Background on the Research Request Tool

In 2004, the Legal Services Corporation awarded a Technology Initiative Grant (TIG) to the Legal Aid of East Tennessee for the Research Request Tool. The purpose of this project is to develop an online research tracking system that facilitates research requests by legal aid lawyers to pro bono law students. While this project is begin piloted in Tennessee between LAET and University of Tennessee Law School, once fully implemented, this tool will be available to every legal aid program and any law school. A long-term plan envisions breaking geographic boundaries by allowing any program across the country to request research from any law school in the country, using a national pool of aspiring lawyers to help the poverty population.

What is the Research Request Tool today?

The Research Request Tool is a secure website that facilitates a process in which attorneys from LAET request research to be completed by law students at the University of Tennessee. The basic process is that attorneys login to the website and complete an online form with information about the request including client information, type of research needed, deadlines and attorney contact information. The request is then reviewed through a process at the law school and accepted or rejected. The law school has a system which allows them to check for conflicts with their clinical programs, have faculty review the requests and assign the requests to students. Once students are assigned research they use the online
information to begin their research, contact the attorney and ultimately upload the completed research to the system so that all research is saved in "research bank" for future use.

As of September 2006, the Research Request Tool is completely developed and resides on a beta site at Kaivo. This Fall, LAET is testing the tool with the University of Tennessee. LAET and NTAP have developed a business plan to expand the tool's use nationwide, if the Fall's experiment is successful and funding permits. Programs interested in correspondance about the tool or participating as a pilot group of users in their state should contact NTAP (info@lsntap.org).