 There is no substitute for a skilled attorney who has done her research and is prepared to make a strong argument on behalf of her client. If funds were unlimited, legal aid offices would have many more attorneys on staff ready to help clients avoid eviction, receive the child support they've been promised, or protect themselves from an abusive partner. However, as we all know, each budget cycle brings tough choices. The numbers of people needing legal help continues to grow, but the number of attorneys legal aid offices can hire is not keeping pace. Some technologies offer an opportunity to serve more clients or offer better services while spending less money. Technologies such as document assembly and online intake systems allow attorneys to practice at the top of their licenses to leave clerical work to others so that organizations and clients get the full value of each attorney's expertise. The ultimate benefit is the opportunity to provide service and information to more people who need it and to positively influence the outcomes of legal actions faced by the poor and underrepresented. Technology is not a panacea for the struggles legal aid organizations face and it will never replace legal aid attorneys. But in many cases, service delivery technologies can help you reach more clients than you ever thought possible and set a new standard for what clients can expect from your organization. Over the next few minutes, we'll discuss what questions you should ask yourself before implementing new service delivery technologies and point out a few potential speed bumps to smooth out before getting started. We'll look at the cultural factors in your office and across your state that may signal a resistance to certain kinds of technologies. We'll discuss whether it makes sense to widen the scope of your project to include other offices or advocacy organizations and the issues you'll have to consider as you coordinate multiple stakeholders and we'll review how clients are using technology and the expectations they bring to the table. We'll also look at return on investment and discuss how to prioritize your technology investments and finally we'll give an overview of the technologies many legal aid organizations are adopting to better serve their clients. Let's get started. Cost is only one barrier to implementing new technologies. New technology can change your office's culture, both how you work with colleagues and with clients. In many cases, these cultural changes are positive because they create opportunities to fix communication gaps or simplify workflows. But regardless of the benefits, change can be hard. Ask yourself if your organization is ready for such a big change. Do senior attorneys on staff prefer FaceTime? Do they struggle with basic technologies such as email and file sharing? If your organization struggled to implement a case management system, have those issues been resolved? What are the communication gaps within your organization and how can this technology help remedy them? What are the benefits to an individual attorney? Do you have the staff time available to both manage a major technology project and to keep your technology current as laws and procedures change? Do you have a plan in place to sell in your new technology, both at the selection and implementation phases? Even if you can't answer all of these questions now, they can give you a sense of what you need to keep in mind as you move forward with new technology and help you weigh whether now is the right time for your organization to pursue a large-scale technology project to improve service delivery. The biggest of these barriers is likely to be the cultural one. Attorneys, especially those who have been practicing for many years, may feel that any substitute for one-on-one interaction with a client weakens the quality of service. Often, they argue that an experienced attorney can pick up on nuances that are easy to overlook. While this is undeniably true, it's also true that many legal problems are straightforward and come up frequently. An attorney spending time on routine matters that don't actually require much legal expertise is inefficient and limits the guidance the attorney can provide to people with more complex cases. Pro-say litigants may have the most to gain from self-service technologies such as document assembly and expert systems because the alternative for them is to be completely on their own. Another important factor to consider is your clients. What do they need from your organization and how can technology better meet those needs? According to Pew, 87% of Americans are online and 64% own a smartphone. Many of those smartphone users are young adults, minorities, and lower income. In fact, for many individuals who qualify for legal aid, their phone is likely to be their only access to the Internet. Since the beginning of legal aid, one of the major obstacles has been the struggle for clients to travel or take time off from work to address their legal issues. A strong case can be made that a growing percentage of legal aid clients not only prefer online tools and resources, they need them in order to be successful. Legal aid organizations that do not provide online options may be leaving a significant gap in service. Consider the demographics of your community and clients before you make a technology decision. You may find that providing different ways to access services opens the door to new clients who need your help. It's clear that many people can benefit from new service delivery technologies. But is the investment worth it? There is an economic reality both legal aid and private attorneys need to face. Legal needs are growing, the ability to pay for legal help is shrinking, and the access to justice for people of all backgrounds is at risk. There is a limit to what one attorney can do, and technology offers opportunities to extend that limit further. Attorneys will continue to be in demand, and will continue to be an essential part of the justice system. But attorney time is too valuable and too costly to continue applying to simple tasks. However, many service delivery technologies will cost tens of thousands of dollars to plan, build, and implement. As a result, some legal aid organizations feel that they are faced with a tough tradeoff. Do they hire an attorney or invest in technology? Most experts see this as a false choice. There are times when hiring is necessary, and other times when technology ought to be prioritized. In each case, the most important determining factor is how many additional clients can be served with that investment. One way to calculate the benefit of a new technology is to determine the time savings and consider how many additional clients can be served. For example, if a process that takes an hour of an attorney's time can be reduced to 30 minutes, and your office typically completes 1,000 of those forms each year, then your office just saved 30,000 minutes or 500 hours. If your organization's average client requires 5 hours of attorney time, then you just made room for 100 more clients. That's a big win for your organization and underrepresented people in your community. Also, consider whether technology can help you provide better quality help. For instance, video conferencing tools could allow attorneys to talk to clients more frequently or support attorneys in unbundling cases. But don't assume that technology is an easy win. Setting up the plausible time saved or more clients served can be a big help in thinking through what makes sense. But if just to break even, you would need to serve more people than are eligible for services in your state, that's clearly not a smart investment. If you're pretty certain that you'll need technology to solve a particular challenge, then the next question is how do you go about it? How big a project should you take on? And how much time and money should you invest? There are many factors to consider. First, you need to sort out what offices and agencies will be using your system. For example, will you limit your online intake system to just your regional legal aid office? Or will you coordinate with offices across the state? Often, clients don't realize that geography determines who helps them with their legal problem. They may contact one office only to get forwarded to another, which can be very frustrating. A statewide system has the advantage of acting as a centralized hub that can seamlessly direct people to the right resources right away. Users don't have to know what offices work on what kind of cases before getting help. That's one less barrier to overcome. The downsides of a statewide system are likely to come as no surprise. Coordinating with multiple people at multiple offices can be difficult, especially when you're deciding the details of your technology project. For example, often not everyone agrees on which questions should come first or how questions should be worded. During issues further, different courts will often use different language or have different procedures, so a document assembly system that attempts to standardize forms across the state will often encounter pushback from judges who prefer their own way of doing things. For any statewide technology to work, you're going to need to get buy in from all the various stakeholders and manage their input. This will require you to build in a significant amount of review time and runs the risk of being delayed significantly by unsatisfied partners. You also may want to consider what areas of service makes sense for your organization. Some legal aid organizations worry that the demand for their new technology will be too great to manage. Washington State, for example, limits its intake to denial of public benefits and eviction, urgent needs that can have a domino effect on people's lives if left unaddressed. Less urgent matters are handled through walk-in and hotline systems. While being overwhelmed by new needs is a common concern, so far very few of the organizations that have adopted new service technologies have experienced levels of demand that they could not manage. Nonetheless, understanding the limits of your organization's resources and designing your technology to work within those limits is an important part of the exploration process. Finally, when considering the scope of your technology project, it's important to ask yourself whether you will want to implement additional technologies in the future and how you can build in scalability to prepare yourself for these future upgrades. For example, online intake may work best if triage is also integrated, but you can't do both right away. How do you adapt your current triage system to your new intake system, while also leaving room for a seamless adoption of a new triage system within the next five years? Looking through what technologies you need, how they work together, and a realistic timeline for when they will be up and running is important to do early in the process, because the complexity of these technology projects means they require significant planning to keep them from being delayed and going over budget. If you're interested in how technology can help you serve more clients, then there are a few different kinds of technologies you should consider. First, before looking into service delivery technologies, you need to make sure you have a solid foundation. A shared file system and regular backups are a must. No innovative technology can work without a secure, accessible file server. You also need an effective office software package that includes email tools and shared calendars. Next, you need to make sure that you have a solid case management system that is flexible enough to evolve as your organization evolves. Document assembly is also an important time saver. It automates the creation of legal documents that are used repeatedly, including such documents as wills, leases, contracts, and letters. You can think of document assembly as templates that can be used over and over. This shortens the time for document preparation and increases the efficiency of your practice. Using an online portal, applicant clients, navigators, or volunteers can input information into an online system to determine suitability for legal aid representation, collect information about the individual and his or her situation, and prioritize legal help. Most online intake systems can be integrated with a case management system, allowing you to import the data you collect automatically. Text messaging is a simple, cost-effective way to provide instant information for people without a desktop computer. Mobile apps can help you provide information and link users to various tools. In the near future, your organization may be offering online intake and video conferencing through a mobile device. Video conferencing enables attorneys and clients who are in different cities to meet when travel is not possible. It can also be used in the courtroom to allow individuals or attorneys to appear in court without traveling long distances. Attorneys, pros and cons, or others can navigate an expert system to get the information and resources they need. Expert systems often include document assembly as well as live chat help. This video series was made possible by a grant from the Legal Services Corporation. If you're interested in pursuing new service delivery technology for your organization and have a sense of which technologies are right for you, click on the module that covers your chosen technology and learn a little more about what it takes to implement that technology in your state or at your organization.