Today, Get Legal Help is used on average about 50,000 times a calendar quarter. About half of the individuals who access the system drop out before being screened. Another 25 percent are diverted to self-help resources because either their income is too high or no legal aid partner is taking cases that match their legal issues. About 6,500 people a quarter are offered intake. Half of those people complete the application and are transferred to a partner organization. Around 1,000 of those get served by an attorney; the others are rejected because of conflicts of interest, income limits, limited program resources, or outside of an organization’s priorities. Over 40 percent of those who use the system do so at night or on weekends when most organizations are closed.
Get Legal Help applicants are less likely to be rejected by legal aid programs for being outside of the organization’s priorities because of the screening process done online, with 24–26 percent rejected for priorities versus 35–40 percent for those who call or walk in the door. By diverting ineligible individuals and streamlining the application process, legal aid organizations estimate that they save about 1,760 hours of staff time a quarter.
The system’s success isn’t really in fancy technology. Yes, there’s an expert system that leverages triage logic, and, yes, there’s a bunch of code that matches user input against the case acceptance priorities of each participating organization. But the success comes in the form of conversations and data analysis. Each month, those responsible for intake at each organization and ILAO discuss case priorities and intake impediments to adjust settings and, on a quarterly basis, share data that highlights higher-than-expected rejection rates for case priority, compares service rates and outcomes for individuals who came through ILAO’s system and those who entered via phone intake or other means, and looks for anomalies that may indicate unintentional bias in the triage process.
These conversations have led to systemwide improvements like the ability for individuals to upload documents directly after their case is accepted or automating reminders via text message of an upcoming callback appointment or at a program level, like changing the maximum number of cases accepted per day, ensuring that callbacks are not scheduled when there is an all-day staff retreat, and managing case acceptance levels to be more restrictive when the program in fact is only taking a more select set of cases in a given legal issue.
ILAO is not alone in doing this work. Across the country, and with significant financial support from LSC, through its Technology Initiative Grant program, similar programs exist. MichiganLegalHelp.org offers a guide that will help triage a website visitor to one or more programs or legal information. OhioLegalHelp.org has a similar triage tool. Through Pro Bono Net’s LawHelp.org platform and Urban Insight’s DLAW platform, most states have some form of a legal information website designed to meet the needs of self-represented litigants and legal aid organizations.
These tools, along with plain language and accurate legal information—available at the swipe of a mobile device or a quick Google search—help ensure that everyone has access to some form of help when facing a legal problem. We will likely never be able to give everyone facing a civil legal problem a free lawyer or make it feasible for everyone to afford paid legal services, but through the use of technology, we are able to better prepare those who go it alone and direct those whose legal issues are so critical to their housing, financial, and family stability to those lawyers who can help them faster and more efficiently.