I'll bet you didn't realize how may Legal Aid programs are on YouTube (or Vimeo) (updated, August 2010)

Submitted by eva on Fri, 08/13/2010 - 2:15pm

At least 57% of American Internet users have watched videos online, and legal aid programs don't seem to be behind the times in adopting new technologies, so I shouldn't be surprised by this, but it seems that legal aid has a significant presence on YouTube.

I know this because you all have been offering information about their sites on the LSTech mailing list, and NTAP staff thought we should keep an impromptu list.

In 2008, the list of YouTube pioneers included these 11 intrepid programs (and, of course, others we didn't know about):

Kate Bladow has been doing some research on whether legal aid programs are posting videos online for Technola, and shared her data with us. (Kate also includes suggestions about how to make your videos easier to find) As of August 2010, she found that 65 legal aid programs had posted almost 600 videos on either YouTube or Vimeo:

Two more things:

If you want to know more about using YouTube to promote your program or educate potential clients, review our 2008 NTAP/PBN statewide website training, SWEB121: A “How-To” of New Tools for Statewide Websites, which included a demonstration about how to set up a YouTube channel.

Don Carder has pointed out: If your program has a youtube channel, you can increase the overall findability of everyone's videos by highly ranking or favorite-ing the videos of your peers. That might go a long way toward helping users find information from legitimate legal services programs.