IMPACT OF LEGAL ACCESS ON DOWNSTREAM JUDICIAL AND ECONOMIC OUTCOMES

Last registered on February 16, 2024
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
IMPACT OF LEGAL ACCESS ON DOWNSTREAM JUDICIAL AND ECONOMIC OUTCOMES
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0012930
Initial registration date
February 12, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
February 16, 2024, 3:35 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
India
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Viknesh Nagarathinam
Affiliation
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Sushant Sinha
PI Affiliation
Indian Kanoon
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Daniel Chen
PI Affiliation
Toulouse School of Economics
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2024-01-23
End date
2025-01-23
Keywords
Firms & Productivity, Governance, Other
Additional Keywords
Legal Access, Judicial Reforms
JEL code(s)
Regulation and Business Law (K2)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Indian Judiciary is known to experience issues related to huge caseload and delays. Furthermore, litigants do not have easy access to legal advice which often discourages them from reaching out to courts for resolving disputes and other legal troubles. From a macroeconomic perspective, this can be considered a hurdle to economic growth and improved quality of life for individuals and firms.

To help democratize the access to legal information, Indian Kanoon was rolled out in 2008. The primary goal behind the creation of India Kanoon was to democratize access to legal documents. Before its existence, accessing judgments and other legal documents was difficult for ordinary citizens unless they subscribed to expensive legal databases.One of the key features of India Kanoon is its user-friendly search capability. The platform breaks down judgments into paragraphs and provides direct links to referenced statutes, making it easier for users to understand the context.

Researchers are partnering with the Indian Kanoon team to conduct an RCT that aims to measure the economic and judicial impact of providing access to an improved user-friendly version of the legal search engine. The study involves over 100k users over a period of 1 year from all over India. The study measures the impact on the users’ legal knowledge after access to the website. The users will be linked with cases to track the judicial outcomes. The Researchers will also collect administrative data on the financial outcomes of the firms associated with the users.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Chen, Daniel, Viknesh Nagarathinam and Sushant Sinha. 2024. "IMPACT OF LEGAL ACCESS ON DOWNSTREAM JUDICIAL AND ECONOMIC OUTCOMES ." AEA RCT Registry. February 16. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12930-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention (Hidden)
The users who are randomly assigned to the treatment group will be notified and receive information about the improved legal search platform along with detailed instructions on how to leverage its newly implemented features. This is achieved by sending them periodical email reminders after the launch .The users in the control group will be those who did not receive the instructional email and therefore are not informed of the new features of the platform. This will ensure that the users in the treatment group are more active and are able to utilize the platform more effectively than the users in the control group, on average. Using this experimental set-up we will be able to measure the impact of the various features of the legal search platform on judicial and economic outcomes. The new features include, better user-friendly interface; improved readability of judgment texts by labeling sections along with the option to select by filter; improved search algorithm for better relevance of search results; searching for judicial precedents; improved virtual assistant

Baseline survey is conducted to test the legal knowledge, user satisfaction, court and firm outcomes. An endline survey is conducted to track the change in outcome variables of interest every three month period. We will track the downstream firm and economic outcomes by linking the users to administrative data to see how the improvement in legal search translates into improved socio-economic benefits.
Intervention Start Date
2024-01-23
Intervention End Date
2024-04-23

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
User satisfaction, knowledge of laws and financial outcomes.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Knowledge of law will be constructed by the answers to 5 "quiz" questions of basic knowledge on the laws in India, asked during the endline survey.
User satisfaction will be measured through a list of survey questions for rating on a likert scale
Financial outcomes are measured by using administrative data on firm performance

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design

The study uses data obtained from surveying over 100k participants. The participants are randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, with 50,000 in treatment and the rest 50,000 in control. Baseline surveys are conducted at launch and the endline surveys are conducted every 3 months for a year.
Experimental Design Details
The study uses data obtained from surveying over 100k participants. The participants are randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, with 50,000 in treatment and the rest 50,000 in control. Baseline surveys are conducted at launch and the endline surveys are conducted every 3 months for a year. This will allow us to measure outcomes both in the short term and the long term. It will also help us construct even study models for tracking user behavior.
Randomization Method
Computer randomization for selection into a treatment group
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
N/A
Sample size: planned number of observations
100000 users
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
50000 users in treatment and control each
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials