Page 14 - Minnesota Vol 8 No 3
P. 14

LawHelpMN: Information and Referral Breakthrough
BY LEYKN SCHMATZ
Legal Aid’s State Support team is proud to introduce a newly over- hauled statewide legal website:
www.LawHelpMN.org.
“We are so excited about this proj-
ect,” says Communications Coordina- tor Mary Rea. “ e old LawHelpMN had reams of useful information but it wasn’t  ltered or curated.  e new site delivers resources and referrals specif- ic to the user’s situation and location.”
 e central feature is the LawHelpMN Guide, which draws data from a Self- Help Library and a Provider/Clinic Directory.  ese two channels contain a comprehensive collection of infor- mation about legal resources in Min- nesota.  e Guide uses a branching logic tree to streamline the data and provide the public with individualized answers to their legal questions.
“It’s a user-centered design, based on years of experience and data from the old LawHelpMN,” says Legal Projects Manager Emily Good. “We also stud- ied the triage logic used by other states
and adapted it to the information and resources available in Minnesota.”
 e Guide uses a bifurcated process. In the  rst step, the user chooses from twelve legal topics and then answers a couple of questions to narrow the issue.  e Guide delivers a list of cu- rated resources from the Self-Help Library.
“Our goal in developing the Guide was to be  exible, nimble, and respon- sive,” says Technology Projects Man- ager Jennifer Singleton. “For example, someone in a family dispute over an estate may think they have a family law problem, but the Guide will jump information strings and direct them to probate law.”
In addition to fact sheets and book- lets, links to other websites and re- sources, and Q&A with in-depth an- swers from an attorney, the Library has 18 interactive forms.  e forms are guided interviews, maintained in-house at State Support.  ey pull information from the client’s answers
to populate court forms and planning documents.
“Education for Justice resources are front and center in the  rst step,” says Rea. “All materials are written by lawyers, working with non-lawyers to make the materials accessible to the general public.  e fact sheets and booklets are vetted by attorneys and carefully reviewed for legal changes annually, and our forms have received national kudos.”
 e second step of the Guide’s pro- cess directs the user to services. If they look over the self-help information and decide they need a lawyer, the Guide asks a few demographic ques- tions.  e answers are mapped onto federal poverty guidelines in the back- ground, and pull from the statewide Provider/Clinic Directory to provide a listing, in order of relevance, of legal services o ces and justice partners.
Legal services organizations have passwords that allow them to update their own information in real time.
ATTORNEY AT LAW MAGAZINE · MINNESOTA· VOL. 8 NO. 3 14


































































































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