Matthew Stubenberg

Who Am I?

My name is Matthew Stubenberg. I'm an attorney and a coder working to build access to justice legal technology. I graduated from Maryland Law School in 2013 and realized the legal technology sector was primed to take off.

The legal field is ripe for innovation. We are at a key inflection point where much of the legal information people rely on is being digitized. This digitization allows for algorithms and efficiency gains that were previously impossible. It is a very exciting time to be in the legal technology field.

Resume

Harvard Law School - Access to Justice Lab

Associate Director of Legal Technology

October 2018 - Present

I created and ran randomized controlled trials on various legal services interventions. This included the Public Safety Assessment (PSA) tool, ride share app reduction in FTA study, and numerous defendant hearing reminder studies. I also built and maintained the software necessary to scrape and collect data.

Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service

IT Director/Staff Attorney

October 2015 - July 2018

Managed the IT department, developed the CLUE program to scrape court records, and maintained our case management system. I also held numerous Expungement clinics and expungement trainings.

Maryland Legal Aid

Senior Application Specialist – IT Department

October 2014 – October 2015

I was the bridge between the attorneys and the IT department. I negotiated several software contracts and developed internal tools to help automate various processes.

Coding 4 Lawyers

Adjunct Professor

2019-Present

I developed and taught Coding for Lawyers during the Fall 2019, 2020, and 2021 semester at University of Baltimore Law School and the University of Hawaii Law School

Projects

Criminal records hold back millions of people every year. The process to get rid of that record is called "Expungement". MDExpungement automates the expungement process in Maryland. Type in your case number and and MDExpungement will use a web scraper to pull the information from Maryland Judiciary Case Search. That information is sent through an algorithm to determine if the case is likely eligible for expungement. If the case is eligible the forms are automatically populated. The website is free to use and has been used to populate expungement forms for more than 100,000 cases.

The Client Legal Utility Engine aka "CLUE" scrapes Maryland Judiciary Case Search. The program was built while I was the IT Director at the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS). The program has scraped millions of cases from Case Search. This data has been used to do lots of interesting things from looking at gun cases in Baltimore to tracking bail decisions.

The Case Search Extender increases the amount of time you can spend on Maryland Judiciary Case Search before it times you out and sends you to the terms of use page. The extension works by keeping your session cookie active by refreshing it every minute.

The not guilty app was my first foray into legal technology. The app allowed law clerks and lawyers to better navigate Maryland courthouses. It was created for both iPhone and Android. Unfortunately, it is no longer available as it became too time consuming to keep track of the changing courtrooms.

When virtual reality made a comeback in 2016, I immediately wanted to find a way to use it to help access to justice. I settled on mock court hearings filmed with a 360 camera. The videos focused on courtroom procedures some pro bono attorneys struggle with. These videos were made in collaboration with the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service and the Young Lawyers Section of the Maryland State Bar Association. All the videos are on YouTube.

Skills

  • Django
  • Python
  • Bootstrap
  • Expungement
  • MySQL
  • PHP
  • HTML/CSS/JavaScript
  • Chrome Extension Development
  • Legal Research
  • Randomized Controlled Trials

Education

2013 - Maryland Law School - Juris Doctor

2009 - University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) - B.A. Political Science