Thomas F. Officer

Product Designer & Cofounder, Community Lawyer

Class Outline

  1. Intro (5 min): Who am I and how I got into legal tech. Why my colleagues and I founded CL and what we believe about the role of tech and A2J.
  2. What is a legal app? (5 min): Showcase 3-5 apps made on the CL platform. Show students how they can explore these apps on their own.
  3. How to build apps (15 min): I teach students the concepts they will need to know in order to complete the in-class assignment.
  4. In-class assignment (30 min): Students are instructed to build an app that helps someone clean their criminal record. We will use a fictional expungement PDF (attached)
  5. Students are encouraged to ask questions as they build. The assignment includes obstacles that can be solved in a number of ways.

Pre-Class Homework

How to Build Your First App, a Community Lawyer Help Guide.

Using Document Assembly to Help People Overwhelmed by Medical Debt, a Community Lawyer blog post.


Reading / Coding Assignment

Functions.py - this repo has a few fairly simple examples