Tech For Good

Commons believes that legal technology can increase access to justice for some of the most vulnerable people in society. How frontier tech such as General-Purpose AI models develop and are purposed for social justice requires careful consideration of risks in deployment.

We advise foundations and charities on the compliance issues they encounter when upscaling their tech, including the intersecting areas of law on data protection, AI regulation and privacy. Our advice has included equipping organisations on AI product development or procurement, SaaS contracting, data sharing agreements and risk management.

We not only believe that non-profits should use technology to increase their productivity to help beneficiaries more, but we also have experience in building online tools for justice.

Between November 2020 and May 2021, Commons gathered information and offered advice to members of the public who had been issued a Fixed Penalty Notice ‘FPN’. With funding from the Social Enterprise Support Fund, distributed by UnLtd and in conjunction with the National Lottery Community Fund, we created an an open-source online web app enabling people to assess the lawfulness of FPNs issued to them under Coronavirus legislation.

We now know that the lack of Parliamentary scrutiny of coronavirus laws, their rapid amendment and poor implementation by the police meant FPNs were disproportionately and unfairly impacting communities from lower socio-economic groups during the pandemic. Our guidance led to individualised support for clients to prevent them being criminalised.