Free Web Tools for the Way You Work

Nicholas Gaffney provides a slew of free web tools in his Marketing the Law Firm Newsletter article, “Free Web Tools for the Way You Work.” While many of the apps on this list will be familiar to you, Gaffney offers some excellent suggestions on PR and collaboration tools as well as advice on how lawyers and law firms can use these tools effectively. -M

Are You LinkedIn to the Legal Aid Group?

The Legal Aid Group on LinkedIn is growing by leaps and bounds and discussions on a wide range of topics are beginning to take off. To participate in this group, you must first join LinkedIn. Once you’re a member, visit the Legal Aid Group page to register (or go straight there if you’re already a LinkedIn member). Also, be sure to join Kate and me while you’re there!  -M

New Site for Advocates Who Defend Immigrants in Criminal Proceedings

The Immigrant Legal Resource Center, Immigrant Defense Project, National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and National Legal Aid and Defender Association recently launched the Defending Immigrants Partnership website, which aims to ensure effective legal representation of non-citizen defendants in criminal proceedings. To access the resource library you must join the site, but membership is free. – K

Metadata v. Metacrap: Technology Standards in the Poverty Law Community

On my way to work yesterday I was listening to a fan reading of essays from Cory Doctrow’s Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future, and was reminded of his great essay, “Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia.” I was also reminded of the good work that our community does on standards, and that there are some great projects and resources that you may not be aware of. (Confession: At one time I coordinated the Legal Services XML Group with folks from LSNTAP, LSC, and ILAO and really enjoyed thinking about this stuff.)

• What is XML and Why Does it Matter? – This is a good introduction to XML for the poverty law community. A nice technical supplement to this is the Wikipedia entry on XML.
• The Power of XML for Poverty Law – Examples of technology projects in the poverty law community that have used LSXML standards to share information between systems (i.e. case management, statewide websites, and intake).
• National Subject Matter Index (NSMI) – The NSMI is a taxonomy of poverty law topics used to standardized the indexing of data. It is now updated using the National Subject Matter Index Tool.
• The XML Primer for Techies – A resource on the more technical aspects of XML, DTDs, and XSL.

If that’s not enough to keep you busy, I would also recommend reading Clay Shirky’s Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links and Tags, which considers some of the challenges of classification by categories and hierarchies. -M

ABA Center for Pro Bono Announces Medical Legal Partnerships Pro Bono Support Project

The American Bar Association Center for Pro Bono just launched a new Medical Legal Partnerships Pro Bono Support Project, which is an ABA-based national medical-legal pro bono support initiative.  The Project will “expand the current landscape of medical-legal partnerships by increasing the targeted patient populations, and it will provide support to existing medical-legal partnerships by developing a national support center.” To learn more about this project, visit the Project website here. -M

LawHelp/NY Named Semifinalist for The Collaboration Prize

The New York LawHelp Consortium has been chosen as a semifinalist for The Collaboration Prize, a new $250,000 award that recognizes and encourages collaboration among nonprofit organizations. Made up of 11 legal aid, bar and pro bono organizations, the New York LawHelp Consortium was nominated for the prize by the Hon. Juanita Bing Newton, Deputy Chief Administrative Judge for Justice Initiatives for the New York State Unified Court System. It is among 30 semifinalists chosen from 644 nominations. The press release is available here. Congrats LawHelp/NY! -M

Be Smart About Naming Files

Unless you are one of the lucky few in the access-to-justice community with a real document management system, there’s a chance that you are still forced to come up with your own file names and put those documents in folders, like me.  This not an easy task.  If you look in my folders, at the top level you’ll currently find files named “Hello.doc,” “projects.doc,” and “states.xls”–not particularly noteworthy names. I pitty the person who has to go through my files if I get hit by a bus.

For those of you who struggle to name files appropriately like I do, check out Get-It-Done Guy‘s podcast on file naming conventions. He provides some great, easy recommendations to improve how you name files. – K

Foreclosures, the Economy, and the Community’s Response

Unless you’ve been holed up for the past several months, you’ve heard that the health of the economy has taken a turn for the worse. It’s a complicated situation that This American Life has done a great job of explaining in a couple of segments: The Giant Pool of Money, which we previously mentioned, and Another Frightening Show About the Economy.

For low-income households, this has made a bad situation worse. Renters are being evicted as their landlord’s properties are foreclosed on, homeowners are falling prey to foreclosure scams, and tent cities are growing as the rate of homelessness increases.

Even while facing their own financial challenges (news about Indiana, Minnesota, and New Jersey), the legal aid and pro bono communities are stepping up to provide additional assistance. Nationally, several pro bono programs are organizing foreclosure projects. In Minnesota, ProJusticeMN.org launched a website specifically for these advocates that includes sample court documents, statutes, and practice aids. (See their e-newsletter story about the project.) Additionally, programs are making more legal information available online. For example, Illinois Legal Aid Online has created several foreclosure videos, including Mortgage Foreclosure Overview, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid has an attorney who is blogging about foreclosure issues at ForeclosureBuzz.org, and in California, ForeclosureInfoCA.org provides legal information on foreclosure for the public. And these are not the only efforts. For a complete list of activities, check out the list on LSNTAP.org. – K