About Nā Alanui Kōkua

What this is

Nā Alanui Kōkua is a public-facing entry point that translates a resident's plain-language question ("I got a ticket", "I need a restraining order") into a guided workflow in any of 16 languages. It sits in front of eCourt Kōkua and JEFS — it does not replace them.

• Unified situation-based front door for all six counties and four circuits.
• Plain-language traffic citation navigator with deadline warnings and ability-to-pay calculator.
• Safety-first TRO/protective-order navigator with device-trail warnings and one-tap exit.
• Kōkua Assistant — Claude Sonnet over Hawaii-specific knowledge base, bounded to refuse legal advice.
• Language picker reaches all 16 Hawaii Self-Help languages; this Phase 0 ships 5 (en, ilo, tl, es, ja).

Why no one else has shipped this

The closest commercial offerings — Tyler Modria, Journal Technologies, LegalAtoms, AZPOINT — all serve a different buyer (court-facing case management or single-workflow A2J Author packets) and none of them ships a unified, multilingual, safety-aware, AI-bounded public front door:

• Tyler Modria. ODR (online dispute resolution) for small claims. Used by 13 county courts in Hawaii but never as a state-level navigator. Closed source. No language layer beyond English/Spanish.
• Journal Technologies (eCourt). The court-of-record CMS — strong on back-office, weak on public-facing workflows. Already powers eCourt Kōkua. Nā Alanui Kōkua complements rather than replaces it.
• LegalAtoms. Best-in-class A2J Author-style guided interviews for protective orders. Single workflow, no unified front door, no AI assistant, narrow language coverage.
• AZPOINT (Arizona). Statewide protective-order portal — but Arizona-specific, no AI, no traffic citation workflow.
• DoNotPay. The cautionary tale. FTC settled with them for $193,000 in Feb 2025 (5-0 Commission vote) for false "AI lawyer" claims. Every PRD "do-not" constraint exists to keep us on the opposite side of that line.

The evidence

• SMS reminders reduce failure-to-appear

  NYC ideas42 + University of Chicago Crime Lab (2018): redesigned summons + SMS reduced FTA by 36%. Santa Clara County RCT (Chohlas-Wood et al., Science Advances 2025): bench warrants dropped from 12.1% to 9.7% with text reminders.

• Ability-to-pay programs improve compliance

  California Judicial Council MyCitations (statewide ATP for traffic): reductions granted to applicants at or below 250% FPL. Hawaii residents face one of the nation's highest costs of living; 125% of the Hawaii FPL is the conservative threshold modeled here.

• Safety-aware design saves lives

  Only Washington (WashingtonLawHelp.org) currently warns survivors that "computer use leaves a trail" and links to techsafety.org — and that warning sits on a legal aid site, not a court. Building this into the Judiciary's own platform, in 16 languages, is unprecedented.

• Plain-language redesign matters

  The NYC summons redesign that drove the 36% FTA reduction was not a technology change — it was language and layout. Every screen in this prototype is written at a 6th-grade reading level.

Three-phase roadmap

1. Phase 0
   Phase 0 (this prototype, ~2 weeks): Front door + traffic citation + TRO + Kōkua + 5 languages. Static knowledge base. Ready to demo and to use as the RFI artifact.
2. Phase 1
   Phase 1 (3–4 months): JEFS read API integration for live case status and hearing dates; eCourt Kōkua payment hand-off; all 16 languages translated + human-reviewed; pgvector RAG over scraped HRS + Hawaii Court Rules + Judicial Council guidance; SMS reminders via Twilio.
3. Phase 2
   Phase 2 (6–9 months): One-tap JEFS e-filing of court-ready TRO petitions; new workflows (small claims, name change, jury duty, eviction defense); LASH advocate hand-off; staff dashboard for interpreter scheduling and ATP review.