Technola : Public Interest Law & Technology Updates & Commentary : Matthew Burnett & Kate Bladow : Tech Advice for the Non-Profit Legal Sector

FreeRice.com, a website that helps you to improve your vocabulary while you provide food for the hungry, has been around for almost a year now. Supported by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the United Nations World Food Program, FreeRice.com has raised over 44 billion grains of rice, which is enough to provide over 2 million days worth of food for hungry people. It's a great example of how one website can have a powerful impact.

When I visited the site recently, I noticed that they had added additional subjects: world capitals, chemical symbols, and non-English languages (Spanish, German, Italian, and French). I suspect that for most legal aid attorneys, chemical symbols aren't particularly useful, but if you are working on improving any second or third languages, this is a great way to build vocabulary and to do some good at the same time. - K

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An item for the history fanatics among us: CNET UK put together a list of The 50 Most Significant Moments in Internet History. Included in the list are the proposal of TCP/IP, the release of Apache, and  the start up of Amazon. - K

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It's always helpful to have a few interesting fonts on hand to spruce up a report, distinguish your PowerPoint, or to help ensure that your marketing materials attract attention. Most fonts cost money, but not at dafont.com, where all of the fonts are absolutely free. To load a new font on your machine, first download the font and unzip it. Next, if you're using Vista, simply right-click on the font file and select "Install" (same goes for Mac OS X, but double click and select "Install font"). If you're using XP, just save the font file to C:\Windows\Fonts. After the font is is installed, you can select it from the drop-down list as you would any existing font on your machine.

And remember: just because you can use a fancy font doesn't mean that you should. Accessibility is important, so be sure to use fonts that are legible. -M

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I was just browsing an interesting new anthology, Rebooting America, which includes forty-four essays "brimming with the hopes of re-energizing, reorganizing, and reorienting our government for the Internet Age," and came across a name that should be familiar to some of you. Included in the volume is an essay by Gene Koo called "Creating Humane Codelaw," which pulls from his experience as a statewide website coordinator at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, where he "became aware of a computer system called Beacon used by the MA Department of Transitional Assistance (aka "welfare") to distribute various benefits such as food stamps to Massachusetts residents." Gene goes on to describe how "software that executes law ("codelaw") presents a number of challenges to a democracy," and provide some ideas about how to ensure that codelaw "remains accountable to the people." Also included in the anthology are essays by Yochai Benkler, Newt Gingrich, Craig Newmark, Howard Rheingold, Clay Shirky, and David Weinberger. -M

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Yesterday, I promised you more about the final panel discussion of the Court Leadership and Self-Represented Litigation track at the Court Solutions Conference: "Agenda for the Future." This panel featured Robert Baldwin, Executive Vice-President and General Counsel of the National Center for State Courts; Chief Justice John T. Broderick, Jr. of the New Hampshire Supreme Court; and Justice Laurie D. Zelon, Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal and was moderated by Richard Zorza.

The panel made some interesting points. First, they suggested that the community needs to broaden the conversation and make the public and politicians aware of the issue. This issue is one that affects the middle class and small businesses as well as low-income households. When speaking to attorneys on access-to-justice issues, Chief Justice Broderick frequently ask lawyers if they could afford to hire themselves and for how long. He usually gets knowing smiles. Without broadening support and making this a recognizable issue, courts are not going to get the support that they need to make the necessary changes.

Second, Chief Justice Broderick said that no issue should be more important to a chief justice than access to justice; instead, judges have been the "principle stumbling block." Self-represented litigants aren't going anywhere, and judges need to "get over it." Chief justices should be speaking out about the issue, and courts needs to be making changes before they start asking politicians for more money. (I suspect that this thought goes along with my theory of "If you don't care enough to put some money towards it, why should anyone else?")

Lastly, the panel encouraged the participants to focus the discussion on access for all and to refine the definition of the 100 percent access to justice. Chief Justice Broderick reminded the participants that not every problem needs a lawyer and not every problem will find a lawyer. And Robert Baldwin asked the group to remember to make the conversation about more than lawyers and money. - K

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As I mentioned in my previous post, the Court Leadership Package was launched at the Court Solutions Conference. By my count, around 180 people from across the United States and Canada as well as several other countries attended the Court Leadership and Self-Represented Litigation track. This was a great conference with ample time for networking and learning. For me, highlights from the conference included the following:

• Being reminded by Joseph Abbate, Senior Management Analyst at the New York Office of Court Administration, that plain language isn't just used or needed in the legal world. Plenty of other jargon needs to be made readable. He used Google's promotional materials for their new browser, Chrome, as an example.
• Listening to Jeanette Fedorak, Senior Policy Counsel for the Government of Alberta, assert that most Canadians, low-income and otherwise, can't afford to hire an attorney. Her argument: In Alberta the cost for a divorce ranges between $16,000 and $128,000 with the average being $44,000. The average income for the lowest 40 percent of Canadians is less than $44,000, and as expected, this group doesn't have a lot socked away in case of emergencies. The next 20 percent of Canadians aren't much better off. They make only $54,200 per year, and while their net worth is higher, most of their savings are invested in their house.  Her statistics paint a dismal picture.
• Supping with a group of document assembly enthusiasts at the Rusty Scupper.
• Attending a panel called "Agenda for the Future," which featured Robert Baldwin, Executive Vice-President and General Counsel of the National Center for State Courts; Chief Justice John T. Broderick, Jr. of the New Hampshire Supreme Court; and Justice Laurie D. Zelon, Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal. It was an inspiring session that I'll talk more about in another post.
• Lunching post-conference with Richard Zorza, Justice Zelon, and Bonnie Hough, Supervising Attorney for the Center for Families, Children & the Courts for the Judicial Council of California. All three are amazing access-to-justice advocates. Our conversation reminded me that no significant change happens overnight. It takes work and patience.

For those of you who weren't able to attend, the materials are now posted on SelfHelpSupport.org. Each of the modules includes slides with speaker's notes, project profiles, video clips, and activity and resource books. Also, thanks to Vince Morris, who kindly took on the role of videographer, all of the plenary sessions were filmed and, I hope, will be made available shortly to those who couldn't attend. If you only have a little bit of time, I recommend checking out the document assembly module - Deploying Automated Forms for Access. Granted, I might be biased considering my role in pulling the module together, but I think that one is the best. - K

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Rather than highlighting the usual free software and tools, this week I wanted to point out a great article published this month on Idealware by Peter Campbell (blog), the director of Information Technology at Earthjustice, which is likely to save you both time and money when making your next major software purchase (i.e. case management system or CRM solution). Also, while a RFP may not be appropriate, many of the issues that Peter discusses in the article also apply to not-so-major software and hardware purchases. -M

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An interesting AP article on the recent Pew Internet and the American Life Survey, "Teens, Video Games and Civics." The survey found that ninety-seven percent of young respondents play video games. That's 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls, with little difference in the percentages among various racial and ethnic groups and incomes." Will the Wii be the great equalizer? Only time will tell, but for now my wife and I still have to travel all the way to Baltimore to visit Kate and her husband for our marathon Rock Band sessions. -M

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For those of you on Twitter or who are considering joining Twitter, I've created a Legal Aid and Pro Bono Pack on TwitterPacks. TwitterPacks contains lists of who is talking about what on Twitter. I've added quite a few people to the list, but if your name isn't there and it should be, go ahead and add it. A couple of new additions to the legal aid and pro bono community that you might not be aware of  - the Shriver Center and Immigration Advocates Network. - K

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A great free online training opportunity from the Shriver Center:

The Editorial Team of Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, published by the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, invites you to attend this free, 75-minute webinar on Thursday, October 2, 2008, at 11 a.m. Pacific time, noon Mountain time, 1 p.m. Central time, 2 p.m. Eastern time.

Learn about how you can help clients who are tenants (including Section 8 tenants) in rental properties subject to foreclosure. (Please note a slight change since our "save the date" announcement--this webinar will focus primarily on strategies in nonjudicial foreclosure states.)

Presenters will be:

• Judith Liben, Senior Housing Attorney, Massachusetts Law Reform Insititute
• Esme Caramello, Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law School's WilmerHale Legal Services Center
• Maeve Elise Brown, Executive Director, Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, Oakland, California

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/488827822 After you register, you will receive the website address and call-in phone number that you will need to join the webinar.

If you have questions, please contact Shriver Center Staff Attorney-Legal Editor Catherine Dorn Schreiber at 909.793.2578.

-M

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The National Association for Legal Professionals (NALP) announced today that the median entry-level pay for legal aid attorneys is $40,000. The good news - it's up $6,000 from 2004 and $4,000 from 2006 . - K

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When looking at software, it's hard to tell the difference between what's good or bad on first glance, and unfortunately, bad software is a lot like a bad haircut--it takes a long time to fix what only took only minutes to wreck.

Enter the Social Source Commons, which serves as a platform for social activists and advocates to list the software that they use to get their jobs done. Need software to help with IM? Social Source Commons lists 33 tools and lets you see who had added each of those tools to their "toolbox." You can also search by person to see what a specific person uses. For example, Beth Kanter (Beth's Blog) or Holly Ross (NTEN).

Don't find what you were looking forward on Social Source Commons? You can also check out Ohloh, which lists open source software that people are using and contributing to; Free Software Directory, which is a project of the Free Software Foundation and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization that lists free software that runs under free operating systems; and Go2Web20.net, which lists Web 2.0 applications and services. - K

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I've always been a big fan of librarians. When I was younger, they would let me wander aimlessly through the stacks at Mayville State University, and they never said a word when I checked out a huge pile of books at the end of the day. However, I never necessarily thought of them as hip. (Note: I blame this on general librarian stereotypes, and the fact that to children of a certain age, adults are never hip.)

Last week at the Court Solutions Conference, I met a librarian that you couldn't help but call hip. Laureen Adams, from the Dougherty County Law Library, has taken the time to podcast so that the public has access to understandable legal information. Given the fact that she is the only staff person and is responsible for everything from watering the plants to reshelving books to helping patrons, this shows how dedicated she is and that she's thinking about how to incorporate new methods for providing the public with library services. Go, Laureen! - K

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If anyone is interested in or needs assistance with hurricane-related issues, they should check out The Hurricane Information Center. Put together by Andy Carvin from National Public Radio and a mess of people that he convinced to help, this website is a portal for all of the information that is flying around about this year's hurricanes. More information about this site is available here on the FastCompany site and here on the NPR site. And as Matthew mentioned last week, free legal assistance is being offered by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. You can stay up-to-date with their efforts either through their blog or by following them on Twitter. - K

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The American Judicature Society recognized Richard Zorza for his contributions to access to justice with the 2008 Kathleen M. Sampson Access to Justice Award. This award was presented last week at the Court Solutions Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. Congratulations, Richard! - K

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A press release from the Texas Legal Services Center on legal resources available for victims of Hurricane Ike. Also, be sure to check out the recently launched National Disaster Legal Aid website, a partnership of the ABA, NLADA, LSC, and Pro Bono Net. -M

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SurveyGizmo, an extremely full-featured online survey tool, is offering nonprofits a free 30-day trial of their Enterprise account. After that you have to either pay or switch to a free account, but as a nonprofit you can save 50% on their annual Pro or Enterprise accounts.

Remember also that the TIG-funded Poverty Law Survey Tool is available for free to nonprofit legal services programs. -M

[Thanks to Yann Toledano for the SurveyGizmo tip via TechSoup.]

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If you haven't seen it yet (it was just featured in this week's LSC update), be sure to read "Who's Putting a Price on Free Legal Aid?" by Terry Carter in the September issue of the ABA Journal, which looks at the problem of legal aid domain cybersquatting. To learn more about how cyber-piracy impacts the legal aid community and how to protect your program, check out these resources available on LSNTAP. -M

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As a follow-up to Kate's last post on National Support Centers, I thought that I would highlight some online resources available on the history of civil legal services in the United States.

A great place to start is the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), and specifically the work of Alan Houseman and Linda Perle, who together authored "Securing Equal Justice for All: A Brief History of Civil Legal Assistance in the United States" (PDF).  Also available on the CLASP website are "Civil Legal Aid in the United States: An Update for 2007" (PDF) and "The Future of Civil Legal Aid in the United States" (PDF), both by Houseman.

The NLADA website provides a brief history of civil legal aid and Wikipedia has a "Legal aid" category, which provides some background on a few state, national and foreign legal aid organizations.

On Google Book Search you'll find Justice and the Poor, by Reginald Heber Smith, and the excellent Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973, by Martha Davis. (And while not much of it is available online, I would also recommend Access to Justice, by Deborah Rhode.)

Finally, LSNTAP has compiled a number of resources that cover the history and role of technology in the legal aid community here.  -M

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Recently, the LSTech e-mail list had a brief, but interesting, conversation about the National Support Centers. I put the e-mails aside with the hope of later writing a more thorough post on their history. Unfortunately, tonight, when I got a chance to do some research, I wasn't able to find a lot of information.

The story that I can put together from the resources that I did find:

The National Support Centers were funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) to support legal services programs by creating materials, litigating on strategic cases, advocating before legislatures and Congress, and building a community of advocates knowledgeable about specific areas of law. During the Reagan era, a lot of Republicans didn't like federal money supporting legal aid and "think tanks for the radical left." While Reagan and his supporters didn't succeed in completely killing off LSC, they did get rid of funding for the National Support Centers. The National Support Centers had to turn to other funding sources to continue.

So, for those of you who lived through it, how did I do? What did I get wrong? Are there resources that I missed? - K

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Last month, Illinois Legal Aid Online, in partnership with the Public Interest Law Initiative's Pro Bono Initiative launched a series of web pages aimed at encouraging law students, federal government attorneys, retired attorneys, and paralegals to perform pro bono work. These pages contain content that is tailored to each of these groups, including a video showcasing other group members' pro bono experiences, articles that explain the issues around pro bono work, and a list of available volunteer opportunities. - K

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Within the self-help community, it is widely known that Tina Rasnow, the Coordinator of the Self-Help Legal Access Center at the Superior Court, County of Ventura, is passionate about increasing access to justice. In fact, this summer, the ABA recognized her with their 2008 Lawyer As Problem Solver Award.

What is not as widely known is that Tina is an author and has written a book to help increase access to justice in California - Norton Gets a Ticket. This short story is easy to understand and a cute way to help educate the public about traffic violations. - K

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WebAnywhere is a free web-based screen reader that doesn't require any special software, making the internet accessible to the blind from nearly any computer. Give it a try here. -M

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Today is the official launch of the Self-Represented Litigation Network Court Leadership Package, a set of tools that judges, court administrators, self-help facilitators, and others can use to educate their court and state about innovations in self-represented litigation. Topics that are covered include

• Court Self-Diagnosis and Strategies for Getting a Court Moving (Including Funding Issues)
• Establishing and Operating Self Help Centers
• Designing and Modifying Physical Space for Access
• Establishing Justice Corps and Volunteer Programs
• Training and Supporting Clerks for Access
• Developing and Deploying Forms and Instructions
• Deploying Automated Forms for Access
• Setting Up Case Management for the Self-Represented
• Working with Judicial Leadership
• Courtroom Staffing and Services for Access
• The Court Role in Establishing and Supporting Discrete Task Representation
• Supporting and Integrating Law Library Services
• Distance Service Technology
• The Limited English Proficiency Challenge
• Developing Systems to Facilitate and Ensure Compliance with Court Orders

These tools are being launched at the National Center for State Courts' Court Solutions Conference. People who are attending the Self-Represented Litigation Track will be trained to use these tools and have the opportunity to interact with experts and learn more about each of the areas.

For those of you who won't be in Baltimore at the conference, the materials will be posted on the SelfHelpSupport.org website in the next couple of months. If you will be at the conference, find me. I'll be there and helping out in a variety of roles. - K

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My mother-in-law subscribes to a wide variety of magazines, which are kept within arms reach of the couch. Since one of my favorite vacation activities is cozying up on a couch with a blanket and not leaving for long periods of time, I made my way through a several of them, including the Good Housekeeping September 2008 issue. This issue focuses on ways to save money and listed several free upcoming health screenings:

• September: Vascular disease sponsored by the Society of Interventional Radiology
• October: Depression sponsored by Mental Health America
• November: Memory sponsored by Alzheimer's Foundation of America
• February: Heart disease sponsored by Sister to Sister
• May: Skin cancer sponsored by American Academy of Dermatology
• On-Going: Asthma sponsored by American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology

While these aren't necessarily LSTech, I am using them to highlight a technology resource that advocates can use to help their clients and themselves - the websites of national and international associations that educate the public about medical conditions. You can use these websites to learn more about a condition that your client is suffering from, ascertain whether a condition supports an argument that you'd like to make, or even learn how to recognize symptoms in your clients. - K

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Other than a brief moment last Saturday night, I was off the 'Net for most of last week and was forced to turn to The Forum to stay in touch with world events. Compared to the quick, immediate reporting of Andy Carvin and the rest of Twitter, the coverage of Gustav and other national events was a bit frustrating, but I was pleasantly surprised with the subject matter of the stories that they are covering. For example:

• Life Preserver or Anchor? - A two-part series on payday loans and their affects, both positive and negative, on North Dakota consumers. Sunday's article included an overview of payday lending, while Monday's introduced an initiative that would use the funds from the Bank of North Dakota and credit unions to provide a payday loan alternative. Supplementary online material included video of a congressional hearing about payday lending in Indian Country and of Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner who provided small self-employment loans to alleviate poverty, speaking at Concordia College.

• Many Teens Sharing Pornographic Images - A story about teenagers using their cell phones to send naked pictures of themselves to others. One terrifying aspect of young people distributing these pictures is that the pictures are easily passed along and will be around for a very long time; a second is that those who send and have these pictures are disseminating and possessing child pornography. As Moorhead policeman Lt. Tori Jacobson told the reporter, "Right now, if an 18-year-old wants to have sex with a 17-year-old, that's OK, but as soon as he takes a picture of her, that's child pornography." Unfortunately, this is not simply a local issue but a national trend.

• Resources Can Help Stretch Dollars - A financial advice column that focused on how a mother of four could try to make ends meet after leaving her abusive spouse. Liz Weston, the columnist, provides an excellent list of resources for families struggling financially.

• Families in Economic Bind Turning to Public Libraries - An article that notes that more people are turning to public libraries to fulfill entertainment needs and save money. This is good news for public libraries since their funding often depends on visits and circulation. And for legal aid programs who are looking for outreach avenues, this makes public libraries an even more valuable partner.

If you are interested in keeping an eye on stories like these, or the news in Fargo, North Dakota, you can either add The Forum to your news reader or follow it on Twitter. - K

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The authors of The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell, have recently launched a companion blog and wiki that are well worth checking out if you're interested in learning how to better utilize technology to support collaboration as a lawyer or legal advocate. I happen to own the book, but I would recommend that you check out the blog and the wiki before you run out and buy it, as many of the tools covered in the book are also featured there. -M

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I just saw that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is using Twitter to send out alerts about field office closings, including the New Orleans District Office, which was closed due to Hurricane Gustav. For more on interesting uses of Twitter and other social media around Gustav, see this post by Beth Kanter. You can also follow technola on Twitter here. -M

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An interesting article from the ABA Journal that discusses the results of the ABA's annual Legal Technology Survey Report. -M

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