 Today's training is presented by ProbonoNet in partnership with LSN TAP and Northwest Justice Project with funding provided by an LSE TIG grant. And just would like to note that today staffing the webinar, we have Brian Rowe and Kat Ng from Northwest Justice Project and on the ProbonoNet side, we have myself, Jillian Thiel and Liz Keith program director. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Liz Keith to kick things off. Great. Thanks, Jillian. And welcome again, everybody. And thanks as well to Brian and NTAP for hosting this series and LSE for their support of it. As Jillian mentioned, I'm Liz Keith and I'm the program director at ProbonoNet and we're very excited to have all of you with us today for this topic. This is the last in a series of five trainings that ProbonoNet has produced this year in partnership with NTAP focusing on the strategic role of technology in legal aid service delivery. And we're closing out this series with an exploration and discussion of new virtual and remote Probono legal services projects. And we saved this one for last because it ties in with the ABA's national Probono celebration week occurring at the end of this month. And we know that Probono is a big area of focus for many of you on an ongoing basis throughout the year, but there's a special spotlight on it this month through the celebration. So for the next 75 minutes, we'll be discussing several technology initiatives that are underway to enable new forms of Probono participation and expand the reach of services to underserved communities. And I'm really delighted to be joined today by three panelists, as well as potentially a couple of their colleagues or collaborators who will be chiming in informally, but I wanted to welcome Deborah Jennings, managing attorney with Legal Aid of Western Ohio, Fong Wong, who's the Probono director of Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, and Claudia Johnson, my colleague at ProbonoNet, and Claudia is the law help interactive program manager. So thank you again to all of our panelists for joining today and sharing their expertise on this topic. And just before we get started, I wanted to provide a little bit of context to the series as a whole and this topic today. A lot of the themes that we've explored throughout the past year are inspired and motivated by the 100% access vision of the 2013 LSE Tech Summit report. And that put forth a really smart and, I think, thoughtful view of the way that through innovative applications of technology, the Legal Aid community can provide some form of assistance to everyone with a significant civil legal problem. And that part of what we're collectively working towards is the day when we don't have to turn away people without having to receive some form of assistance. And we know that in many communities, Probono engagement is a big part of this equation and this vision. So we'll be talking today about how technology can help that. And we know that many attorneys can and do volunteer, but for others, they're not sure how to get involved or maybe whether they have the right training or skills to help people in need. Or they simply face an everyday hurdle that's familiar to many of us, which is the lack of time or balancing work commitments, family commitments, maybe wanting to volunteer but not being located close to a program or having barriers of distance and able to get involved. So I think throughout the webinar today we'll see ways that programs and tools are helping to lower barriers to Probono participation and expand the pool of available volunteers through innovative uses of technology and collaboration. And in turn ways those programs are reaching more clients or in some cases assisting those who might otherwise go unserved. So within our panel we'll be looking at four initiatives. We'll be starting with Deborah, who will be talking about a chat-based initiative that Legal Aid of Western Ohio has developed to provide Probono Council on Advice to low-income litigants in rural areas. And then Claudia will be talking about a very new, recently released capacity that's been developed for Law Health Interactive called LHI Connect, which supports the sharing and remote review of online forms available on LHI. And then we'll wrap up with Fong, who is going to talk about two initiatives that LaFLA is spearheading. One is a really interesting video conferencing partnership that is being developed with local libraries and the other is a development of a statewide online Probono training institute that was one of the inaugural Probono Innovation Fund grants through LSC last year. So with that we will turn it over to Deborah, who's going to talk about Legal Aid of Western Ohio's live chat project to kick things off today. Hi, everyone. Can I be heard? Yes, sounds good. Okay, great. Well, I'm happy to have the opportunity to speak to you all today about Legal Aid of Western Ohio's live chat project. This project is a TIG-funded project and the service delivery model offers trained Probono attorneys the opportunity to provide real-time legal advice to eligible clients on relatively uncomplicated legal issues via the internet using the live person software. Before I get into the project details, I thought I'd provide you with a little bit of background on its origins. Like most legal services programs, one of our biggest challenges is how to deliver service to the greatest number of persons living in poverty with our current resources. LAWO's service area is 32 counties in northwest and west central Ohio, which you can see depicted on this slide. Okay, so 30 of those counties, and this kind of brings it in a little bit closer, but 30 of those counties are rural counties. And in our rural counties, we have about 315,000 persons living at or below the federal poverty level. Our challenge was to look at service delivery models and our potential Probono resources to assist us in serving these individuals. About four years ago, roughly in 2011, we launched a partnership with a corporate attorneys and attorney affinity groups to provide on-site counseling advice through telephone clinics, which we held at our LAWO offices. The feedback that we got from these volunteers who participated in these clinics was very positive. What they liked about them most was the personal satisfaction that they were able to achieve with the direct service delivery. And they expressed an interest in exploring the possibility of providing these services from their own remote locations. So that led us to begin to think about ways in which we could tap the untapped potential to establish and formalize ongoing relationships with these folks and others who might be interested in a convenient, predictable, volunteer opportunity. So in developing our live chat model, one of our goals was to design a delivery system that would encourage attorneys to provide Probono assistance by making the service time limited and convenient. Kind of drawing from those lessons learned from those telephone clinics and then making it possible for those volunteers to provide that service right from their own remote locations. So because a Probono attorney can provide the legal service by chatting with the client online, the attorney can provide it from wherever they are. Another goal of our live chat model was to increase the efficiency and effectiveness by offering attorneys that are located in our rural counties the opportunity to volunteer in a scheduled and predictable time limited manner without the need to travel to our office location and its associated time commitment and expense. We also wanted to offer them an opportunity to learn an area of the law they might be otherwise unfamiliar with in order to give them the possibility of expanding their own substantive areas of practice through this exposure and training. So the nuts and bolts of our project are these. First, LAWO organizes and provides substantive poverty law training for potential volunteer attorneys. We selected initially housing and consumer as the substantive poverty law areas for this training. Our experiences with our onsite clinics confirmed that attorneys who might be most interested in delivering this type of service generally had transactional practices and so we're comfortable with areas of the law that were primarily contract based. So that informed our selection of housing and consumer as our original substantive areas for the project. In addition, the attorneys are also trained on our case management system so that they can view their clients electronic file prior to chatting with the client. And then, of course, they're also trained on how to use the live person software. At the conclusion of this training series, the attorneys provide their appointment availability to an LAWO paralegal working on the project. So what we ask them to do is to provide one hour blocks of time. It can be their lunch hour, it could be early morning, it could be late afternoon, whatever works and is most convenient for them. But we ask them to provide their availability in one hour block or appointment times. They communicate what those times are to a paralegal who keeps the information on a master calendar. And then our intake staff knows what appointments are available when they have a potential client on the phone who would be a good candidate for a chat. So we have a centralized intake system with LAWO called our legal aid line. And we have intake staff who provide the eligibility screenings and determinations for our entire 32 counties service area. So the intake staff prescreens applicants for legal assistance for, first of all, financial eligibility. And then, of course, for issue eligibility, housing or issue falling into one of those housing or consumer categories for which we have trained our volunteers. They also screen for access to the Internet and for comfort level using the technology. It's important for us to make sure that the service delivery model that we might be offering is one that the client feels comfortable using. So if any of those indicators aren't there, then the determination is made that that individual is perhaps not the best candidate for a chat. So this next slide on the right hand side, albeit a little small, but if you want to see what it looks like, you can go to www.legalaidline.org. It shows the entry point for the client experience for the chat service. The client accesses the live chat window through the website on the date and at the time of their scheduled chat appointment. And you can't see it on this slide, but there is language that indicates that you must be scheduled to chat with an attorney and that if you're not, it gives an indication of how to apply for assistance. Now we use the pre-chat survey tool in the live person software to prompt the client to enter certain information, their name, their case number, and other information that will help the volunteer attorney identify the client so that they know they are making the selection of the correct client for their chat. And then from the client's point of view, the session begins. So this next slide shows on the right hand side the volunteer experience and the attorney begins the chat from the live person console and at the top, there we go, at the top you can see there's a line, several lines. Those would represent individual clients who've logged into a chat for their appointment. And then the attorney is going to match that information with the information that has been entered by the client down in that right hand corner box to confirm that they're selecting the correct client for the chat that they have been scheduled with. So after selecting their assigned client, then the session begins and the chat happens back and forth between the volunteer attorney and the client. The session is supported by customizable canned content which is available right from the console. We have created blocks of canned content that the volunteers can draw from while they're engaged in the chat. The introductory chat content we ask all of them to use and basically that pushes out information about that this is the extent of the service that we're able to provide that the attorney, if their situation involves a court appearance, the attorney will not be their attorney for that, that whatever service we're going to be able to provide is going to happen within the context of the chat and that when the chat is over that service is over. And we ask the client just to acknowledge that along the way. So in addition to that procedural canned content that we have loaded and available for the volunteers, we've also created blocks of substantive content that they can either use as is or customize based on their interaction with the client during the chat. So they operate as we kind of refer to them as cheat sheets. So they operate as cheat sheets to help support the volunteers in their exchanges with the client during the course of the chat. And then we also have one of our paralegals always on standby as while chats are happening in the event that a volunteer would need some more direct support from LAO staff during the process. So our outcomes so far are promising we think. We're basically just emerging from our soft launch. We currently offer the service for six topics in the housing and consumer area. We've trained about a dozen volunteers and we have six who regularly open and schedule chats over the course of the week. And the remaining do so more inter intermittently. We have recently added to new substantive areas and we are in the process of finalizing the scheduling of training of additional volunteers so that we can add capacity for the service delivery. So to date we have scheduled about 80 chats and we've helped about 55 people through this service delivery model and we're encouraged about its prospects for the future. Great. Thank you so much, Deborah. That's a great overview. We have a couple of questions in the chat box. One is from Michelle Han who is wondering are the volunteer attorneys anonymous or does the client know their name? So a conflict check is done in advance and the attorneys are not necessarily anonymous. Okay. Do they have the option to be anonymous? It hasn't been an issue for us because we're treating these as cases. We are running these through our conflict checking process. That might be a 2.0 or 3.0 version but right now that's not how we are delivering the service because we are treating these as cases. I definitely agree with that approach and the reason that I ask is Washington State is implementing the web lawyer forum for giving advice and we just went back and forth including with our ethics committee over whether individuals could even give advice anonymously and we decided not to do that for both ethical concerns and also just the relationship with the client. You feel a little bit better if you are actually know you're connecting with a real person and who that person is even if it's limited scope representation. Yeah. So part of those decisions were informed by our earlier experiences with our brick and mortar phone clinics with our volunteers where we really appreciated their feedback. About their level of commitment to providing the service delivery kind of grew from their connection albeit brief you know maybe just 30 minutes maybe 60 minutes you know with the client. So that's how we have structured and developed the model. Great. So we've got a few other questions here and I'll try to get through them quickly before we move on to Claudia. But Claudia was actually wondering Deborah if you know which subject area requires the longest chat and do you have a sense of how long the longest chat can go? Is it 10 minutes, 20 minutes longer? So the different topic areas that we selected, we selected based on our Council on Advice crisis stabilization service delivery within legal aid of Western Ohio. And so we tried to make selections where we thought the interaction would be at most 30 minutes because we really wanted to keep these time slots to about an hour as best we could so that that would include any prep, then the actual connection with the client and then follow up. So much of how that plays out has to do with individuals who are delivering the service but we chose relatively uncomplicated housing and consumer issues so that we could keep the commitment to about an hour. I hope that answers the question. Great. And I'd be happy to share any of that with anybody who'd like to see a little bit more. And Juliet was wondering how much time does the paralegal involved put into this project? Do you have a sense of that? That can depend as well. Initially it was substantial. Now it's more a monitoring function. You know, anytime you add a new volunteer or a group of new volunteers, that's going to require a little bit more time. But with our experienced volunteers, our regular volunteers, I would say overall it's not a huge considerable amount of time. I don't know if our LAWO director of private attorney involvement was going to be on this call. I don't know if she might have anything to add through the chat box. That would help answer that question for folks. Great. I think I see Missy here. So Missy maybe if you're able to chime in through the chat box, that would be great. And then maybe the last question for this segment because it ties in with the sidebar that we're going to be talking about next. Alex from Nebraska Legal Aid was interested in hearing a bit about the decision making process that went into using live person as a solution for this. The free services out there and I know that might be a big question and I can add a few things to that after this segment as well. Yeah, so there's a lot of components to that decision. When we originally submitted the LOI for this TIG, we thought that we were going to perhaps be able to participate in the arrangement that Pro BonoNet had with the provider. But when it came down to actually implementing the different pieces of the TIG, we realized that there were security and confidentiality issues and concerns with respect to the exchange between the attorney and the client that we were going to have to address in a different way. So it was also a time when the provider was changing its platform a bit. So we did do some research and we made the selection to go with live person for a number of reasons. Security, we were happy with what they could tell us about the security of the exchange. And the confidentiality of the exchange. And then they also had a feature which is a screen sharing feature, which I didn't go into today, but I'd be happy to talk to anyone about if they'd like to. Which we've begun to use and implement where the attorney, if they want to review a document or review a form or review a lease or anything like that can request permission to view the screen of the client. It doesn't work the other way. And then they can share the screen. That and provide some assistance that way as well. That is changing a bit as they're undergoing another sort of iteration of what you might be able to do in terms of looking at documents and another screen within the software. But that was another reason why we went with live person. So we would be happy at some point to work with you in doing a short video kind of demoing that technology, something five minutes or less. There are a lot of people who have asked about that and I haven't had a really good solution to give them as a recommendation. So that's fascinating. Yeah. It is changing and we're not 100% sure what that is going to look like. It's going to be demonstrated for us. Our current contract with live person goes through February. So that will be a change if we decide to stay with them after that date or shift to another slide. But we'll be really happy to do that demonstration and we'll be really happy to do that. Great. Well, there are a few other questions in the chat box that Deborah, if you're able to stay on and maybe take a look at any that you can respond to. That would be great. And I see Missy has chimed in as well. So thank you both. This was a really exciting project. And it is one of, to my knowledge, two live chat projects in the community now that are providing pro bono or brief advice that are not just information and referral finding services. And then I think Deborah and her program also have done a really thoughtful job in thinking through the design and volunteer support required for something like this as well as the intake and screening process that helps affirm for the client individual that this is an appropriate and helpful medium for them to get assistance through as well. So before we shift to Claudia, I wanted to just do a sidebar update about other live help live chat initiatives underway throughout the country. This is a map of, to my knowledge, to date the live chat initiatives that are underway in legal aid communities throughout the country, primarily in association with the statewide legal aid website. The states highlighted in yellow have a substantial portion of their share of their staffing done through law student and or pro bono attorneys. And the states in blue are often I think staffed using legal aid staff, but in many cases they also engage AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers as well at least part time. And as for folks who are not sort of aware of the evolution of live help in the community, it began as a small pilot in 2004 in Montana and Iowa that pro bono helped to develop and it now encompasses about 15 or so of the states that you see here assisting more than 20,000 people a year. And many of the, as Deborah was describing, her program is one of two that's now using live help for brief advice and it made sense for them to use the live person platform, a separate instance of that in order to support that model. About 10 or 11 of the other states here also have been using the live person pro chat platform. That platform existed in 2004 and has been I think a good solution for those states in the interim. One of the reasons, similar to what Deborah said, one of the reasons that many states have opted to go with that is in particular if you're using law students or volunteer attorneys having the canned chats, having robust reporting mechanisms, sort of an infrastructure behind the software that helps the volunteers provide effective assistance and then help support the supervision component of it as well I think has been really critical. However, the live person platform is at a crossroads and they are kind of rolling, they're looking to roll their current customers using live person pro onto the next generation of that that Deborah described. So Probononet has been working this year with Iowa Legal Aid. One of the original pilot partners for live help to assess and pilot a new chat platform for the states currently using live person pro including looking at Alex probably many of the tools that you've seen out there as well. So this has included doing community and product research about the needs. It will include pilot testing the new solution on Iowa Legal Aid and then sharing our findings with the community. And earlier this year there was I think a pretty extensive Google spreadsheet shared with the LS Tech listserv with some of the product research we've done so far and what some of the criteria are that are driving this based on needs. We've been hearing from the community and would definitely love to share that again and report back out when this process is further along. So great. Well we will shift gears now and turn it over to Claudia who's going to talk about a capacity that has recently been added to LHI Connect that we hope will help support more remote document creation and review by volunteer attorneys. Hi, thank you Liz. Hi all. Thanks Deborah for sharing that. It was very neat to see. I'm excited. I wanted to talk about LHI Connect which is a new backend capacity that is working in the national server for document assembly. And talk a little bit about the problem area we were trying to solve and how we think Connect is going to be really helpful in solving that project. So the problem that we were trying to address is this issue that there's a lot of people out there that have a very specific need to create a document. And the document is complex because the document is based on law and statute that is complex. It's not because it's not in plain language or poorly formatted. It's just that it is a complex process like for example expungement or another one could be a modification for child support for a family with kids. Something with assistance so it's not a document that could be well geared to somebody to do as a self-represented litigant assemble it on LHI and submit it. It's something that we need lawyer review. So that was kind of the problem area that we wanted to create this capacity about. And then the other area being that the lawyers and the clients are not necessarily in the same city or working at the same time. So as a gap in terms of distance and also an asynchronous process where if you have a pro bono lawyer they may want to volunteer but if they can't review the document on their own time and not necessarily have the person that they're reviewing for waiting for them or sitting there or coming in during business hours. So we were trying to enable a capacity where the clients and the lawyer can work together on a document but not having to be doing it at the same time. And so we wanted to create a way where people can fill out documents, share them on the back end through a secure system and the lawyer can look at what the client submits and then use an online form assuming the lawyer is not a total expert on this complex area of law to edit and produce new documents that the lawyer then completes and gives back to the person to file. And so that was kind of what we were doing with this capacity. And we thought this could be very helpful for people that are setting up clinics where let's say they want to have 300 people submit for review a particular complex document and then the lawyers are going to do the review after the clinic on another day on their own time and they only want to look at those documents that have been assigned to them. And we wanted to get rid of the need for the end user to remember a password or a login or having to learn how to use LHI as a maven so that they could just answer the interview, agree to submit, and then the lawyer could go in, get a notification and review the document. So that's what the solution is and we call it LHI Connect because it's a tool that would allow people to connect through the back end. And so basically the person knows that they need to do this particular form so they know they're looking for a form and they find the form in the statewide website. And so they do the interview just like they would do any other LHI interview. They answer the questions. And what happens with Connect is that the first thing that they will get is they will be asked for permission to share their answers with legal aid staff and pro bono lawyers that are going to review the document. And actually the terms of use here, the way we've coded is that each program could put their own terms of use so that the person is disclosing it to that specific organization's terms of use. So if it's going to be used, for example, we're going to have a court, it could be permission to allow the self-help staff to review it, the self-help attorneys, and then for the filing clerk to review it. So the language here is modifiable according to the workflow. Once the person agrees and puts in their name and accepts the terms of use, they answer the interviews, they create the document, and then on the back end of LHI it's shared. So let's move to the next slide. So what happens next is the pro bono coordinator of this virtual clinic or remote clinic or supervising all the pro bono volunteers that are not with the client at the same place, they get a notification from the assistant that says, hey, an answer has been submitted for this project. So the person can go and check and place the case. And you place the case like you normally would place the case in any pro bono group. Generally, you would look through your panel, see who's available, see, hey, do you want to review this? Yes, the lawyer does his conflict. None of that is done on LHI. All of that is done as just regular legal aid does pro bono placement. So once the lawyer agrees to take the case to review, the lawyer has an account on LHI and the pro bono coordinator can say, hey, give these person's answers to this lawyer. So you can assign as pro bono coordinator an answer set from a specific person to a particular lawyer that has already agreed to represent the client and has done all the requirements to accept the client on a pro bono basis according to the rules of ethics in that state. So then the lawyer is assigned the case. And so then once the lawyer or advocate is assigned the case to review, LHI sends them a notification that tells them, hey, you are now, thanks for volunteering. And here is an answer file to review and go log into LHI and these are the instructions. So when the lawyer logs back into LHI, let's go to the next question. And they go and they see, okay, so I have this answer file assigned to me and they can, hold on, so let's go to the next question. They can go in and they can decide, okay, I'm going to open it. And they can open it with the interview that the person originally did, which will be the self represented interview. Or they can open it with a new interview, which is the lawyer interview where the lawyer could be adding additional remedies and could be adding the extra value lawyer or advocate modifications to that interview so that the document that produces is either the same that the person did or a new one based on the same that the person did. So it allows the lawyer to create a, you know, let's say the person fills out a screening interview, the lawyer could then fill out the pleading. So it is very flexible and you can have more than one document that they will be working with. You could have, you know, after the default. You could have the judgment or a summary judgment or whatever, you know, whatever is in the process, you could tie all of these documents together and they would do them serially or transactionally like a lot of legal work, yes. So the lawyer would click what interview they want and then they can modify it. They can change it. And on the back end of all of this, there's a persona that we call the connect coordinator and this would be the person at the legal aid group or at the bar or at the court that would have kind of the superpowers where they would create this connect, we call them connect points and they will to add as many of the interviews as they have already on LHI that are part of that case. They will add the provono coordinators if there's two or three people in the project that are provono coordinators, they could all be connected through the back end and then they would add the lawyers so that at the end, all of them will be tied to this connect point and they can use this connect point in any way that they wish. It basically becomes just a URL that they can put in their statewide website or that they can distribute. So for example, if there's a big clinic that happens twice a year on expungements, they could create a connect point to keep everything tied together on the back end and so anybody that's part of a connect point will see when they log into LHI with that account, the LHI connect bar on the left-hand side and when they click on that, they will go to the connect points that they're associated with. So that's basically an overview of this new connect functionality and right now, if we go down this, we are piloting it. It's actually a TIC funded project that is being piloted with LASSO in Oklahoma. Margaret Hamlet is our main client in that grant and she is doing an expungement with provono lawyers across the state and it's right now in use and the evaluation of this will start in late December through hopefully March. And what we're hoping to do is also in November, we're hoping to have a court try it for purposes of using the same capacity in a self-help center where they have five self-help centers in the Bay Area where it takes three hours to drive five minutes. And so instead of having the clients drive to file, what they want to do is if somebody is in Brentwood for those who know that area and they want to get to Richmond, which is about 45 minutes but it takes three hours, the person in Brentwood can have their files reviewed by the self-help staff there and if the self-help staff thinks that it's good, then they can give it to the filing clerk in Richmond without the person having to travel to file or without the clerk having to have the person wait, etc. So this is going to start hopefully in November and then once we have these two kind of common cases scenarios, we're hoping to open it up to other groups that already have online forms in LHI with the idea that they will take the really well-tested forms where they have the capacity to do clinics and remote events and virtual events and they'll be able to set up and use this capacity to expand different types of delivery, mostly focusing on remote and pro bono and virtual services. And so that's what the hope of this project is and I would welcome questions or more information if people want, they can reach out to me and I'll be happy to share. But hopefully by around March of next year we'll be in a position to have some of the evaluation information back and get ready to see if we can start sharing this with other states that may be interested in using. And basically what we call that document co-production tool to promote pro bono and promote remote services. Great. Thanks, Claudia. So if anyone has questions, please feel free to ask them in the chat box or just jump in here. One of the other aspects of this project that Claudia and Margaret have been working on is an extensive user guide. So that will, for programs that are interested in adopting this, help provide information to the overall project manager as well as what we refer to as the connect coordinators, the people that would be setting up these kinds of events and engagements through LHI. So we're looking forward to releasing that to the community next year. Great. Okay. Well, thanks, Claudia. We're going to move on. If people have follow-up questions about LHI Connect, feel free to reach out to Claudia or ask them through the chat box. But we're going to move on to our last segment now and welcome Fang Wong from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. Fang is the pro bono director there. And she's going to be talking about two initiatives that LaFLA is spearheading this year. One is a video conferencing partnership with local libraries around LA. And the second is the development of a statewide online pro bono training institute that I think is really exciting. Thank you, Liz. Yes, I'm going to talk about two pretty exciting projects that we started this year. And the first is the LaFLA library video conferencing project. And this is an LSE funded, LSE TIG-funded program. And we are partnering with five libraries, the LA Law Library, Long Beach, Torrance, Palmdale, and Englewood. And we've also partnered with other, we're also discussing partnerships with other community partners as well as law schools. And in the next slide, the goal of this project is basically to provide another way for us to connect with our clients, our community partners, and also with each other. So, you know, in addition to in-person meetings and phone calls and conference calls and what have you. And the reason why we wanted to develop this project in the next slide, you'll see this is a map of greater Los Angeles and where the stars are are the LaFLA community offices and where the little blue circles are are all the law libraries and or self-help centers if they're close by. And although, you know, Los Angeles is a very urban area, traffic is so horrendous that sometimes it takes more than 45 minutes just to get from one office to another, especially our more distant offices like Long Beach and Santa Monica. And oftentimes when we have clients who live in the outskirts, it takes them a very long time to reach us. Sometimes, you know, they have to take two or three buses. And when you think about Palmdale Library, which is on the very top of the map, it costs, I believe it's $26 now just to take the bus from Palmdale to Los Angeles. And we've partnered with one justice to do a number of justice buses to get out to Palmdale, and we always get requests to come back. And so we thought, you know, why not start a video conferencing project and be able to more easily connect with our clients that are outside of our, you know, main central Los Angeles area. So in the next slide, you know, this project is pretty basic. It doesn't involve a whole lot. These are the components of our program. Our partners and volunteers, I would say, are key to making this project successful. As I mentioned, there are five library partners that have partnered with us to develop this project where we basically are able to connect via Chromebooks. And I also want to mention that we have law schools now that are very interested in participating. We have a partnership with Southwestern right now where law students in between classes, they jump on the Chromebook and connect with our clients and do intake and, you know, chat with the supervising attorney after each of their sessions to talk about the cases and review what should be done with those cases during the intake. And in terms of technology, the bulk of the funding that we received went to purchase 30 Chromebooks, and those Chromebooks were purchased so that we could have what we call a universal method of engaging one another in our libraries. And the reason why we decided to purchase Chromebooks was, number one, they were just so much cheaper than laptops. We found that the technology at the various libraries really differed. Some of them had very old computers and printers, and so we decided to just focus on Chromebooks and distributing them between our offices and our libraries so that we could have one universal method connecting with one another. And we also developed a chaos mode so that when clients use the Chromebooks, they can easily access it, and there's a survey that pops up. They can access certain websites, but the function is mainly for connecting clients with prospective volunteers or law attorneys and, of course, being able to share documents through the chaos mode and pull up any other information related to their cases. So a quick question. What is really the difference between a Chromebook and a laptop? So I knew I was going to get that question. A Chromebook is basically like a tablet. It's a simplified version that has limited capacity. And so for our purposes, the Chromebook just seemed very practical. We didn't need to have a ton of storage because the purpose was to connect with other folks virtually. And in terms of the actual software, we're using GoToMeeting free. And GoToMeeting has an app that allows us to connect up to three people in each meeting room. So far, it's a really low-cost way for us to connect with folks. And I want to point out that for folks who want to develop a video conferencing program, Chromebooks aren't necessarily needed or necessary. Like I said, we decided to do this because our project was pretty expansive. We were partnering with our self-help center, sorry, with our libraries, with law schools, and the different organizations just have varying degrees of advance and not advance technology. But a program could easily just purchase video cameras and have used their existing computer speakers to connect with folks and use GoToMeeting free. We've been able to get by thus far with the free service. And I'm surprised that we haven't yet had to purchase the full GoToMeeting software or program. And in terms of, you know, other needs for our program, we have, you know, we've trained staff, we've trained library staff, we've trained law students to use this program. And, you know, there isn't too much to GoToMeeting. It's a very, very simple program. We've also developed other tools to help manage this project. And in the next slide, I'll explain how we've been able to use this video, or how we've developed this video conferencing program. As you can see from this visual, we use the Chromebooks to connect in a variety of ways. I mean, we initially expected to use it with the libraries and clients. And since then, we've been able to expand. A lot of our Chromebooks we actually use for our existing clinics to complete documents. For example, at our Veterans Clinic and at our Expungement Clinic, we've been able to use the Chromebooks for volunteers to fill out documents and print out. Oh, and I also want to point out that at the library, we have a multi-function printer that's cloud-enabled so that we can print from the Chromebook at any location. So, if let's say, you know, I'm meeting with a client from, you know, the LA Law Library and at my office, I have a document that I want the client to look at. I can print it from my end because it's, you know, cloud-enabled. So that's helped us bridge that distance gap as well. And it's a very useful tool that the library folks have been very happy about. And so, so far, you know, we've been able to develop, in addition to using these Chromebooks for existing projects with the libraries. And some of those are the Expungement Clinics with the Genesee Impact Clinic that we partner with other community partners in. And other ad hoc clinics throughout Greater LA. We also use them for a project that we started with Southwestern Law School. And we basically created another intake system allowing the libraries to make appointments. And in the next slide, you'll see that we developed a Google Calendar that allows the libraries to make appointments with us so that folks can sign up and get some legal assistance. We have law students who basically do the intake for these appointments. And there are various supervising attorneys on staff to oversee or provide advice to this client and student after each of these intake sessions. And what's great is that Google Calendar sends notices to all of our partners about what appointments there are and whether they've been canceled. It does get updated. And this also allows us to find out who's using their Chromebooks. So let's say we have a large clinic and we need to use the existing Chromebooks. We could borrow back those Chromebooks and use it for, you know, a future clinic where we have lots of volunteers who need to access them. So this gives us a way to see what's being done with the Chromebooks and who's using it for what purpose. And I also want to point out that we do have policies and procedures surrounding priority uses for these Chromebooks. And, of course, the main priority is to enable clients to have access. And I do also want to point out that prior to even starting this project, we surveyed our clients because we were concerned that this additional method of connection would be difficult for them to use. And I'm not surprised, but a lot of our folks that we surveyed, a lot of the clients, said that they preferred to figure out how to use a Chromebook to connect with an attorney rather than, you know, having to travel to another office location to meet with an attorney in person. So after we got that input, we moved forward. And fortunately, we got it and were able to develop this very useful project. So in this last slide, I just want to point out that this is a web link that we developed to coordinate our go-to meeting rooms. And mind you, this is a free go-to meeting service that we use, and we develop different chat or video-compensing rooms so that each of our offices and libraries and law schools can talk to one another in separate rooms at any given time. So for example, yesterday we had a clinic with the Palmdale Library, and one of our Southwestern students, you know, went on Chromebook 1 under Palmdale Library to chat with the various clients. And on Chromebook 2, we had an attorney who's on standby to provide any advice to the student. So it's a great way for us to coordinate who's using what, and, you know, it's easier than having to send a link out to, you know, the person we need to get in touch with. So it's a really great tool that we were able to develop, and this is actually quite easy to create. And it was something that we thought of after we developed the project with the various partners. So I know I went through this really quickly. Does anybody have any questions about this? Fong, there are a couple in the chat box that I think you just answered, but Juliette was wondering how did you set the printers up off-site? Was somebody from LaFla, did somebody from LaFla have to go to those libraries and help with that install? Yes, so we did have an IT person, a contractor who helped us set up the, you know, the 30 Chromebooks and the printers. So we did have someone that we got funding to assist with that process. But I have to say, it wasn't, it was a lot because of the number of the Chromebooks and the partners that we were distributing them to, but in terms of the actual knowledge that's required, I think any IT person could probably do the work. Okay, great, and it's good to know about the free version of go-to-meeting. I'm not sure how many people are aware of that, but that's a great tip for people on the fact that it supports up to three attendees, you know, interacting from remote locations seems like a really key component to this. Great. Well, I think we can move on to the Pro Bono Training Institute. Great. Okay, so LaFla was fortunate to get another LSE-funded grant, the Pro Bono Innovation Fund, to develop the Pro Bono Training Institute. And this is a project that's in partnership with two great partners, One Justice and Neighborhood Legal Services in Los Angeles. And the funding that we received basically pays for two full-time staff to help develop this project. And before I get into what this is, I'll talk about why we thought about developing this and why the funding from LSE was just so key in allowing us to solve a great problem and persisted for a very long time for many of us Pro Bono managers. So, you know, the problem has been that a lot of times trainings are just so busy and they are often asked to do trainings on a variety of substantive topics, and developing a good interactive training takes time. I know that, you know, just me personally, you know, each year our organization does between 30 to 40 Pro Bono trainings. And, you know, I wish I had the time to just stop and help the attorney make those trainings more interactive and less talking head, you know, just a more interactive training. And, you know, time is always an issue. And so what we often find is we get trainings that are, you know, 100% lecture with very little to no interactive components. And we also have found that a lot of these trainings are duplicative. There are different organizations that provide the same training over and over. And sometimes we have attorneys who will say, well, you know, if this attorney, Pro Bono attorney wants to volunteer my project, that attorney is going to have to take my training because I don't know what training the other organization provided and I don't know the content. So I would feel safer if they knew my system of doing, you know, whatever training for work. And we also find that Pro Bono trainings may reach out to us and say, hey, you know, I'm ready to take an unlawful detainer case, but we may not have a training available until the next month or two. And so timing is key. And then, you know, I wanted to also address that these trainings aren't universal. One training is just so different from another organization. And even though these trainings are, for example, domestic violence, even though these trainings are given throughout California on a regular basis by different organizations. So we thought, well, why not create a more centralized, efficient way of training Pro Bono's in California? And so we thought it makes sense to have on-demand online Pro Bono trainings by developing a centralized website and making the trainings more interactive and effective by ensuring that trainings that are produced have, you know, training best practices or adult learning techniques are embedded into these trainings. And of course, you know, the purpose of this is to support and expand Pro Bono in the state by, you know, making these trainings a lot more accessible and reducing these duplicative trainings so that legal services folks can use those resources to do other things, like provide support to Pro Bono trainings who end up taking on the case instead of constantly doing trainings over and over. And also, you know, I want to point out that the purpose is to also, what we call universalized these trainings is by getting legal services folks to come together and develop a uniform training that they all buy into. Folks from different jurisdictions throughout California can take these trainings and, you know, the third goal, go to an organization that's listed as an organization that has volunteer opportunities and connect, basically Pro Bono training is going to connect with these volunteer opportunities throughout California, not just in the jurisdiction in which they live or work. Because, you know, one of the problems we see too is placing Pro Bono cases is sometimes about timing. Sometimes we may have more volunteers than we have cases or we may have more cases than volunteers and being able to train folks throughout California and being able to possibly connect with them on cases that are available elsewhere can benefit everybody, not just our own organization. So the LRC grant was just so instrumental in allowing us to really get these partners together and think beyond our own organizations and see how we could help, you know, folks in need throughout California. So in the next slide, I'll talk a little about how this works. So in the middle orange bubble, the Pro Bono training institute basically collaborates with different legal services trainers to develop trainings on various legal substantive issues. And I want to point out that these substantive topics were pre-developed. We surveyed the community when the project started to get their feedback on what legal topics they thought were important to low-income folks in the community. And based on that feedback, we have been working with a number of organizations and trainers to develop a series of trainings for Pro Bono attorneys. And what's great about this project is that it's a project that's developed by attorneys for attorneys, you know, the focus of which is to produce quality training. And, you know, once we get together the legal experts in the various areas of substantive law, they collaborate to develop the trainings with help from our two staff members who help them design the training and produce it and, you know, put it online. And those are then available for Pro Bono attorneys to watch. And then there's the second component of it, which is, if you see on the bottom right square, we get other legal services organizations to buy into this project and say, you know what, this training contains all the substantive aspects that I would use in a training for my Pro Bono attorneys. And, you know, I agree that, you know, I would send folks, Pro Bono folks to this training if, you know, we're not doing an in-person training and they need support or a training. And then the second part, or the third part I should say, is we don't necessarily do the connection, but we list organizations that want to be listed as organizations that have available volunteer opportunities in that training module so that folks can connect with those organizations if they choose to then volunteer somewhere or take on a case. So there are a lot of different components and, you know, we've been able to, so far, develop, in the process of developing a handful of trainings, so far we have one component up. And if you look at the next slide, this is our website with one of our training modules up. And I want to quickly point out that when I talk about effective trainings, one thing that we are also doing is we're breaking down the trainings from, let's say, an hour and a half or two hours to smaller chunks. So let's say an unlawful container training. Sometimes it could be one and a half to two hours, but that training is going to be broken down into segments of 10, 15 minutes based on, you know, categories. So let's say helping, doing an answer, 10 minutes, doing discovery, 15 minutes, preparing the hearing brief, 10 minutes, you know, preparing for trial, 20 minutes. That way, problem-trainers who want to watch a small clip don't have to sit through an entire hour or an hour and a half training. They could just sit for that one little section to learn how to do that one little thing that they want to do so they could be more effective for them and they could save them a little more time. And these modules or little sections can also be helpful to legal services advocates who may want to do in-person training but not want to have to do an entire training. They could play these modules and talk in between these short modules about their program or their internal policies or procedures in handling these cases. So... And I also want to point out that for each of these trainings we also have surveys for not just the trainees but also for advocates who want to provide feedback. And I want to point out that, you know, producing or developing trainings is similar to writing where, you know, you write a first draft and it's not perfect and you have to kind of rethink it and do it again. So we're constantly finding that there are a lot of things that we can improve and for that reason we do have a focus group that helps the purpose of which is to give us feedback about the content and whether the trainings are useful and effective for pro bono attorneys that are watching this. And next slide. This is kind of a roadmap of what we do, what we can do, I mean. So, of course, you know, our goal is to ultimately provide a better way for pro bono attorneys to be trained and to be trained in a collaborative way with trainings that we call universal. And so part of that is to ensure that our staff help the trainees or the trainers, I should say, incorporate interactive training methods into their trainings and, of course, incorporate other e-learning best practices in the recordings, for example, multiple choice, clips of videos, true, false questions, just so that folks can have some interactive component and so that legal services organizations can be sure that these volunteers are getting a thorough training and are being quizzed or tested on the knowledge that they're being trained on. And our staff will also assist with the trainers with drafting agendas and learning objectives. Sometimes we find that, or many times, I should say, we find that trainings lack that basic component. Many times folks who do trainings just kind of jump in and jump into the substantive law and talk for an hour without any questions being asked by participants or the trainer. And that's not the most effective way of training, but having an agenda and giving the trainees an idea of what they're going to learn and what the purpose of the training is for and who the intended audience should be is very helpful. Because we also recognize in this project that there's a variety of folks that will be using the service, pro bono attorneys, advocates, paralegals, law students, and these trainings are going to be geared towards specific audiences. And also, we also recognize that an hour training or an hour-and-a-half training can only contain so much information. And instead of having a trainer try to fit as much information as possible in a training and kind of talk as fast as it can to get every fact or law in, we understand the importance of providing reference materials and teaching folks to refer to documents or other guides that they can use to supplement the knowledge that they learned during the short timeframe. And so developing organized training materials is very important to this project as well. And of course, the last part is sharing resources putting these training modules and recordings onto the probono-training.org website or any other websites of our partner organization. So in terms of the process, I won't go too much into it, but as you can see, this is kind of where, how we conduct the trainings that we do do. We usually work with trainers, handouts and PowerPoints, and then we help them provide information or support, review the training that they have in existence and provide suggestions as how they can improve it and implement any edits that they can... any other edits that can provide additional interactive exercises or what-have-you. And then, of course, after getting the buy-in from other organizations about the content, it's time to basically present and upload it on the website. And I want to point out that, although we will be doing some outreach, the purpose of this website is for legal services advocates to use it and broadcast it and share it with their probono attorneys who would be taking their cases. And this is a service for the benefit of not just legal services folks, of course, but probono attorneys throughout California who intend to take on a case and want to learn about a specific area of law. So that basically is kind of a very, very brief overview of this project. And I know I went through it very, very quickly, but if folks have questions, I'm happy to answer any questions. Great. Well, thank you, Feng. There is one question from Rachelle, who is wondering if you're using any specialized platforms or software to deliver the trainings themselves. We are... I know I didn't go into the technical part of it, and I could definitely... We're using WordPress for our internet site, and we're using some other basic Adobe program. And I could talk specifically offline about that because I know we're almost out of time, but the whole technical side is another huge component that could be a whole training in itself. So I'm happy... Here's my contact information. I'll be happy to talk more specifically about the details. Okay. Great. Well, thank you. I know this was one of the inaugural probono innovation fund grants, and I noticed in the announcements that this year's funding ran. It looked like there were a couple of states that were embarking on similar endeavors, so hopefully your approach and the way that Laughla is collaborating with other partners to get buy-in on the content and design and then help use this effort as a way to connect volunteers to probono opportunities will be useful to folks that are looking to replicate this, so thank you. Absolutely. Great. Well, we are just about out of time, and thank again all of our panelists for taking the time to join us today and share their experience with us on these exciting projects. We've shared some resources through the chat box along the way and have some other references here. There's a Colorado lawyer article that is describing another virtual lawyer in the library program that is being established in rural southwestern Colorado for others interested, in particular in the library partnership models that Fung described and other examples throughout the country. There are a range of life-help replication resources available through ProbonoNet, and we have links to some of the LSE resources here as well. So we will wrap up. We've got contact information here again, and I included Eva Cardi, who's with Iowa Legal Aid and is the lead contact for the life-help product assessment that I mentioned earlier. Brian, is there anything you want to add about upcoming webinars or additional LSN TAP information you'd like to highlight? Definitely. We've got three more webinars already scheduled and possibly a fourth coming up before the end of the year. Oddly, we have one on Tuesday next week, which is working with a new nonprofit that tries to connect individuals who are just learning to do mobile app development with nonprofits to do free development work. We've got one on the basics of Excel, techniques, tips, that type of stuff, and then one on visualizing dashboards. The one that is unscheduled so far that will probably be in December is going to be on Google Analytics. Also, if there's any other tigs or things that people want to share best practices from, we're happy to do all of the lay works, setting it up, recording that type of stuff. We've got room in our schedule and we're starting to plan things out for next year also. Thank you guys so much. This has been a really good presentation. I liked one of the comments that this would make a great presentation at EJC. I definitely hope to see some of these projects presented there. Great. Well, thank you, Brian, and thank you again to our panel and I think we'll be sharing a feedback survey as well. The one that Jillian put earlier in the chat box was an example of a feedback survey that's been created for the Pro Bono Training Institute that Fong was described. But we would really welcome your feedback on this training as well and don't hesitate to reach out to any of us for more information about any of the projects we described. So thank you all again for joining.