Rate My Professor David Turner

David Turner serves as Senior Analyst in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. He is affiliated with Otago's Faculty of Law, contributing to research through the Legal Issues Centre. Turner's work focuses on online legal information self-help (OLISH) to enhance access to justice in Aotearoa New Zealand. In 2020, alongside Dr. Bridgette Toy-Cronin, he co-authored the report 'Online Legal Information Self-Help in Aotearoa: An agenda for action,' funded by the New Zealand Law Foundation and the Michael and Suzanne Borrin Foundation. The report reviews international OLISH deployments, highlighting collaborative models and iterative innovations. It addresses New Zealand's justice gap, where 63% of people encountered legal problems according to a 2017 study, with nearly half facing hardship due to unaffordable services or ineligibility for legal aid. Key recommendations include fostering cooperation among judiciary, legal profession, community organizations like Community Law and Citizens Advice Bureau, and government entities; establishing a shared mission; developing a portal website with guided pathways; implementing joint funding; conducting user research; and prioritizing design elements such as findability, issue identification, understandable information, action options, and barrier mitigation including accessibility and anxiety reduction.

In the same year, Turner co-authored 'An Evaluation of Legal Information Chatbots: Useability, Utility, and Accuracy' with Dr. Bridgette Toy-Cronin and Dawn Duncan under the Faculty of Law. His contributions extend to initiatives like an online hub for OLISH providers, offering resources on user needs, assessment criteria, progress measures, privacy standards, and hosting forums such as the New Zealand OLI Forum. Through these efforts, Turner advances strategies for effective, empowering legal self-help tools tailored to diverse users, including te reo Māori support, complementing traditional services.