The National Legal Aid Technology Report

This is the future site of NTAP's National Legal Aid Technology Report, a new online project that will share the results of NTAP's community-wide technology survey to showcase the software and hardware being used throughout the legal services community.

The survey is still in development, but ultimately, we hope it will inform the poverty law techies and administrators about what is being used by your colleagues and the pros and cons of software being used throughout the community. The survey will include product reviews, your vendor recommendations, and general IT solutions as well as our assessment of what hardware, software, and services are being used, and at what prices and quantity. If you need to solve an IT problem and you want to know how your peers have addressed it, the National Technology Report may be your first resource!

The rollout of the Technology Report will be July 1, 2008, but expect to see the formal tech survey start making the rounds in the LStech community before then.

A Sneak Preview: Changes in Case Management Systems Among Legal Aid Programs

Wondering how this information can be useful to you? Here's a sneak preview that might make it clearer: In March 2008, Michael Bowen posted an inquiry to the LStech email list asking techies to let him know if they'd installed a new case management system in the last few years, and if so, what their old system had been. In 3 or 4 days he received 21 responses from programs in 16 states and 2 Canadian provinces. You can take a look at their answers (and get a snap shot view of trends in CMS in legal aid) here.