are skeptical, particularly regarding online jury trials. Some of this skepticism stems from empirical concerns. This paper explores two oft-expressed concerns for sustaining remote jury trials: first, that using video as a communication medium will dehumanize parties to a case, reducing the human connection from in-person interactions and making way for less humane decision-making; and second, that video trials will diminish the ability of jurors to detect witness deception or mistake. Our review of relevant literature suggests that both concerns are likely misplaced. Although there is reason to exercise caution and to include strong evaluation with any migration online, available research suggests that video will neither materially affect juror perceptions of parties nor alter the jurors’ (nearly nonexistent) ability to discern truthful from deceptive or mistaken testimony. On the first point, the most credible studies from the most analogous situations suggest video interactions cause little or no effect on human decisions. On the second point, a well-developed body of social science research shows a consensus that human detection accuracy is only slightly above chance levels, and that such accuracy is the same whether the interaction is in person or virtual.

What effect will potent new legal tech tools have on the civil litigation landscape, and what can or should we do about it? Recent trends in plaintiff win rates and damages awards suggest the American civil justice system is growing more slanted toward the “haves” at the expense of the “have-nots.” Some say that AI-fired legal tech tools will reverse this trend and democratize the system. We disagree. Potent new legal tech tools are surely coming. Many are already here. But these tools are, and will likely continue to be, unevenly distributed because of the privileged access to data and technical know-how of emerging consortia of corporations, law firms, and tech companies. As a result, legal tech will, at least over the near- to medium-term, further skew the litigation playing field, shaping not just the resolution of claims but also the evolution of substantive law. As the American civil justice system enters the digital age, the haves will be propelled yet further ahead.

The COVID-19 pandemic has powerfully disrupted the American legal system. Yet, as with so many other aspects of life, the pandemic was most powerful as an accelerant of trends already in motion. And nowhere has this been more evident in law than in the civil justice system’s uptake of new legal technologies. With “legal tech” tools of all shapes and sizes gaining traction, the system, long a bastion of stasis and tradition, has begun a profound transformation.

While a shift to virtual courts has been lauded by technological enthusiasts and reformers for decades, little research has examined how this technological change may affect vulnerable unrepresented persons and low-income people in the United States on the “have not” side of the digital divide. In this Chapter, we cast light on how virtual proceedings unfold for low-income unrepresented persons in the everyday. It is important to do so. To date, much of the conversation has lauded Zoom court proceedings as the future of civil justice, centering this praise on idealized forms of online proceedings and their conveniences, without interrogating the impact of the precarity that low-income people contend with or persistent digital divides. In marked departure, we examine how these new technologies affect the experiences of low-income unrepresented persons who encounter, and contend with, adversities within virtual court proceedings. We examine how these new technologies reconfigure the features, affordances, and barriers present within the civil justice system, and the impact of these new technologies on the psychology of judges, lawyers, and unrepresented persons, as well as the impact of these new technologies on the meaning of the judicial role and on a person’s unrepresented status.

Faith in technology as a way to narrow the civil justice gap has steadily grown alongside an expanding menu of websites offering legal guides, document assembly tools, and case management systems. Yet little is known about the supply and demand of legal help on the internet. This chapter mounts a first-of-its-kind effort to fill that gap by measuring website traffic across the mix of commercial, court-linked, and public interest websites that vie for eyeballs online. Commercial sites, it turns out, dominate over the more limited ecosystem of court-linked and public interest online resources, and yet commercial sites often engage in questionable practices, including the baiting of users with incomplete information and then charging for more. Search engine algorithms likely bolster that dominance. Policy implications abound for a new generation of A2J technologies focused on making people’s legal journeys less burdensome and more effective. What role should search engines play to promote access to quality legal information? Could they, or should they, privilege trustworthy sources? Might there be scope for public-private partnerships, or even a regulatory role, to ensure that online searches return trustworthy and actionable legal information?

This chapter explores various aspects of community land trusts (CLTs), focusing on how this governance model effectively functions as an ownership structure for common pool resources. Indeed, understanding the incentives facing the owners of any communal ownership structure is vital to successfully creating and managing a CLT. These resource commons aspects are conceptually explained and explored below through a descriptive account of current practices within the CLT sector.