News and Views
Wikis for Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing
Communication is a significant challenge for groups working together toward a common goal. This is particularly true when the groups members are geographically remote, for example, members of a statewide task force, or colleagues working in a multi-office program. Collaboration requires information sharing, give and take among the group’s members, and opportunity for consensus building.
Email, […]
Some Popular Low-Cost Wiki Platforms
There are many choices for wiki platforms. Listed below are a few free or low-cost options that include most of the features desirable in a wiki to be used by a group for collaboration and information sharing.
MediaWiki
Open-source software package originally written for Wikipedia. Although the look and feel will be familiar to most users, since […]
Wikis for Lawyers
Lawyers in many settings, both within the legal aid community and without, have begun to develop wikis to share information on relevant topics and collaboration around legal issues. Below is a list of wikis in several areas, from wikis centered around legal aid issues to wikis run by courts, to wikis tracking legislation and legal […]
Michigan Reentry Law Wiki
Legal Aid of West Michigan has created the Michigan reentry law wiki, based on the manual Providing Civil Legal Assistance to People with Criminal Convictions in Michigan. This online version of the manual includes additional and updated information from its original paper source. Topics include cleaning up criminal records, child support, employment, financial aid for […]
Library of Congress Adds Features to THOMAS
The Library of Congress has released a beta revision to THOMAS, the web portal to federal legislative information. The beta version includes new features designed to help users find legislation more easily. For example, it is now possible to search all of THOMAS, including the current Congress and past Congresses, from one search box. Beta […]
Creating a Legislative Scorecard
What is a legislative scorecard?
Legislative scorecards are a useful tool for a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to update its members on policy issues of importance to the organization’s mission. Scorecards let the organization’s members know how legislators have voted on bills and what the organization thinks about the voting. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has strict […]
Really Simple Ways to Keep Up with News and Information
Overworked advocates for low-income people often struggle with information overload. What if you could collect news stories and information from newspapers, website, blogs, and other sources in one place and browse through them at your convenience? What if you could organize news of specific interest to you in your practice, easily retrieve categorize, store, and […]
Great Sources for Poverty Law-Related RSS Content
New RSS feeds are coming online everyday. To find feeds, look for the orange “XML” or “RSS” box on any webpage. Generally, you can simply copy that page’s URL and paste it into the RSS aggregator you have chosen to use in order to subscribe to the feed from that site. Here are a few […]
Legal Research on the Internet
Numerous web-based resources await new legal services attorneys seeking substantive information in various areas relevant to poverty law practice. Moreover, the web offers advocates unparalleled opportunities to connect with one another and to share knowledge and support. This outline offers summaries and links to some of the most popular and useful web sites for legal […]
Using the Shriver Center Website
The Shriver Center plays a pivotal role in the delivery of legal services to low-income clients by creating, through its comprehensive services, an extraordinary network of legal services and pro bono lawyers, policymakers, and other advocates working on poverty law and policy development. Through the Clearinghouse Review, the online Poverty Law Library, and Advocacy and […]
HotDocs Training
The National Public ADO (Automated Documents Online) project will offer a two-day, hands-on, introductory training on developing HotDocs templates for online use. There is no charge, but participants need to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.
For background on the project, see the series of articles on eJustice on automated document assembly.
The […]
Protecting against data loss: Principles and Examples
All organizations have both sensitive and mission-critical data that they must protect from data loss and malicious discovery. In a digital world, program directors and information technology (IT) managers must make effective backups the top IT priority for their organization.
Expect to invest some money in a dedicated server, off-site storage solutions, and software (although good […]
Google Launches U.S. Government Search
Google has announced a new tool, Google U.S. Government Search, intended to make it easier for users to find U.S. government information and news.
Google U.S. government search enables users to search across content on offcial federal, state, and local government sites from a single search box. The Google U.S. Government Search index includes federal, […]
Creating Effective Screenshots for Printing
Recently, the topic of screen shots for print publications came up on the LSTech mailing list. Below is a quick tutorial, taken from advice provided by David Eads.
The overall goal when capturing screenshots for print is to capture as much image information as possible and then edit the image to the desired effect.
First, set […]
dotOrganize Seeks Feedback from Social Change Organizers
dotOrganize, a collaborative technology venture currently in development, seeks input from activists working in social change organizations. dotOrganize hopes to help social change and mission-driven organizations to improve their effectiveness by supporting the emergence of smart, simple online tools uniquely tailored to grassroots organizers. dotOrganize also seeks to nurture a collaborative support system to insure […]
Study to Assess Effectiveness of Technology Assistance for Nonprofits
NPower and N-TEN have announced a new project to measure the effectiveness of technology assistance for nonprofits. With funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Cisco Foundation, and the Surdna Foundation, NPower and N-TEN seek to quantify how technology assistance impacts nonprofits’ work over several years.
The project includes a two-year study of twelve […]
Wiki-Law Builds Open Content Legal Resource
A new site, Wiki-Law, seeks to build the largest open-content legal resource in the world. Founded by two law school graduates, who do not give their full names on the site, Wiki-Law is intended to promote the collaborative creation and free exchange of legal information among lawyers and other interested individuals. The site includes several […]
What’s Happening at the TIG Conference?
Participants in the Legal Services Corporation Technology Initiative Grants conference in Austin, Texas, have created a wiki for capturing information disseminated at the conference. In addition, attendees are sharing bookmarks (using a social bookmarking service, del.icio.us) and photos (using Flickr). Finally, particpants have created a blog to share their perspectives on the presentations and to […]
New Search Engine Donates Proceeds to Charities Designated by Users
A new search engine, GoodSearch, enables users to support their favorite charities simply by searching the web. Users simply designate the charity they wish to support and use GoodSearch’s search bar, which is powered by Yahoo Search. Every time the user searches, revenue is generated for the designated charity.
Advertisers pay for links that are placed […]
Low-Cost Conference Calling Service Available to Legal Aid Programs
Budget Conferencing has agreed to provide a preferred rate to Legal Services Corporation grantees, other nonprofit legal aid programs, their affiliate partners and network members. The special legal services rate is 5.5¢ per minute for toll-free, reservationless calls (normally 12¢ per minute) and 4.5¢ per minute for toll calls.
Included in this rate is the […]
Working on Work
By Marc Lauritsen, Capstone Practice Systems
Preparing documents is only part of what most legal advocates do. But together with structured fact-gathering, analysis, and advice-giving – activities quite amenable to the technologies discussed in this issue – document preparation in a broad sense makes up a very large part of the legal work needing to […]
Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants: A2J Author
By Jay C. Carle and Ronald Staudt, Center for Access to Justice and Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law
Access to Justice Author (A2J Author) is a software tool that delivers greater access to justice for self-represented litigants by enabling non-technical authors from the courts, clerk’s offices, legal services programs, and website editors rapidly to build and […]
HotDocs: The Outer Limits
Moving Document Assembly Beyond the Document
By Hugh Calkins, Pine Tree Legal Assistance
In Maine, we have tried to build the HelpMeLaw and Pine Tree Legal Assistance websites at least partially in response to client demand. We used focus groups to help design the sites and have tried to be responsive to client use of the website: […]
Building the National Server
By Paul Agostinelli, Kaivo Software
HotDocs is simply a software package that allows one to create forms online. It is an extremely powerful and full-featured product that performs the bulk of the processing required to turn a set of answers into a printable form. To make this product usable by a large community of users, however, […]
There’s Still Life on the Desktop
Why and how some programs are still best served by the Windows version of HotDocs
By Alan Soudakoff, Capstone Practice Systems
Most talk about HotDocs in the legal services community in the last couple of years has focused on HotDocs Server, the web-based version of HotDocs. For most legal services programs, making use of the national HotDocs […]
Case Management Software and Online Document Assembly
By Bart Earle, Capstone Practice Systems
Case management software has gained a solid foothold in many legal services organizations, where it has become an integral part of the technology environment.
PIKA, Kemps, LegalFiles, Time Matters, and ProLaw are among the case management programs commonly in use. Moreover, there is growing interest and adoption of document assembly among […]
Technology-Based Solutions for the Poverty Community
By Jennifer Miramontes and Michelle Barrett
Introduction–The Vision….
Five years ago, when the Legal Aid Society of Orange County (LASOC) introduced I-CAN!™ (Interactive Community Assistance Network) as a technological enhancement to the existing legal aid system, a vast majority of providers were skeptical. Could this technology solution in fact aid in the delivery of services or would […]
Courting Judicial Partners: The Promises and Perils of Court Collaboration
By Camille Cameron, Idaho Legal Aid Services, and Katherine Bladow, Montana Legal Services Association
In each state, the most public and often most influential entity to interact with self-represented litigants is the court system. In recent years, courts across the country have seen an increase in the number of people who cannot afford legal assistance and […]
Setting Up an Automated Document Assembly Program
by Kristin Nelson Verrill, Atlanta Legal Aid Society, Inc.
There is no way around it–adopting a HotDocs document assembly program is resource intensive. No matter the size or purpose, the project will require a significant time and financial commitment. You will also have to invest staff time in both the development and implementation of the program […]
Automating Forms for Pro Se Users: Tricks of the Trade
by Sheila Fisher
Automating forms for use by legal staff or other professionals is a moderately simple task; the “automator” (person building the document assembly template) can expect legal and computer literacy from the staff using the templates. You can freely use legal terms and expect they will be understood and recognized. The automator can also […]
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HotDocs and the Courts — The California Model
The California courts, working with LawHelpCalifornia.org, have set two goals for their National Public Automated Documents Online (NPADO) project.
Programs that Support Self-Help Centers
First, we are creating programs that support the work of self-help centers. These programs are designed for center staff and volunteers for use primarily at self-help center computers. We are currently […]
Doing Documents Online
Automated document preparation has long held great promise for expanding access to justice. We now have good reasons to expect the promise to be redeemed. This introductory article provides some background and history, and then describes the current national server project.
Document assembly
Technologies for the automated production of legal documents have been in use for […]
E-advocacy case study: Housingmatters.net
Technology offers nonprofits new ways to organize constituents around an advocacy agenda. In Illinois, a coalition of housing rights groups and advocates have launched an electronic advocacy website to mobilize Illinois residents and make their voices heard on important affordable housing issues. HousingMatters.net demonstrates the effective use of technology by a coalition of like-minded groups […]
Options for quick and easy online fundraising
Online fundraising, once difficult to set up, is now quick and easy thanks to a proliferation of payment processing service providers. Despite this, few legal aid organizations incorporate online fundraising into their development plans. Here is a short description of several of the options that legal services programs may use to solicit donations online.
One of […]
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News and views
- Wikis for Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing - 12/05/2007
- Some Popular Low-Cost Wiki Platforms - 12/05/2007
- Wikis for Lawyers - 12/05/2007
- Michigan Reentry Law Wiki - 02/15/2007
- Library of Congress Adds Features to THOMAS - 01/09/2007
Recent tutorials
- How to Use the New Attorneys Wiki - 12/06/2007
- Using Google Reader - 10/10/2006
- Using Feedreader - 10/10/2006
- Adding a Live Bookmark in Firefox - 10/10/2006
- Using the Shriver Center Website - 10/10/2006