lstech

How I Spent My 2015 Technology Initiative Grants Conference

I’m back from our (Legal Services Corporation) 15th annual technology conference, which ran from January 14th through the 16th  in San Antonio, Texas.  It was a good one this year, with a great location, good food, great people – nearly 300 of them, which is quite a record for us. There were plenty of amazing sessions, kicked off by a fascinating keynote on international access to justice web app partnerships. Slides and videos will be up soon on LSC’s website. But I did want to share the slides from my sessions, which all seemed to go very well.  I did three: Are You Agile I… Read More »How I Spent My 2015 Technology Initiative Grants Conference

Hackcess To Justice

Regular blog readers know that landing my job at Legal Services Corporation, the single largest funder of civil legal aid to people in financial need, was not an accident.  The mission of providing representation to those who need it, but can’t afford it, is one that I targeted for over half a decade before getting this position. I’m passionate about the work of our grantees, because there is something about social and economic injustice that offends me at my core, and I consider it my responsibility and my privilege to be able to do work that attempts to alleviate such injustice.   That’s my best explanation,… Read More »Hackcess To Justice

Making Your Website More Useful For More People

This post was originally published on the LSC Technology Blog in January of 2014. LSC is Legal Services Corporation, my employer. At LSC, we’ve been taking a critical look at our web site, to see if we can make it a more useful web site by factoring in all of the ways that people might want to view or use our information. In these days of big data and small screens, we realize that we have to be much more attentive to the ways that we present data than we have in the past. Identifying the different visitors who frequently use our site, we took a closer look… Read More »Making Your Website More Useful For More People

Finding Aid To Improve Find Legal Aid

This post was originally published on the LSC Technology Blog in January of 2014. LSC is Legal Services Corporation, my employer. Hands down, the most popular feature on LSC’s website is our Find Legal Aid lookup, which directs you to the LSC-funded legal services provider in your service area. I’m happy to announce that we’ve given this lookup a refresh while simplifying its use. But we didn’t do it alone, and the story of how we got this project going is one that I really want to share with our community. As I’ve blogged about before, our service areas are a unique geography that doesn’t lend… Read More »Finding Aid To Improve Find Legal Aid

Hacking For Justice

This post was originally published on the LSC Technology Blog in May of 2013. Note that “LSC” is Legal services Corporation, my current employer, and “TIG” stands for “Technology Initiative Grants”. Welcome to the new LSC Technology blog, hosted here on the TIG site, and written by TIG and Information Technology staff. To kick this off, I wanted to report on a fun, exciting, and long overdue initiative we’re on: making our non-confidential data available to hackers.  Let me be clear here, for those of you who have any bad associations with the word, that  a “hacker” is not a computer criminal or spy.  The… Read More »Hacking For Justice

Trello: A Swiss Army Knife For Tasks, Prioritizing And Project Planning

This post was originally published on the LSC Technology Blog in May of 2013. Note that “LSC” is Legal services Corporation, my current employer. One of the great services available to the legal aid tech community (lstech) is LSNTAP’s series of webinars on tech tools.  I’ve somehow managed to miss every one of these webinars, but I’m a big fan of sharing the tools and strategies that allow us to more effectively get things done. In that spirit, I wanted to talk about my new favorite free online tool, Trello. Trello is an online Kanban board.  If you’re unfamiliar with that term, you are still likely familiar with the… Read More »Trello: A Swiss Army Knife For Tasks, Prioritizing And Project Planning

My Birthday Campaign: Justice For All

Image by Steven Depolo I’m sure that you’re all familiar with birthday campaigns: this one is a little different. For my birthday, coming up on June 1st, I want you to do something for me and a cause that is very important to me.  But I’m not asking for money, I’m asking for your voice. Here’s the deal: Legal services (aka legal aid), is the offering of free legal counsel and services to those who can’t afford an attorney otherwise.  Many Americans know this, but they have no idea why it is so important. They might ask, “What’s the big deal?  In America, everyone has the… Read More »My Birthday Campaign: Justice For All

TIG Takeaways: First Impressions Of The Legal Aid Tech Community

Last week I attended two events sponsored by my new employer, Legal Services Corporation (LSC). The first was a two day Technology Summit, where a group of 50 thought leaders gathered to develop a plan for addressing the demand for legal aid more dramatically by making strategic use of technology. That was followed by the three day Technology Initiative Grants (TIG) conference.

(Great) Mission Accomplished

I’m still knocking on wood a bit, but I think it’s now safe to rep0ort that I’ll be joining Legal Services Corporation as their Chief Information Officer in January. Those of you who read my Looking For A New Job post in August know that I had some pretty strict requirements for that gig, and this one meets or exceeds them. LSC is the nonprofit that allocates federal funding to legal aid societies across the country.