Welcome LexBlog Friend and Passerby!
I’m humbled to have a digital space to share my perspective and uplift voices that may not otherwise be heard.
Over the next few weeks, you’ll be witnessing my expert-in-practice blogging skills on 3 topics @Miguel Willis picked for the 2018 Access to Justice Tech Fellows to write about.
Writing from probono.net’s New York City office I am spending ten weeks learning and contributing to the LawHelp Interactive® (LHI) team. LawHelp Interactive is an online legal document assembly service operated by Probono.net. It is used by courts, legal aids, and access to justice partners in about 40 states throughout the U.S. Plus, the forms are free to users – talk about #access #to #justice. Forms are available in child support and custody, domestic violence, debt collection, foreclosures, evictions, divorce, and more.The LHI team is comprised of technologists, form developers, quality assurance engineers, legal technologists, program managers, project managers, and lawyers.
What am I doing with LHI this summer? My first project is developing a marketing and social media plan, and creating user-friendly resource materials for current and potential stakeholders of LawHelp Interactive – Connect (LHIC). Connect is a new feature to LHI that assists an individual with their legal need(s) by allowing them access to interviews, which later create legal forms, on a variety of legal topics. An individual can choose to interface with these interviews by either 1) creating a user account on LHI, or 2) opt out of creating a user account and enter the LHI system anonymously. Once an interview is complete, the interview answer file is managed through LHI-Connect. The interview answer file can be shared and reviewed with any of the following parties: legal aid staff, court administrators and staff, or pro bono volunteers.
The LHIC platform improves the delivery of legal services because it allows several parties to collaborate at the same time. For instance, a group clinic could support self-helpers in completing an interview and advocates (attorneys, law students under attorney supervision, or probono volunteers) could review the form from a remote location. After review, a self-helper could print their form and file it. The LHIC platform is flexible to support access to justice work.
My second project connects my social justice, health policy and technology background with legal technology and law, by focusing on medical-legal partnerships (MLPs). Last summer, as a recipient of the Public Interest Law Initiative program, I worked for the Chicago Medical-Legal Partnership for Children, a program of the Legal Council for Health Justice and witnessed first-hand the power of these cross-sector partnerships. I am seeking to collaborate with stakeholders on understanding technology use, areas for improvement and innovation within MLPs. There is much to learn in this area and I want to learn and be an advocate for MLPs beyond the term of this fellowship. MLPs, an innovative and collaborative model, already support the delivery of legal services to our country’s most vulnerable populations by addressing legal need as social determinant of health. Understanding how technology does and can improve medical, behavioral, and legal service delivery models within an MLP context is another step towards #access to #justice in our fast-paced technologically moving world. Together we can increase access to justice and improve health outcomes.