Digital Legal Application Office
Making judicial services available online, without media discontinuities
Every local court in Germany operates what is known as a legal application office. Constituents can visit in person to file lawsuits or petition for assistance with legal counsel. Many people are unaware that these offices exist. Not only is there a visibility problem, there are also barriers to access.
Together with the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV), our goal is to create an online clearinghouse for constituents’ interactions with civil and administrative law, so that these services are readily available and can be requested and used digitally. At the same time, petitioners should have ways to get answers about the relevant service (such as assistance with legal counsel or procedural costs), learn about their options, and get data to the court directly. The overarching goal here is to give constituents a simple way to connect digitally with the judicial system, while also relieving the strain on the courts. The project is a part of the digitalisation initiative for the justice system (German only) and a level project of the Federal Government's modernisation agenda(German only).
Status: Development
Go to the “Access to Justice” website (German only)
Go to the assistance with legal counsel website (German only)
Go to the assistance with legal costs website (German only)
Go to the protecting money in the event of account seizure website (German only)
Go to the certificate of inheritance website (German only)
Go to the Servicestandard peer review (German only)
Go to the GitHub repository
Special features
- Multi-award-winning project: winner of the 2024 Award for Good Administration (German only) and the 2025 Open Source Competition (German only)
- Participatory product development: Close cooperation with local courts and state justice ministries for joint testing and development activities
- Continuous discovery: Ongoing user research with the legal system and constituents, including visits to local courts
- Transparent work: Regular publication of project contracts, service standard reports, code, and news on project status
Facts and figures
Cooperation within the federal judicial ecosystem (with stakeholders including constituents, lawyers, state judicial administration bodies, academia)
60 interviews and 13 usability tests conducted to date (as of November 2023)
Various online services are now available on service.justiz.de, including those relating to legal advice (from 2023), legal aid (from 2024), bank account garnishment (from 2025) and certificates of inheritance (from 2026)
Dr. Marco Buschmann, Federal Minister of Justice ret.
Online procedures in the civil courts and digital clearinghouses for legal petitions create tools for obtaining modern access to the judicial system. (…) This not only makes it easier for people to reach the judicial system, but also strengthens constituents’ trust in democracy and the rule of law.
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