Call for Nominations Open for Inaugural Changemaker Award

The University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law has announced a call for nominations for the Changemaker Award, an honor recognizing a law firm, non-profit or government organization that has made an original, creative, distinctive or sustained contribution to increasing access to legal services. The Changemaker Award will be launched this year, as one way to celebrate the five-year anniversary of Innovation for Justice (i4J), a social justice-focused legal innovation lab housed in the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business.

“We are eager to showcase the outstanding efforts of our partners and those around the country who are working to make real differences in their communities through new, replicable, and scalable strategies for legal empowerment,” said Stacy Rupprecht Jane, director of i4J, and 2002 alumna of the University of Arizona College of Law. “Even more, we hope these awards can inspire others to think differently about how we can close the justice gap.”

The Changemaker Award was made possible through a generous contribution from Stephen Golden, fellow 2002 alumnus of the University of Arizona College of Law. Nominations will be solicited through an online form throughout the summer and fall, with the award committee selecting a winner in November. Self-nominations will be accepted.

“i4J’s success in their effort to increase access to justice has been spectacular. This award will recognize individuals and organizations that are unafraid to shake up a system for the greater good, and will also shine a light in i4J,” said Golden. “I look forward seeing the work of the inaugural recipients and awarding a finalist in November.”

i4J is the nation’s first and only cross-discipline, cross-institution and cross-jurisdiction legal innovation lab. The program’s award-winning approach focuses on three main strategies: creating new legal-service models, improving user experience for justice sector technologies and building new platforms to support policy advocacy.

Since its founding in 2018, i4J’s interdisciplinary community of students, faculty, partners and collaborators have worked to advance fair and equitable dispute resolution strategies through systems-level change at both service and policy levels. The program seeks to expose root causes while avoiding merely treating the symptoms. Current projects include the first pilot in the U.S. to train and license non-lawyers to provide limited-scope legal advice to domestic violence survivors in family law cases, and the first usability evaluation of an online dispute resolution platform in the U.S which will make it possible for parties in civil cases to proceed in legal matters online anytime, eliminating access and convenience issues. Last month, i4J also released the Medical Debt Policy Scorecard that ranks states based on their current medical debt policies. The online scorecard was developed as a resource for policymakers when addressing a mounting medical debt crisis.

University of Arizona Law Dean Marc L. Miller noted, “The justice gap that exists in this country requires creative – indeed disruptive -- problem-solving.  Our Innovation for Justice team has continued to rise to that challenge. Their leadership in this space and commitment to engaging with these issues makes them a perfect home for this award, which allows us to celebrate those who share this same passion and have substantial impact on access to legal services.”

Submit nominations online here. Learn more about the Changemaker Award. Learn more about Innovation for Justice.