CS-SIS Breakfast Meeting: Connecting Big Dots

John Mayer, Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction

There are a number of "big dots" with problems to solve.

Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is an organization funded by federal government that gives money to organizations who provide legal aid to low income people. The federal government is currently shrinking, so LSC must find ways to become more efficient.

Courts are seeing an increasing number of people representing themselves. This forces judges to serve as law professors for litigants in their courtrooms.

Law libraries are being used less and less by lawyers, but more and more by the general public. This forces librarians to instruct inexperienced pro se patrons in how to perform legal research.

Law students, as always, need more on-the-ground experience while in law school to prepare them for practice.

There has to be a way to connect these dots and solve their problems simultaneously...

Recently, LSC decided to require legal aid organizations within a single state to join forces on a single website in order to receive funding. One example of this is probono.net, where organizations receive web space on the site using a content management system. Another is Illinois Legal Aid Online, a site for legal aid organizations in Illinois that provides information designed for three different audiences: pro se patrons, pro bono attorneys, and legal aid attorneys.

The Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) became involved in these projects through The Center for Access to Justice and Technology (A2J) at Chicago-Kent College of Law. A2J walks pro se users through the process of filling out a legal form rather than just giving them a blank form. The system takes things one question at a time, explaining information one issue at a time. To aid in the creation of these systems, CALI created A2J Author, which allows creators of A2J content to break a form down into a series of steps using a graphical interface to simplify the authoring process. When a law changes, or if a different jurisdiction reuses another's form, it is a simple process to make changes. As with CALI Lesson authoring system, an A2J author can view the entire form process as flow chart.

When an A2J user finishes a form, the system currently sends the answers provided into a HotDoc system that generates a completed hard copy of the form that the user can print and file themselves. The next logical step for CALI and A2J is automated electronic filing of these forms.

Currently, pro bono efforts typically involve courts, legal services, and legal education, but there needs to be a way to involve law libraries and lawyers in this process -- and to get law students involved while they're still in school. CALI is still trying to develop a way to make this happen.

So far, members of the organization have brainstormed many interesting (and sometimes humorous) ideas so far, but none have been workable. These include:

Virtual Legal Aid
A system for providing legal aid online that is similar to virtual reference service in libraries.

MyLawsuitSpace.com
A website where users could help one another with various legal problems. Of course, this leads to problems with the unauthorized practice of law, but people are already using the web for legal advice anyway.

Law students as "pre-authors"
Student writing explanatory text about the law.

Mentor eBay
Need legal help? Post your problem and price you're willing to pay for help. Attorneys then bid to take your case.

YouTube Law Guides
Online video tutorials about the law. (There is already one judge who is posting his sentencing hearings on YouTube.)

There are many problems with connecting these big dots in a single legal aid project. For one, different jurisdictions and local practices make online resources problematic. With the internet, there is always the risk of unauthorized practice of law (though this warning may just be protectionist propaganda by local attorneys who perceive online services as competition for clients. The quality of online information is always questionable, so there needs to be some evaluation of authority (and aren't librarians in a perfect position to help with this already?). There are also a number of second order effects that will be created by the online system CALI envisions, including electronic filing and an increase in lawsuits, and these must all be taken into account. There is also the question of how to provide incentives to students to encourage them to participate. Paying them is problematic, which leaves course credit as the only other obvious alternative.