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

Illinois Legal Aid Online will once again be webcasting several live sessions from the LSC TIG conference, which takes place next week. Below is a list of sessions and links. To view the live webcasts click on the link at the scheduled time. Note that all times are Central.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

9:15am-10:30am
Opening Plenary: Generational Approaches to Change and Technology Adaptation

10:45 am-12:15pm
Emerging Trends in Technology

2:00pm-3:30pm
Knowledge Management - What It Is, Why It Matters, and Options For Making What You Know Findable

3:45pm-4:45pm
Mission-Based Technology Planning

Thursday, January 14, 2010

9:00am-10:30am
The New Frontier of Intake - Enhancing Intake with Online Tools

10:45am-12:15pm
E-Discovery Jeopardy

1:15pm-2:15pm
Ignite Session - Show and Tell of Technology Projects

2:30pm-3:45pm
Strategic Planning for Telephone Systems - How-to's and Examples

4:00pm-5:00pm
Pro Se Clinics and Document Assembly

Friday, January 15, 2010

9:00am-10:00am
NTAP and Pro Bono Net Updates

10:15am-11:00am
BTOP and Other Funding Sources

11:15am-12:00pm
TIG Updates from LSC

A calendar of sessions is also available here. -M

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Several upcoming events of note:

• She's Geeky DC - November 13 & 14, 2009 - Washington, DC
  Techie women from the DC area are meeting up. It's an unconference, so no agenda will be announced prior to the event, but look here for a sneak peak at potential agenda items. (Cost: Starting at $55. Register here.)
• Tech Training Made Simple with Online Videos - November 18, 2009 - Online
  At this TechSoup webinar, Stephanie Gerding will interview Lee LeFever of Common Craft about how their amazing "In Plain English" videos are created. (Cost: Free. Register here.)
• Virtual LegalTech - November 19, 2009 - Online
  ALM is hosting an online version of their LegalTech Trade Show with both presentations and exhibitors. Two particular presentations of note: IT Leadership in Turbulent Times and the Microsoft Boot Camp at 3 pm and 4 pm Eastern, respectively. (Cost: Free to qualified attendees. Register here.)
• O'Reilly Gov 2.0 Online Conference - December 10, 2009 - Online
  An online version of O'Reilly's popular Gov 2.0 conferences, this 3.5 hour session will focus on five projects: City of Santa Cruz Budget Crisis-A Blueprint Using Social Media, txts 4 africa, Transit 2.0 at Bart.gov; Utah Department of Public Safety Media Portal, and Digital Diplomacy. (Cost: Free. Register here.)
• LSC Technology Initiative Grant Conference - January 13 - 15, 2010 - Austin, Texas
  The agenda for the LSC TIG Conference hasn't been announced yet, but like previous years, it's expected to be filled with great information. In addition to the conference, LSC TIG staff have been planning a week full of activities, including a document assembly training hosted by Pro Bono Net on January 11 and 12 and the MIE National Conference for Legal Services Administrators on January 12 and 13. (Cost: Not free. Registration available soon.)
• Nonprofit 2.0 - February 12, 2010 - Washington, DC
  This is another unconference, but this one is for people interested in using social media to create networked communities. Randi Zuckerberg, who is responsible for Creative & Buzz Marketing, Politics, and Social Change at Facebook, and Amanda Rose, the Twestival Co-Founder, will be keynoting. (Cost: $47.12. Register here.)

And a couple of conferences that have already happened but have materials that are worth checking out.

• TedxMidAtlantic -  Videos from the MidAtlantic version of TED are now available. (TED is known for "Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.") I recommend Sonja Sohn's talk, but then again, I'm a huge fan of both Baltimore and The Wire.
• Facebook, Twitter & Blogging...Oh MySpace! - The Pennsylvania Bar Institute brought together lawyers to talk about social networking and media. You can see the tweets from the event.

Any important events that I missed? - K

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

LSC published a detailed list of the awarded 2009 TIGs on its website. This list contains both project descriptions as well as the amounts awarded. - K

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks

I sat in on several great sessions at the NLADA Annual Conference. While most weren't technology sessions, technology was nicely woven in to all of the presentations.

LSC Updates - Helaine Barnett, Karen Sarjeant, John Constance
I missed the first few minutes of the session, but I did arrive in time to hear Helaine Barnett talk about the LSC technology survey and the resulting guidelines document, Technologies That Should Be in Place in a Legal Aid Office Today, which was recently released. LSC is working to support grantees as they implement the outlined technologies. In particular, they worked with LexisNexis to develop a HotDocs software donation program and have funded the national document assembly project (NPADO) to support programs implementing document assembly initiatives. Through TIG, LSC provided funding for an updated version of the case management system report as well as a rating system for hardware, software, and vendors. LSC is also looking at identifying additional training opportunities and, as a part of this, will be webcasting parts of the TIG conference. In order to ensure that programs are looking at using technology to improve their service delivery, a technology plan will become a required part of an LSC grant application as was previously mentioned on Techno.la. Additional technology-related news that was mentioned: LSC will shortly be sending check notices electronically; 33 TIGs were awarded; and LSC has funded the development of a website that focuses on legal issues for active military and veterans.

Client Use of Technology: 2008 Updates - Gene Donney, Kathleen Brockel
Gene led a great session about Internet use. (His slides are available on the LSNTAP.org site.) It was one of the most interactive sessions that I've participated in for a while. And Kathleen was an amazing Vanna White! My take aways:

• The digital divide still exists, but it is getting smaller.
• Our clients are using technology with us or without us, and we need to adapt, so that we can better serve them. For example, another attendee told the story of being asked to send a homeless client a text message rather than phone him because it cost less on a pre-paid cell phone. This is simple and can provide significant benefit to the client.
• Legal aid has to provide more than one way of accessing its services. I will be the first to acknowledge that technology is not the solution for everything. Some communities, like migrant workers, can be best reached through in-person intake; others can easily access legal aid through hotlines. In the same way, online intake can act as an important funnel for others--homeless families who don't have access to a phone because public telephones are disappearing and people who turn to the Internet for resources first.

That's all for today. Check back later this week for more. - K

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks (1)

"A new Web site launched by four national legal organizations will help victims of disasters find valuable information and assistance to speed recovery from hurricanes, fires, floods or other disasters. The site is sponsored by the American Bar Association, Legal Services Corporation, National Legal Aid & Defender Association and Pro Bono Net." You can read the full press release here and visit the new site here. -M

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks (1)

Texas legal aid organizations and the Houston Bar Association are using LiveHelp to assist Texans affected by Hurricane Ike in obtaining free legal information:

The new service ... is available now and enables Hurricane Ike victims to conduct a live online chat with attorneys recruited by the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program. Attorneys will answer questions and also refer those seeking help to legal resources specific to FEMA appeals and other disaster-related issues.

Funding for this project was provided by the Texas Access to Justice Foundation. The LiveHelp project was funded by the Legal Services Corporation and developed by Pro Bono Net. For more information about this project, read the full press release here. For more information about LiveHelp, contact Liz Keith (lkeith at probono.net). -M

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

The Northwest Justice Project just announced new online interactive court forms for pro se users to file a divorce petition with no minor children of the marriage. Future forms available on WashingtonLawHelp.org will include interviews for finishing your divorce, a domestic violence protection order and a demand letter for return of a rental security deposit. This work is funded by a grant from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and the Washington Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC). They use A2J Author, developed by the Center for Access to Justice & Technology (CAJT) at Chicago-Kent College of Law and the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI), LexisNexis's HotDocs Professional, and the LSC-funded national document assembly server (NPADO), a project of Pro Bono Net. -M

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

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

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

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

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks (1)

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

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks (1)

The Legal Services Corporation and LexisNexis have announced the launch of the HotDocs® software donation program:

The new donation program will strengthen the important national online document assembly project that LexisNexis, LSC and the State Justice Institute have nurtured to provide access to justice for low-income Americans. LSC initiated that program, known as National Public Automated Documents Online (NPADO), in 2001 with a grant to the Ohio State Legal Services Association that developed a system in which legal aid programs use HotDocs® Professional Edition to create easy-to-use guided document assembly interviews from existing forms. Interviews are then uploaded to a national server, allowing users to assemble professional-looking legal documents.

Any LSC or state IOLTA funded legal services organization can request a donation using the program's website. -M

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks (1)

LSC recently released its 2007 Fact Book, which contains a wealth of information on client demographics, private attorney involvement and staffing at LSC-funded organizations. According the Fact Book, there were 116 full-time IT Managers at LSC-funded organizations in 2007, with an average salary of $50,959 (comparable to that of a Staff Attorney at $51,680).

Only 30% of IT Managers were women, which is just slightly higher than the overall percentage of women in professional IT industry positions (26% in 2007, according to the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology). Comparatively, women at LSC-funded organizations represented approximately 82% of Paralegals, 67% of Staff Attorneys, 60% of Supervising Attorneys, 54% of Managing Attorneys, 48% of Deputy Directors, and (notice a trend here?) 32% of Executive Directors.

With regards to race, approximately 62% of IT Managers at LSC-funded organizations in 2007 were Caucasian, 14% African American, 14% Latino, 8% Asian/Pacific Islander and 3% Native American. In 2004, African Americans made up approximately 9% of the overall professional IT workforce, Asians 9% and Latinos just under 6% (NCWIT 2007 Scorecard). Finally, about 8% of IT Managers at LSC-funded organizations were attorneys and their average number of years in the profession was 13.3 (3.3 years longer than the average Staff Attorney and 4.9 years less than the average Supervising Attorney). -M

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

You've probably heard the news. The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) intends to require a technology plan as part of its 2010 grant competition. Perhaps this news has made you happy in that you now have a good reason to get started. Or perhaps it just made you cry, rant and rave, quake in your boots or giggle hysterically. How are you going to get this done on top of everything else? And what's a technology plan anyway? Don't worry. Here's a list of free resources to help you along.

• Statewide Technology Planning Manual - The resource for technology planning in the legal aid community. LSNTAP drafted this manual to help legal aid programs develop technology plans without hiring a consultant.
• Path to Successful Technology Planning - A free webinar on June 5, 2008 from TechSoup.org. TechSoup.org is a technology community that provides free technology resources and support to the nonprofit community. They also run TechSoup Stock, which provides discounted or free technology products to nonprofits. In addition to the training, or if you can't attend, make certain to check out TechSoup.org's technology planning center.
• How to Cost and Fund ICT - A technology planning guidebook. It gets to the point of a technology plan - finding out what your technology costs and how you are going to get the money to fund it - and provides some great worksheets and checklists for you to use as a part of the process. I'll admit that I've only scanned this document and haven't read it thoroughly, but Beth Kanter and Marc Osten, its authors, are known for providing high quality content.

I hope that this gives you a handle on what technology planning involves and a few resources to get your plan started. - K

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks (1)

"Faced with increased demands for legal assistance from low-income Americans, several representatives of legal aid groups will appear before a congressional panel later today to help make the case for additional funding." More here.

LSC President, Helaine Barnett, and Board Chairman, Frank Strickland, last month testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee to present the case for a $471 million budget request for FY 2009, including $5 million for the Technology Initiative Grants Program (TIG). The full FY 2009 budget request is available here. -M

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks