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

On Thursday, July 2nd at 11 am PT / 2 pm ET LSNTAP will host a Roundtable with Brian Lawlor, Regional Counsel for Legal Services of Northern California, who will discuss "Findability and the Google Search Paradigm: Integrating Search as a Organizational Solution." This discussion is based on LSNC’s Findability Project, an effort to integrate (and document) enterprise search in a large nonprofit legal services organization. Registration details are availble here and Brian's presentation is available here. -M

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Today, West announced two new websites with resources for lawyers.

• Do Justice. This site is an entry point for law firms that want to use Westlaw for their pro bono cases. West hopes to donate more than $12 million of Westlaw access to law firms in 2009.
• Between Cases. A resource for unemployed lawyers, this site offers job search tools and training materials. Also, it has information for lawyers who want to continue or start to provide pro bono legal services.

The full press release is available at PR Newswire. -K

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Did you know that when you search the Web with Google, you are searching only about 0.2 percent of the Web. The remainder, more than 66,800 terabytes, is part of the Deep Web, or the part of the Web that search engines haven't indexed. (For reference, 1 terabyte is 50,000 trees made into paper and printed.)

So what does the Deep Web contain? According to Wikipedia,

• Dynamic content: pages that are created on the fly.
• Unlinked content: pages that aren't linked to and don't link to any other content.
• Private Web: password-protected pages.
• Contextual Web: pages that display different content depending on who or what you are.
• Limited access content: pages protected by CAPTCHAs or other technical methods.
• Scripted pages: pages that are accessible only through links produced by JavaScript.
• Non-HTML/text content: content in file formats not handled by search engines.

A lot of researchers are examining how to access this invisible content. Last week, one potential contender in the race to expose the Deep Web launched, DeepDyve. This search engine is using techniques used in the field of genomics, an approach that differs significantly from Google's approach. The company behind the search engine is marketing it as a research engine. So while it works for searches that bring up movie times, hockey game scores, and so on, DeepDyve aims to help researchers do better research.

Unfortunately, I don't do a lot of scholarly research, so I turned to the first academic that I thought of--my Dad--and found that he is cited in Wikipedia. But that doesn't really tell me whether DeepDyve is better at research than Google. So I'd love to hear from some of you who do more research than I do. What do you think of DeepDyve? - K

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Today (June 24) the Hawaii Access to Justice Commission held their 2009 Access to Justice Conference (PDF). Chief Justice John T. Broderick of the New Hampshire Supreme Court was the keynote speaker. Because of David Raatz, an attorney in attendance, you can see the highlights without the trip to Hawaii.

A few highlights:

• Courts aren't meeting their obligations because of failure to use tech & make other changes - NH Chief Justice Broderick #AccesstoJustice
• It's not people's fault that they can't afford atty. Judges/attys need to speak about problem - NH Chief Justice Broderick #AccesstoJustice
• Widening justice gap won't close on its own. Everyone from White House on down should help. - NH Chief Justice Broderick #AccesstoJustice

To see the rest, search Twitter for #AccesstoJustice. - K

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The Legal Services National Technology Assistance Project (LSNTAP) today released an interactive report based on their 2008 technology survey of the software and hardware being used by nonprofit legal services programs. The report website allows you to filter survey results, rate products and vendors, update survey answers for your organization and export survey data. According to the survey, 31% of respondents reported that their program uses a wiki, 46% of respondents reported that their program uses HotDocs, nearly 50% of respondents reported that they use VOIP, and 50% of respondents reported using web conferencing to attend or host remote presentations. A summary of the survey results are available here. -M

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Twice a year, IncisiveMedia holds legal technology tradeshows: one in Los Angeles and one in New York City. These tradeshows feature an enormous exhibit hall as well as presentations from industry leaders.

This week, LegalTech West Coast starts on Wednesday, June 24 and runs through Thursday, June 25. If you're in the Los Angeles area, you can get a free pass to the exhibit hall and keynotes. And for those who won't be in LA, you can follow #LTWC on Twitter or check out the keynote presentations from LegalTech New York, which happened in February 2009. (You can even get CLE credit.) - K

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I’ve recently started using Format Factory to convert video, audio and images and have been really impressed with the results. It supports conversions to (and from) all popular formats, including:

• Video: MP4/3GP/MPG/AVI/WMV/FLV/SWF
• Audio: MP3/WMA/AMR/OGG/AAC/WAV
• Image: JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO/GIF/TGA

While the user interface isn’t perfect, it’s fairly intuitive and has worked flawlessly for me so far (which is more than I can say for any other converter that I have used). Format Factory is available free for download here. -M

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Recognizing that nonprofits have integrated teleconferences, videoconferences, and webinars into their daily routine,  The Goodman Center, which helps nonprofit organizations improve their communications with funders, stakeholders, and the public, surveyed the community to find out the good, the bad, and the ugly about these events. The result: Dialing In, Logging On, Nodding Off: The True Costs of Teleconferences, Videoconferences and Webinars, a report that suggests the nonprofit community has a lot of not-so-good meetings, trainings, and conferences.

The Goodman Center is sponsoring a webinar on July 17, 2009 to review the results of their report. Registration information is available on The Goodman Center's website. - K

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Jayne Cravens, a leader in the non-profit technology space, is updating The Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, which looks at best practices for working with and supporting online volunteers.

As part of the process, she's gathering information about what tools organizations have used to support online volunteers--people who provide "some kind of work support without pay to a nonprofit organization, community-based group (such as a school), or government initiative focused on the community (such as a city-sponsored park cleanup)." So if you've been a volunteer or worked with volunteers, please take a minute to complete her survey and let her know about your experience. - K

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In April, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati sent the legal community into a tizzy when they launched a tool that lets the public generate contract term sheets. But today, the New York State Unified Court System and Legal Assistance of Western New York (LawNY) topped WSGR's term sheet generator.

Justice Fern A. Fisher, Director of the New York State Courts Access to Justice Program and C. Kenneth Perri, Executive Director of Legal Assistance of Western New York announced the release of three new computer programs that will help New Yorkers navigate the legal system. These DIY (Do It Yourself) programs ask straight-forward questions to help users prepare individualized court forms and instructions. (Read the full press release.)

Now self-represented litigants can get help filling out a Support Modification Petition for Family Court, the Small Estates Affidavit for Surrogate's Court, and the Adult Name Change Petition for Supreme Court online.

As a warning, I am a bit biased. I've been working with the New York Courts on this project for almost three years as part of my day job at Pro Bono Net. So I'm particularly excited to see it launch! - K

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Laura Quin at Idealware recently compared various collaboration tools, including options that support informal conversations, online presentations, information sharing and long-term projects. She also created the above chart to help you to navigate your options and discusses how to choose the right software for your project. Read the full article here. -M

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In an effort to reduce excess inventory, the American Bar Association is offering its comprehensive fundraising manual, "Innovative Fundraising Ideas for Legal Services (2004)," for one dollar (plus shipping and handling). The manual "provides information on 30 initiatives for developing funding to support the delivery of civil legal services to the poor" and "offers a user-friendly overview of each fundraising strategy, examples of successful implementation, and the names of individuals who can be contacted to further discuss each initiative described." To place an order, visit the ABA Web Store here. -M

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The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) offers LSC-funded legal aid programs free annual memberships that include

• access to 700+ legal tutorials;
• site license use of CALI Author, the tool used to create CALI's legal tutorials; and
• discounted registration for the Conference for Law School Computing.

With reduced training budgets, these free memberships could be a great way for legal aid staff to review important legal concepts and develop training materials for self-study. - K

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Have you looked at the Supreme Court of the United States website recently? It's not very user friendly, the available information is limited, and the design is a bit dated.

And I'm not the only person who thinks so. The Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan nonprofit that works "to foster more openness and accountability in government," recently suggested that the site should be redesigned and recommended ways that the Supreme Court can "make the Court’s proceedings transparent, incorporate modern design principles, and meet the higher expectations of today’s web user." The resulting mock ups are beautiful and suggest several great ways to make the site more useful.

Fortunately, it also sounds like the Court recognizes the limitations of its current site and has asked for funding for a site redesign. Personally, I'd love to see the Court work with the Sunlight Foundation to implement a version of these designs. What a great opportunity to open the courthouse doors and save money at the same time! - K

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Interested in learning more about social network sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn? Then sign up for one or more of these free sessions about social networking and social media.

• On June 10, 2009 at 2:00 pm Eastern, Care2 is hosting "Share the Story: High Impact Ways to Integrate Social Media into Your Advocacy and Fundraising Campaigns." This session will demonstrate at how nonprofit programs can integrate social media into their campaigns by examining the lessons learned by World Society for the Protection of Animals- Canada. Register for Care2's session here.
• On June 11, 2009 at 2:00 pm Eastern, LSNTAP is hosting an Executive Roundtable on social networking policies. This session is aimed at Executive Directors and Administrators. Find out how to participate on the LSNTAP site.
• On June 17, 2009 at 2:00 pm Eastern, NTEN is hosting "You're All a-Twitter," a free webinar about Twitter that will walk through the basics of what it is and how to use it. Register on the NTEN site. - K

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The Nonprofit Technology Network, together with the Nonprofit Times, released its 3rd annual report on IT staffing and spending today. You can download it here. [Note that submitting your name and email address is required to download the report.] -M

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The ability to visually represent data is an important tool for advocacy, fundraising, and reporting. Below are a few free online tools that will allow you to quickly create graphs, charts and other visualizations.

• Google Docs – Google Docs has Charts and Widget features that allow you to create graphs and charts that can be shared and embedded into websites.
• ManyEyes – This online tool (and community) allows you to easily upload data sets that can be made into a variety of charts and other visualizations, but requires that you publish your data online. It’s also a great place to find visualizations of census and other public data.
• DabbleDB – Allows you to create simple online databases as well as graphs and charts based on your data. It’s free if you share your data or $8 per user a month if you don’t.

Other online tools for creating graphs and charts include Swivel, iCharts and WidGenie. Google Docs, Many Eyes and DabbleDB were also covered in the “50 Tech Tips for Tough Economic Times” session at the 2009 EJC conference. [H/T to Laura Quinn for inspiring this post.] -M

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When my husband has the perfect idea for a gift, he gets excited and can barely keep it secret. If the gift's for me, he pesters me until I guess what it is. Usually, the guessing lasts for a while, but this year, I figured out what I was getting for my March birthday by the middle of January: a Kindle, Amazon's wireless reading device.

He had a long list of reasons why a Kindle was perfect for me--less to print, less to tote around, fewer trips to the bookstore, and more room in our house for things besides books and book storage. I, on the other hand, was not nearly as certain. I had hoped for a tricycle, a new cell phone with a data plan, or a high-end firewall. An expensive e-reader wasn't on my list. I like how books smell, and I like to turn pages and take notes in the margins. And I don't like reading from computer screens. After mulling it over, I told my husband that I didn't think that I'd like the Kindle, but he convinced me to give it a try.

And he was right. I love my Kindle. I read more, especially more documents that I would have had to print before. Now, I e-mail those documents to my Kindle. (I may have saved an entire forest from destruction in the four months that I've had my Kindle.) I take more notes, too, because I can highlight and annotate text on the Kindle and transfer it directly to my computer--no re-writing or re-typing. The best part: with Kindlefeeder, I can send articles from my favorite blogs directly to my Kindle.

Turns out, I'm not the only person in the poverty law community who has a Kindle. Carol Garner at LawAccess New Mexico has a Kindle, too. She's hunted down some great resources for Kindle owners: Kindle Boards, The Kindle Warehouse, and MobileRead Forums. And John Mayer, the Executive Director of CALI, is expecting his Kindle DX any day. More broadly, the National Center for State Courts has suggested that e-readers could be great for judges, who need to read a lot and interact with their documents.

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Want to help the Online Document Assembly Project win $5,000 cash and $25,000 worth of donated software in Microsoft's and TechSoup's Show Your Impact contest? Yes? Great!

It's easy. You just need to vote for the "Increasing Access to Justice" entry in Microsoft's and TechSoup's Show Your Impact contest by June 10, 2009. Here's how:

1. Go to Microsoft Impact Story Contest.
2. Register or log in.
3. Vote for "Increasing Access to Justice" in the Transformations to Maximize Impact category.
4. Vote for at least 2 other programs. (Preferably, your two other choices are in other categories.)
5. Cast your ballot.
6. Tell your friends to vote.

The first round of judging is by the public, or more specifically any individual from a Microsoft donation recipient organization, TechSoup or Microsoft, and any of those individuals' friends, family or contacts. (If you are reading this post, you qualify.) To move on to the second round, the "Increasing Access to Justice" entry needs to be one of the top nine voted-for entries in the Transformations to Maximize Impact category. So please vote!

Need to know more about Online Document Assembly, the project that consumes my days, before you vote? Check out the profile that The Chronicle of Philanthropy published in February.  -K

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The Equal Justice Conference is over, the TIG deadline has passed, and Memorial Day has come and gone, meaning summer is officially here. If you've planned to spend some of your lazy summer hours catching up on Technola's posts, here is the list of May's best.

• Using Video to Share Your Story
• Free Friday: More Online Case Law
• More File Converters
• Tech Tip: Find Out Who Links to Your Site
• Teen Choice of Social Network Sites

And if you're looking for some additional reading, check out these posts:

• Is SaaS more secure? - Idealware
• Saas and Security - the Response! - Idealware
• Nonprofit Website Mistakes: Lack of Transparency - The Nonprofit Consultant Blog
• How to Live Blog (Or Twitter) An Event Effectively - Social Media Today

Happy Reading! - K

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