Promoting Justice for all, regardless of how much money someone has in their wallet, or their zip code.

Being a fellow through the ATJ Tech Fellowship means that I work with a host organization to really understand the nitty-gritty of the legal tech world. It allows me to come face to face with the problems that the access to justice community faces and try to come up with legal tech solutions to those problems.

This summer, my host organization is the Montana Legal Services Association (MLSA). This organization works with low-income Montanans to provide legal advice, information, and representation on civil legal issues such as domestic violence, landlord/tenant situations, parental rights, and so much more.

It’s incredible to watch how they do this. The MLSA calls themselves “a state-wide law firm”, meaning that each MLSA location is not restricted to helping clients within a certain mile radius.  All offices take cases from all over the state.  Because of this, many of their legal advice appointments happen over the phone. Yet, they can still make time for in-person appointments too, if that’s reasonable for the client.

But their biggest hurdle is the sheer number of clients who come to them for help. In 2010, they received 8,595 requests for help. But with only 13 full-time lawyers, they were only able to take 3,700 of those, or 43%.

Because of this huge gap between the number of requests and lawyers able to help, one of MLSA’s goals is to help Montanans represent themselves and know their rights. Part of that work is done through the advice appointments. But a much larger part is done through their online law information resource, Montana Law Help. Organized by legal issue, Montana Law Help has basic legal information on the most common questions they hear on a day-to-day basis. What can I do when my landlord tries to evict me? What is an order of protection and do I need one? There are even kiosks throughout the state that let people access this website if internet isn’t available in their home or local library.

My project this summer is to update this website and make it more accessible. Is there enough information on each page? Is that information presented in a way that makes sense? Do people have trouble finding the articles through search engines like Google or Bing? For the past week and half, my job has been to go through the archives of LiveChat help feature on the website, to figure out 1) what are people’s most common questions when they come to the website? 2) Are those questions being addressed? 3) What problems are people facing when they try to find information on the website? 4) How can we make that easier?

To find out more about MLSA, watch this brief interview from October of last year: