A2J Author® is a software tool that delivers greater access to justice for self-represented litigants by enabling non-technical authors from the courts, clerk’s offices, legal services programs, and website editors rapidly to build and implement customer friendly web-based interfaces for document assembly. The A2J Guided Interviews® created with A2J Author® remove many of the barriers faced by self-represented litigants, allowing them easily to complete court documents that are ready to be filed with the court system.
A2J Author® was developed under grants from the State Justice Institute (SJI grant number SJI-04-N-121), IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI), Center for Access to the Courts through Technology, and Legal Services Corporation (LSC). The points of view expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the SJI, Center for Access to the Courts through Technology, Chicago-Kent, CALI, or the LSC.
In 2012, the A2J Author team began a complete re-write of the authoring tool. Previous versions of A2J Author had been written in Flash. A2J Author 5.0 was re-written in HTML/jQuery. Many additional features were added. You can read about the new features in our A2J Author 5.0 Authoring Guide, Chapter 1, found here.
To learn more about the development of A2J Author 5.0, read Sam Goshorn's design notes.