However,
after the withdrawal of funding for the support centers, the centers became
fully dependant on non-legal services funding.While
maintaining their general excellence, the programs and focus of the centers
have become somewhat divorced from the legal services community, with linkages
being maintained as much by long standing relationships as conscious planning.Thus,
while some centers have kept in close touch with field defined need, others
have become largely independent.In
most cases, day to day support for the field has inevitably become a much
lower priority.[1]
Prior
to the 1996 changes, Clearinghouse was the premier provider of integratedcontent
for the community, funded by the Legal Services Corporation.After
the changes, it was able to generate some revenue from the bulk purchase
system developed with the Legal Services Corporation, however that system
replaced only part of its revenue.This
forced a radical reduction in program.Clearinghouse
continues to publish, continues to operate its paper clearinghouse, although
now on a paid basis, and is building a web presence.[2]
Handsnet
has been the other main legal services content aggregator.However,
as can be seen by viewing any legal services e-mail list, the role of Handsnet
in the community appears to have fallen, overtaken by the huge amount of
data on the web, and the ease of obtaining program specific e-mail domain
addresses.While the strength of
Handsnet is the breadth of its social service reach, relatively little
law is maintained on Handsnet (although back-up centers material is automatically
trawled for content by WebClipper),[3]
and it appears that the community no longer uses Handsnet as the major
resource it once did.Unfortunately,
the WebClipper project, discussed in technical detail in an accompanying
paper, similarly does not seem to be as widely used as a useful resource
for the community as it might be, notwithstanding its ambitious reach.It
was less frequently mentioned in interviews than might have been anticipated.[4]
There
are undoubtedly many reasons for this.These
include inadequacies in the work of the content providers.These
inadequacies include lack up breadth of reach, lack of detailed local responsiveness,
lack of use of technology to provide high quality up to date and well distributed
content.
However,
it must be noted that there remains a widespread reluctance within the
consuming community to “carry the freight.”Many
programs regard back-up information as a luxury, and are unwilling to pay
for services.Others use informal
networks of contacts to get free back-up services.The
legal services community has always been weak at valuing the contribution
of back-up services.The crisis created
by the 1996 changes has not as yet changed this fact.
However, The Community Must Find a Way That The Many Suggesting Beginnings and Potential Content Provider Resources Discussed in Paper Two Can be Used Integrated into a New System.
Given
the immensity of the need, and given the huge potential resources, we have
to find a way to break out of this self-perpetuating and inadequate state
of affairs.
If
there is no intervention, there will be slow and incremental improvement.Additional
web sites will slowly be developed.The
existing web sites will slowly come to include more and more of their organizations’
content.Additional content will
be slowly be developed.More and
more links between the back-up programs will grow on their web pages.The
content aggregators will slowly do a better job of linking to material
from their providers.
But
none of this will transform a network that is not structured to meet the
support and law reform resource needs oflegal
services into a system that does provide that information. The key reason
is that none of these changes will transform the chaotic and un-integrated
relationship between content providers and consumers.The
incentives just will not be there on either side, and any improvements
will be driven by the realities of funding that do not reflect the needs
of the whole system.
Therefore
what is needed is more that myriad small incentives for improvement.Rather
there is need for a broader transformative vision for integration of the
potential resources into a broader system.[5]The
implementation of that vision must be grounded in a detailed analysis of
the potential and weakness of the provider and aggregator network that
we now have.
None
of them have gone beyond carrying traditional document to generate web-conceived
and web driven advocate assistance tools.[8]The
furthest they have gone is to include tools that allow the whole site to
be searched for key words.[9]Such
tools will not just be downloadable documents.They
will be on-line operations that act on documents and other objects to empower
advocates in their tasks.
More
prosaically, the sites, with perhaps a few exceptions, have only began
to evaluate and understand how the technology can be used to meet the real
day to day needs of the organizations with which they work. (there is much
need for developing tools that will help organizations do so.)[10]They
have failed to create the partnerships that outreach that will improve
their utilization and thus their impact.[11]
Nor
can we ignore that there are significant gaps in the content provider network.Some
subjects, such as family law, have effective no support source at all,
others such as farm worker law, have almost disappeared, and all the sources
– through no fault of their own -- are no longer structured around the
needs of the field advocacy community.
·Need
for integration with users needs
·Need
for market (field unwillingness to pay for or understand importance of
use)
·Need
for on-line tools that optimize usage and utility – beyond information
·Need
for marketing
·Need
for understanding what is really wanted by consumers (being driven by pre-existing
or funder- driven roles)
·Need
for technology skills[12]
·Lack
of understanding the potential of technology and the Internet
Each
of these inadequacies can be overcome.However,
substantial energy and re-envisioning is required.
·Marketing
assistance with users
·Marketing
and partnering assistance with gateways and portals
·Technology
assistance to improve and create additional community building resources
·Assistance
in providing support and assistance to other parallel sites.
Such
resources may be available pro bono from within the technology communities
and from the technology components of law firms.The
development of any content consortium will be a major tool for providing
this assistance.
Ultimately,
however, we must find ways to creating a broad linking strategy that puts
all the information – client or advocate – into the right hands.This
is not just a matter of building better web sites, it is a matter of creating
a new architecture, and a new way of thinking among advocates and client
serving organizations.
Most
important, because it is conceptualized as a community building resource,
is Probono.net.Probono.net offers
resources, information, a calendar, discussion and feedback systems and
news.It is divided up by practice
area, and uses a specially engineered Cold Fusion interface so that each
practice area can be maintained by non-techies.The
project has been successful at recruiting attorneys in a number of practice
areas, and is now expanding beyond its New York base to other cities.
The
importance of the model is that it uses content, but focuses on the use
of content and resources to build a community.It
is that community that holds members, and provides an incentive to content
providers to contribute their energy as content managers.We
must find ways of building on this kind of model to create far broader
and more comprehensive content-driven legal support communities.
However,
a number of state support web sites are already functioning.As
with the national sites, they vary in quality, level of innovation, and
range of features, but all underline the enormous potential of the technology
to re-create and expand the legal services community.[14]
In
the long term we need to build on this base to find an equivalent model
for state support, linking both traditional advocacy organizations and
the community organizations that have been less directly involved with
legal services or advocacy or services in the past.The
states of New Jersey has thus far probably been most effective at using
technology to achieve this result.New
York[15]
and Michigan[16]
have made particularly good use of content-driven sites to keep people
connected to one information source.
But
here again, these models only begin to scratch the potential of the technology
to transform the practice, by giving advocates the legal advocacy tools
they need day to day to be effective.
We
have to find a radically different relationship between the centers, the
content aggregators and the field, and we have to find a way of supporting
the work of the centers as they provide the content and substance that
justifies such a relationship.
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