Legal Design for Practice,Activism, Policy,and Research

This article offers an original integrated introduction to how to think about what design can do for law; where to find examples of legal design; and how to assess it. It identifies clear points of contact between lawyerly concerns and designerly skills, knowledge, and attitudes. It proposes that designerly ways can directly improve lawyerly communication; and that they can also generate new structured‐yet‐free spaces in which lawyers can be at once practical, critical, and imaginative. The article foregrounds the, hitherto unrecognized, diversity of existing legal design practice by drawing examples from across four fields of lawyering: legal practice, legal activism, policy making, and legal research. Emphasis is placed throughout on the need for a critical approach to legal design – that is, for legal design to be thought about and done with a commitment to avoiding, exposing, and remedying biases and inequalities.     

The Effectiveness of a Mental Health Court in Reducing Recidivism in Individuals with Severe Mental Illness and Comorbid Substance Use Disorder

The current study examined the efficacy of a specialized mental health court in reducing recidivism for severely mentally ill defendants with comorbid substance use disorders. There is a wealth of research supporting the efficacy of mental health courts in reducing recidivism for those with severe mental illness; however, the benefit of these courts for individuals with severe mental illness and comorbid substance use disorders has received limited empirical attention. Participants were 514 defendants enrolled in either a traditional adversarial court or a specialized mental health court. Recidivism was assessed across different outcome variables, including frequency of reoffending, severity of new offenses, and length of time to reoffend. When compared to participants in the traditional adversarial court, enrollment in mental health court was associated with a greater length of time to rearrest and fewer participants were rearrested in the mental health court than the traditional court. Group differences between those with and without comorbid substance use disorders who were enrolled in the mental health court were not found across recidivism outcome metrics. Results of the current study are particularly promising given that defendants with substance use disorders are at a greater risk for reoffending.