Momentum Episode 16:
Bridging the Justice Gap with Jotform Enterprise (ft. Ayyoub Ajmi)

Jotform has been used in countless ways to positively impact communities over the years, but sometimes a specific use case stands out not just because of their old Jotform plays in it, but because the user behind it has such a powerful story.

Today we'll be sharing one of those stories about how Jotform Enterprise has helped Ayub Ashby, founder of Civilaw.tech, bridge the justice gap and help disadvantaged victims seek protection.

Welcome to Momentum, a podcast by Jotform where we talk about technology, productivity tips, insights, and best practices that help us move forward in business and in life. Let's get started.

Maintaining momentum.

All right, so I am here with Ayub Ashby, who, like I mentioned, is the founder of Civilaw.tech, and in just a moment we're going to dive into what that is and why it's so important.

Ayub, I just want to welcome you to the show. Do you want to maybe introduce yourself and what your current role is right now? I think you may have the longest title of anyone we've had on the show, so I don't want to mess that up.

No, that's fine. Well, thank you. First, thank you for having me. This is a really great pleasure to be with you and the audience. My name is Ayubaj Me. I'm located in Kansas City, Missouri. I'm the founder of Civilaw.tech. It's a consulting firm. I provide legal tech services to organizations, courts, legal aid services, things like that. My goal is to help people have meaningful impact on people's lives.

In addition to being the founder of Civilaw.tech, I also serve as the associate director of the law library at University of Missouri in Kansas City, and this is due to my heart as well.

Gotcha, gotcha. You have a lot going for you obviously. First, it's just really great to have you. I think there's a lot of important material that we can cover here today, so I figure we should dive right in.

Obviously, you're an avid Jotform Enterprise user, and recently we've been able to publish an awesome case study about how you use Jotform to really bridge the justice gap and leverage technology to even the playing field for disadvantaged victims needing court protection, as you kind of mentioned.

We'll get to that, but I think even before we get to that story, I know that you have a pretty inspiring backstory yourself, and I think that would be great for people to hear. Do you want to maybe start there and just talk a little bit about your journey up to this point and how you ended up where you are now?

Sure. I mean, everything I'm doing right now is, I always tell, a superior chance and meeting good people all the way.

My background is technology, so my degree, I have a master's in library science degree, and when I finished my background, because I had this background in technology, it gives me an edge over the competition basically.

I received multiple offers to work as a librarian combining technology and librarianship, and working in the library was pure chance. I had no experience in law. I have never dealt with law in the U.S. I'm originally from Morocco, so I moved to the U.S. in 2017 after I won a green card lottery.

A lot of people don't know that, so I'm a lucky winner of the green card lottery. It's literally always a lottery. You're being metaphorical, but an actual lottery.

Oh, actually it is a lottery. It's a diversity program that the State Department conducts every year, and the idea is to bring diversity to the U.S., which I think is a wonderful thing.

Literally, you put your name and date of birth, and if you're lucky, somebody will call you, and after that, then there is another immigration process, background check, and things like that, but it's pure luck. So this is how I came here and this is how I started.

Everything I was doing is, you know, okay, let's try and see what I can do here, and then my technology background goes back to when I was in Morocco. I had my own consultant from there, and I was already working and designing websites and things like that.

Being a librarian was pure transition for me because I always tell people I was a librarian before I knew that the librarian degree existed. So I did the library degree and I started working in law school, and then I started learning more about things that I could do with law and technology.

Was it always a dream of yours to come to the United States, or was that just sort of a lucky happenstance, or did you always want to end up here?

I had this, this is the truth, I had no dream, I had no plans.

Let me tell you the full story. Like I said, I had a business in Morocco, so at that time in 2006, 2007, the U.S. Department changed the process of the green card lottery, and it used to be a paper-based process, so it switched to becoming online.

Basically, you have to go to a website and take digital pictures and upload it. That's how you start the process.

Well, at that time in Morocco, internet was not predominant as it is now, and a lot of people didn't have a way to do that, so I started offering that service for a fee.

I had a business where people would come to me, I would take a picture of them, do some Photoshop editing, make sure it's the size that is needed, and submit the petition for them online, and mine was a test.

Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so you definitely had some background in this, and it seems like that obviously transitioned very well when you did get an opportunity to come to the United States.

Absolutely, absolutely.

What inspired you to end up taking up law?

So when I started working in the law library at UNKC, I quickly learned that technology can be a game changer in the field.

The legal practice is one of the most resistant to change out there, so honestly, if it was not for COVID-19, we would still be talking about whether we can or should use the cloud to save files or use a file cabinet.

This is how resistant to change it was, so it's amazing to see how things have been moving in the last two years, and witnessing that change is really amazing and inspiring.

When I started working in the library, my title was digital librarian basically, so I provide services to faculty and students, help them use technology in learning and teaching and all of that.

I started learning more about the classes that we offer. One of the classes that we offer is an interdisciplinary class where we have students from multiple practices. They could be MBA students, they work with JD students and computer science students all in the same class, and they work on real-life projects.

Those projects usually are in the intersection of law, technology, public policy, urbanism, things like that that usually the city will need or some local organizations will need, and I started getting involved in those classes.

For example, we had a group working on creating a founder's term sheet for startups. We had another group working on streamlining the process of expungement, and they do research and things like that.

The common thing with those projects was technology. Yes, you need to have expertise in law, you need to have experience in business, but technology was a key element to making those projects successful.

That's where the light really went on for me, and that's why I knew that combining law and technology, I can really do some damage, so it will be really interesting to explore that.

Literally, I got involved, but the other thing also is in the law school, we have clinics, which is basically experiential learning where students get to do some real work with real cases.

For example, we have a child and family clinic where we help people with family law matters. We also have what we call a self-help clinic, and our situation is unique because it is located in the library which I manage.

So this self-help clinic, we provide limited scope representation to people in the community. Limited scope representation means that you get to meet an attorney and that attorney will give you legal advice for the duration of the meeting.

After the meeting, you take whatever information or paper the help you produce and you represent yourself in the court.

This clinic is a partnership between UMKC and Legal Aid of Western Missouri.

We don't have any advertising, we don't have any signage, we don't have anything, and within a few weeks we were booked like three months in advance. The need is really so big that it's really disturbing.

Eighty percent of people who go to court for family matters are unrepresented. That means someone who is in a force or a child support situation, they go to court, and maybe the other party has a lawyer and they don't have a lawyer, and you can guess what the results are going to be.

Eighty percent of people who go for family law matters don't have representation.

We have legal aid services everywhere. They help people with low income, they give them legal advice, but the problem is the need is so big that first you have to qualify. There are some income limitations and not everyone can match those income limitations.

Even if you are poor enough to get your file, more than 50 percent of people end up not getting the help they need. They get little to no help because there are so many demands.

This is what really inspires me. Everything I do, I am not taking a job from someone else. There is plenty of job out there. What we need is to use tools like technology, like Jotform and things like that, so we can do bigger impact, not just helping case by case.

For example, expungement, clearing criminal records. A lot of states now are looking into that, especially now where it is hard to find employees because a lot of employees have criminal records and you can't hire them.

A lot of states now are in the process of automating the expungement, which means they can literally clear the records of millions of people with one click.

Technology now can make this happen quickly and efficiently, and the results are amazing because taking cases one by one would take years and years to help those people.

The solution is math solutions like this, where you take a bulk of people and you can give all the tools you have available so the courts can have advocates to help people, legal aid can help, and automation and self-help tools, everything we can to help those people.

That's a lot to take in, and I think to your point, the way technology has empowered this process, what would the process be like without technology? What would the old-fashioned paper trail process be to help these people?

The old process, which unfortunately is not really old, it's the most common process now, is everything is paper-based.

Even when I talk to someone, they say, well, we have petitions in a PDF fillable form. It's not really enough because the problem is those PDF petitions are pure legalese. You have to be a lawyer to understand what they mean.

There are people who struggle with who is the plaintiff, who is the defendant, for example. If you are educated and familiar with the system, you might understand those terminologies, but a lot of people don't understand those terminologies and have to fill out the paperwork themselves.

If you don't fill out the right paper, you get penalized, and if you miss something, you get penalized, and if you don't get penalized, at least you're going to get delayed. The relief is going to be delayed for days or weeks.

The process is really not working. The process is broken.

For example, with expungement, we're talking about years if you want to do those cases one by one. Pennsylvania cleared millions of criminal records of people with drug offenses, California did that, a lot of states did that.

A lot of people who qualify don't really need to know, and the court knows they can just do that in one click. Of course, it's not that easy because data is not organized and you need systems, but there are ways to do that. It's not impossible.

It's empowered by technology, as you mentioned, and obviously law takes a long time, the entire industry to adapt to change.

It sounds like this is a broader issue and a broader movement that in some ways you're spearheading a little bit. To your knowledge, are there other institutions out there who are trying to do the same thing that you are but may just haven't made it big yet?

Oh, absolutely. I'm not really the leader here. I'm just following other leaders before me. I'm trying to target things from different perspectives sometimes.

For example, there are a lot of organizations. I can give you examples. Code for America, based in California, they do this work on helping courts streamline the process of expungement and other things.

There are organizations working in bankruptcy, providing a way for someone to do bankruptcy petitions online. There are plenty of people helping, like faculty teaching students how to code, how to understand and use those tools.

A lot of lawyers do pro bono work for free trying to help, and there are a lot of clinics. All the law schools I know have clinics to help low-income individuals and people in many areas of the law.

This is the good thing. This is not unique. A lot of people are helping. The only thing is there is so much need that we are not really making a lot of change because it's huge.

There are a lot of people with criminal records or with legal needs and all of that stuff. Think about evictions and just the recent stuff due to COVID and all of that. There is a lot of that.

To your point, even the more institutions that are getting equipped with technological prowess to escalate these processes to help these people get those expungements, even the more that get the technology to do that, there's still more that need the expungements, and the need grows as the solution grows.

You almost need some kind of mass shift in a very real and significant way, but it's good that change is at least started and it's happening and people are aware.

I guess it's the baby steps at the end of the day.

A lot of the projects we are working on will have much bigger impact if driven by institutions rather than private providers or services. If the process is provided by the court, it will have more impact and people will use it even more.

That's literally where I work. All of my work is creating self-help tools that are free to users because if you need the petition, it's your right to have access to the petition.

The courts will provide that service for them, and the courts will spend some money to do that, but from an economic perspective, they're going to save more money because this is less time a clerk in a court will have to spend just explaining which form to use.

This is less time the judge will spend trying to figure out what they are trying to say. I hope it's pretty good. It helps everybody. That's the truth. It helps everybody.

Let's rewind just a little bit and actually talk about how this started happening for you. So you came to America in 2017, you said 2007, sorry, and then you were working in the library, and sort of by happenstance you discovered this need and cultivated this interest.

What sort of inspired you to take that step to actually found Civilaw.tech and now KSPOP, Kansas Protection Order Portal? Obviously those are larger initiatives, and at some point the seed had to be planted and then you had to go about actually starting that, getting resources for that.

Can you talk me a little bit through the actual process?

Sure. Like I said, I get to do a lot of good things through my work at the university. However, the main goal of the university is teaching, so we focus on teaching and providing students with experiential learning opportunities. That's the main goal.

In order to have an impact and really this is what I want to do, to be more efficient, I had to have an entity. I had to have a business entity so I could enter into contracts with organizations and get resources and help.

I saw the need to better work through a business entity so I'm not creating any issues for my other position and they get to help more people doing it that way.

KSPOP, the Kansas Protection Order Portal, is one of many projects I have been fortunate enough to take on. KSPOP is not my portal; it's owned by the court, which is good because it's the court really.

They were really forward-looking in going ahead and creating this portal and creating this self-help portal. Not many courts have self-help portals or dedicated space in the protection order specific area.

I helped the court design and implement and I'm actually supporting the portal entering its second year now. This is how I started this project. I had other projects, but this is maybe the most rewarding one for me.

For people watching and listening, the Kansas Protection Order Portal is an online platform where victims of abuse, domestic violence, sexual harassment, sexual violence, child trafficking can seek help remotely without having to go to court.

The portal is not just generating petitions; generating petitions is one aspect of what is provided. The other thing is we provide education. We educate people so they know what rights they have and what relief they can have.

These are very traumatic situations for them, and sometimes it's not easy for people who are in it because where are you going to go? Who's going to feed you? Who's going to feed your children? There's a lot of questions and a power dynamic at play normally.

There is a risk. There are cases where people who try to escape violence have unfortunately been killed. So there is a lot going on. We are not just making it easy for people to seek help but making sure that when they file a petition, they know that this is the right petition.

We connect them with advocates in their area. They are victim advocates who can help you find shelter and create an emergency protocol for you so that when you are ready to leave, you know where you're going to go, where your kids are going to go, and how to protect your identity.

For example, a lot of victims are monitored physically by Bluetooth devices or monitored by email or phone. We educate them and give them all those things they need to know and connect them with people who can provide that help.

When they are ready, we help them file the petitions, and we do that in two steps. This is really where Jotform comes in and why I like working with Jotform.

We started thinking about the project before COVID-19, and then COVID-19 hit and it became urgent. We had to do something because courts had limited access and there were a lot of restrictions. People could not leave their homes.

Before developing the system, we asked clerks, people who work with victims, and other organizations what issues they have. The bigger issue is figuring out what petition to file.

In Kansas, and this is the case in most states, there are two types of petitions: PFS, which is protection from sexual assault, harassment, and child trafficking, and PFA, which is protection from abuse.

They provide similar relief but the qualifications are different. If you find the wrong petition, your request will be denied and you will be asked to file the right paper.

In addition to the petition itself, there are other forms you need to fill out, and if you are not in the field, there is no way you can know that.

We did some experiments in school. My colleague asked law students in their second or third year to guess which petition they need for a situation, and most couldn't answer.

For example, if you have children and are seeking relief just for yourself, you may think you don't need the petition that has children information because you say you don't have issues with the abuser, but still the judge needs to know the name of your children and relationship to make sure there is no divorce procedure pending.

There are small nuances like this. Using Jotform, we created an eligibility test with a few questions. Based on answers, we can tell if they qualify and what petition they qualify for, and if they don't qualify, what other relief they can access.

Before the portal, it would take victims sometimes the entire day to fill out those packets, which can be 30 to 40 pages of information.

With the Jotform petition, it took an average of two minutes and 30 seconds to know what petition you need to file and if you are eligible, then you can start.

We use plain language, simple instructions, ask questions only once, and all that information is built in the logic in Jotform. People don't see that; it's all in the background with conditions working as you fill out the form.

At the end, we generate the entire 40-page packet filled out for you and ready to be filed with the court, and it takes an average of 30 minutes.

This is literally life-changing for people because a lot of people just don't do it because it takes so much time.

It's hard to understate the significance of this. Many individuals are in positions of extreme duress, whether at home or with a partner, and they probably don't have the time to get away to do this paperwork on their own or they feel unsafe.

It's awesome to have a process and system they can turn to, and it's amazing that Jotform has been able to help with that. The idea behind it is so important in the lives it impacts.

These are really cool use cases for Jotform. This is probably the coolest one I've ever heard of personally, and it's amazing that it's being used this way.

In the first 12 months, we had more than 18,000 eligibility reviews completed and more than 6,000 petitions filed. Those are not just numbers; those are real victims.

I wish there were zero petitions filed, but the reality is that those who needed to file a petition had a solution, and people who are in lockdown or afraid to leave their house can file a petition from their smartphone using the Jotform petition.

It's hard to break in, but at least there is help and a way to help those people.

Thank you for setting up the system and having these considerations for people in duress, even as small as being able to do it on their phone. Often they might not have access to a laptop or be able to go somewhere and fill out paperwork depending on how closely monitored they are.

Many parts of the system are pedantic and nuanced, like knowing which petition goes with what situation. Just being able to give them those resources is so important.

I think it's really important we don't have direct stories from victims because we don't want to have a survey, but through people who work with them, we hear stories.

Police officers in many cities now have the Jotform petition on their phone so when they go to calls for violence, they are ready to show people if they want to sit down and fill out the petitions from the phone.

It's small things but makes a lot of difference. Being able to fill out a simple questionnaire and have the petition decided for you and take out all the guesswork is so important.

I think KSPOP has a button where you can exit out quickly in case you feel monitored or unsafe. Is there a security measure built in for that?

Security is one of the biggest things we have to deal with because these are people who are abused and there is a chance of being monitored. Their life is in danger from the period when you file your petition until you get the protection order.

We are very careful about that time. We built in a lot of tools in the Jotform forms and website where there is an escape button that redirects you to another website or something random to help you.

We don't track people or keep their information longer than needed. Those are built-in tools in the system. We don't cache that information to limit exposure in case someone is watching what they are doing on the phone or computer at home or elsewhere.

You can't understate the significance and peace of mind that they have filling out the form knowing they have an escape button just one click away. It makes them feel more confident in going through with it and coming back later.

Really impactful and powerful stuff.

I'm curious, how did you first find out about Jotform? What gave you the idea to start using it for this purpose and what made it the right fit for this important use case?

I'm a user of Jotform since the beginning. I still have my original account with multiple users that has been grandfathered. I've been using it since 2007 or 2008.

At that time, I was designing websites and many clients asked for contact forms. It was hard to build contact forms in PHP or other languages and make something beautiful like you can do easily with Jotform.

This was my first introduction. I decided to use this tool to create contact forms for clients' websites, and this is how I started using Jotform.

The good thing with Jotform is that every month or so there is something new. Now I can do attachments, voice recordings, and more.

Every time a client asks for a feature not available, my answer is always to wait because I'm pretty sure someone is working on it, and it usually happens.

Recently, the process for collecting signatures was added, which is really good timing. We use it in the law school clinics a lot because most clinics are remote and need signatures before working with people.

We used to pay per signature, which was crazy, but now we have Jotform included in our subscription, and everything is in one place.

For the self-help clinic, we have an intake form with a signature field at the end. You get the form and a copy of the signature immediately, and we are done.

Regarding retention, we don't collect information unless necessary, and if we collect sensitive information, we have a policy on how long we keep it.

For protection orders in Kansas, when someone files a petition, the court must provide a hearing in 21 days, so our policy is to keep information for 30 days, counting weekends.

The server is secure, a dedicated server from Enterprise. We don't want liability or to keep information we don't need.

In the past, we used API calls to delete petitions after 30 days, but now we use Jotform settings to auto-delete submissions after 30 days, which is amazing.

This is how I use Jotform. I have many stories but limited time.

We have the child and family clinic and a trivia night event every year where we do trivia games and collect donations to help children and families.

When COVID hit, we couldn't do the trivia in person, and they were about to cancel the event. I told them to give me a day or two, and we used Jotform to create games.

We had drag and drop games, multiple choice, and quizzes in a funny way. People loved it. Combining Zoom and Jotform, we saved the day, had many donations, and everyone was happy.

We just did the second one, and even now that we are open, people probably will stick with the virtual one.

That's incredible. Many people use Jotform for simple data collection and contact forms, but in your situation with KSPOP, there is a lot of legal nuance and a layer of security, protection, and peace of mind for yourself, institutions, and victims.

Having measures like the auto-delete feature is really important to enable what you do.

It's cool to see how we've been able to accommodate those things because ultimately this is why we do it, to help people like yourself and all the people you are helping.

It's a powerful story, and I'm grateful you are able to share it today.

I didn't create anything new. Everything was already there, but through your implementation and intentionality, you've created second chances and hope for thousands of people through the systems you've set up.

I would argue that you have indeed created something, and the work you are doing is immensely impactful. It makes me gratified to talk about it today and work for a company that has helped enable it even on a small level.

It's absolutely a team effort. I couldn't do what I'm doing without support from the school, colleagues, and everyone.

Why I picked Jotform Enterprise is because of the support I get. That's one of the main reasons I use it. On top of security, I have a smart team I can email with questions or problems, and they jump on it and fix it.

It's a team of people helping from their perspective, doing their best, all hands effort, going in the right direction, hopefully helping people at the end of the day.

It's been fantastic to have you on the show and talk about this. I think it's eye-opening for myself and hopefully for many listeners.

Anything we missed or didn't get a chance to cover, I really appreciate the context and background you gave to these important causes and solutions.

I think we covered everything. If anyone wants to learn more about the services or help, visit my website Civilaw.tech to learn more. We are open to business and happy to talk to anybody.

We'll definitely put links to these resources and others mentioned in the description for the YouTube video. I encourage people to check that out. It's amazing what Ayub and his team are doing.

It was incredible to talk to you today, and I appreciate you lending us your time.

Thank you so much.