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Sarah Stephens: 

Hi, my name is Sarah Stephens. I'm a postgraduate researcher. I sit across three schools, which is IDS, Law and Computer Science. I'm looking at the role of technology to increase access to justice for women in Tanzania. And I've built a digital legal assistant, available on a mobile phone, that helps women know about their legal rights and explore their justice pathway and therefore increases access to justice.

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The Journey to a PhD 

A summer spent in East Africa as a law student started me on a journey of understanding law as a force for social change. I spent a wonderful summer working on a community justice project in Kenya, supporting access to free legal advice.

After qualifying as a solicitor I moved to London, working in commercial law for ten years. Alongside this, I volunteered at legal advice centres and continued supporting the legal advice centre in Kenya, as an advisor and Trustee.

Upon completing my masters in Human Rights Law, I realised that I wanted to work in this area of law. This coincided with my husband's job relocating back to East Africa in 2015, so I was able to work on justice projects in Tanzania.

I returned to my main interest regarding the accessibility of justice for underserved communities.  Due to the increasing availability of mobile phones across the region, I recognised their potential for the delivery of legal services in Tanzania. This inspired my development of a digital legal assistant available on a mobile phone. As this concept developed I wanted to ensure that it would be useful and would not cause any unintentional harm to the women that would use it. This led me to explore these themes further through my PhD research.

My PhD is pushing the boundaries of interdisciplinary research. I’m based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) but also have supervisors in Law and Informatics. It’s exciting from a research perspective to be working across three disciplines that are epistemologically so different. At the start of my PhD I didn’t realise that it is unusual to be so interdisciplinary, but it has generated such breadth in my research.

I'm building tech, I'm in Africa and I'm a lawyer.

The Research

My research explores how technology can increase access to justice for women in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.  However, the scope of the question is larger as it can be applied in the wider context of increasing access to justice across society.

I took four years to build my digital legal assistant, deconstructing many of my assumptions about ‘tech for good’. The PhD process has been transformative, as it causes you to critically examine your assumptions. My supervisors reinforced the importance of contemplating the journey, rather than just focusing on the end product.

Learning how to code was my lowest point. I was trying to learn Python during lockdown via an online tutor. My limited grounding in tech made learning how to build the digital tool a real challenge. The launch of ChatGPT then revolutionised my research as it has huge potential for addressing unmet legal need. 

There have been three stages to my research. The first stage was field research to understand women's justice needs and mobile phone access. In the second stage I built a theory of adoption of digital justice tools. The third stage was building the digital assistant.

I wanted to address a key justice issue that Tanzanian women encounter in their daily lives. My research is grounded in community. I have lived in Tanzania for several years, so it was a natural extension of my relationships. I ran focus groups with women from across society which identified the critical justice issue encountered by women as land and inheritance rights, which became a priority research focus.  

I was surprised by the women’s description of justice, as they described justice in its social context, explaining that justice is about their access to resources, highlighting the plural justice systems in Tanzania which include customary, religious and state justice. This shaped the development of the digital tool, to provide information about rights and bringing a claim, within the social context in which justice operates.

The legal assistant is called Dada Wakili, because dada means sister and wakili means lawyer, translating to sister lawyer. The name mimics the advice seeking behaviour of women which is to speak to a female friend. It also provides information in both Swahili and English.

I originally envisioned women having information at their fingertips for use in everyday life, but it’s greatest use is in legal centres. The tool is currently being piloted in legal advice clinics, to help advisors access relevant legal information more quickly, which increases the quality of advice and number of people that can receive assistance.

As part of a network of solutions, the tool makes justice more accessible for women. It is also freely available on a mobile phone where women can access it privately to learn about their rights, which promotes agency and legal empowerment.

Achievements and the Future

I was awarded a SENSS* scholarship to fund my PhD. This was a huge honour and I am so grateful for this award which has enabled my research.  

I won the Big Ideas contest at Sussex and went to Berkeley and San Diego, USA, as a finalist. It was an amazing experience. Working with the Sussex Innovation Centre and Careers and Entrepreneurship, helped me to convert my research into a self-sustaining business model.

Winning several awards has helped sustain me through the PhD. These include Start-Up Sussex, Santander Elevate award, Tech for Good Africa (Abilitynet) and the Social Impact Award at the national Tata Varsity Challenge. I have recently started lecturing in Legal Innovation and am Co-Deputy Director of the newly formed Sussex Centre of Law and Technology.

I am a member of the Online Procedure Rule Committee with the Ministry of Justice. We consider many of the issues I have explored in my PhD including how to develop an inclusive digital justice service to increase access to justice.

I am currently launching the digital legal assistant in Tanzania. I would like to see it used effectively by women in society and across legal advice centres to help meet unmet legal need. In the future I hope to scale across the region and will be in Malawi next month to explore more opportunities for partnership. 

 *South and East Network for Social Sciences 

Interview by Shona Clements, Sussex Researcher School

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