National Pro Bono Celebration Week - Catch up with technology in Pro Bono work!

This week marks the second National Pro Bono Celebration Week, in which we stop to stop to thank pro bono lawyers, whose efforts improve life for their clients and our communities.  NTAP isn't directly involved in pro bono work, but we partner with Pro Bono Net each year to showcase new tech initiatives in pro bono. This month's Leveraging Technology for Pro Bono showcased concrete ways legal aid is using technology to solve problems in pro bono work. 

People who attended learned about:

• Connecting pro bono volunteers to mentors and opportunities:
  Teri Ross (Illinois Legal Aid Online) demo-ed a statewide Pro Bono mentor/mentee matching system which launched at http://www.illinoisprobono.org in July 2010.   The system collects information about a new pro bono lawyer's practice areas, geographic location, mentoring needs and availability and automatically contacts an appropriate lawyer who has agreed to mentor.
  
  Colton Lawrence (Texas Legal Services Center) talked about Texas Legal Services Center's recent collaboration with the Texas Young Lawyers Association to launch Partnering for Pro Bono, a web-based matching program that pairs in-house attorneys with private practice attorneys and identifies open cases for them to work on.
   
• Helping users navigate websites: Abby Biberman (LawHelp/NY) talks about how LawHelp/NY's law students volunteers deliver remote services via LiveHelp. LiveHelp not only helps users navigate the LawHelp website, but it collects data about what users are seeking, so that LawHelp/NY improve and refine website content.
• Using document assembly to ease the work of pro bono volunteers: John Freeman (Minnesota Legal Services Coalition) explained the "Criminal Expungement Start-to-Finish" project (login required), a document assembly interview which helps pro bono lawyers streamline the process of expunging the criminal records for legal aid clients.  The interview includes the entire complicated process and information about relevant statutes and cases. Expungement is so complicated in Minnesota that pro bono attorneys have hesitated to do this work. 
• Future trends: Tony Lu (Pro Bono Net), discusses emerging pilots (and ideas) for new uses of technology in Pro Bono.

Want to learn more (or see these tools in action)?  View the training recording below. 

Curious about what was up and coming in Pro Bono tech in 2009? Watch Applications to Make the Most of Pro Bono Support (2009) to learn about using innovations in website design, project management & collaboration tools, HotDocs, LiveHelp and voice recognition in your pro bono work.