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Current Projects Integration into Community Training and Info

Street Law for ‘Know Your Rights’ training from Univ. of Georgia

University of Georgia has a Street Law program. It holds sessions to train people, especially young people, on legal topics. Much of their work is focused on how young people can understand the criminal justice system and the social services system, to be smart when navigating them.

Street Law UGA conducts community outreach geared primarily towards familiarizing youth about prevalent legal concerns and basic rights. Our student-run organization is designed to educate youth about practical law topics — “Street Law” —  and inspire youth to seek legal careers.  Street Law UGA focuses on educating minority and low income youth and inspiring youth from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the legal profession.

They have law students get off campus and into community placements. The goal is to have continuing relationships, to build a channel of expertise and relevant resources.

The law students are placed in middle and high schools, youth detention centers, independent living programs, and church youth groups.

The topics covered included the rights of an arrestee, the foster care system, dealing with a criminal record, what a crime is, etc.

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Current Projects Integration into Community

Lawyer in Library program in Providence

The Providence Public Library hosts lawyers who will answer questions for free.

It’s called “Lawyers in the Library.” No appointments are needed, and the series is free.

It’s run with a Presentation from a lawyer, and then an opportunity with people to speak to that lawyer about the presented topic.

For example, they’ve had presentations and open questions on Supplemental Security Income, disability benefit, tenant rights, employee rights, and special education.

There is one session every few  months, and are held in evening hours.

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Current Projects Integration into Community

Legal Clinics in High Schools, from Chicago Law & Education Foundation

The Chicago Law & Education Foundation  has a high school law clinic that works on providing services, particularly around immigration law, to students in need.

The Chicago Law and Education Foundation was started in 2010 by teacher/attorney Dennis Kass. CLEF launched a pilot clinic at Little Village Lawndale High School during the 2009-2010 school year. The legal clinic was once a week after school. High school students helped operate the clinic, serving as initial intake, providing translation services for Spanish speaking clients, and working on the various initiatives. CLEF was formed to expand that legal program to other schools the following school year.

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Ideabook Wayfinding and Space Design

Making the court Self Help Center more friendly and human

Could we remake the Self Help Center to be more colorful, friendly, and humanized?

This could be with more art on the wall, with more aesthetically and purposefully structured walls of resources. It could also have things for toddlers and other kids to focus on, so that they are focused, calm, and not distracting their parents and others.

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Ideabook Procedural Guide

Starter Kit packets for legal processes

At Self Help Centers, we observed that people got a lot of paper, but didn’t know exactly what to do with all of them.

The idea of a Resource Guide is that there would be a streamlined collection of resources, with forms, to-do lists, timelines, and maps. It would be akin to what new moms get from the hospital as they leave after giving birth. It would have everything organized, so the person feels confident that they have everything they need.

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Ideabook Wayfinding and Space Design

Big Maps of legal service providers, on the wall and in handouts

What is it?

Have standardized maps of all the court’s floors and rooms, as well as adjacent buildings. These should use the color scheme to direct people on a certain pathway to the right location. It should have plentiful white space, so people can annotate their paper map with where to go. The maps should be like those in malls and museums — clean and annotated.

The maps can be of streets, if there are many providers in the neighborhood.

It can be of the building, to know where to go within a large complex place.

Or it could be of a city/county, to get a wider collection of providers on the same sheet.

How could it be implemented?    

Take or create the existing floor plans of the court, and then review them to make them clean, oriented towards common user pathways, and with the same font and color choices for the other signage. Then create poster, print handout, and digital versions of all of them.

This will likely take one to two months to design, and $1000 to create the signage.

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Ideabook Wayfinding and Space Design

Numbering Line System for self help services

How can we make lines in courts less painful?

One idea is to have a numbering system. People can take a number and hang out til their number is called — instead of waiting in line and getting exhausted and frustrated.

The numbering system would have paper numbers to take, along with a digital system to count and announce the numbers that are up for service, with instructions on where to go.

We took this model from the DMV, that had a more coordinated numbering system. It let people hang out and sit down, rather than waiting in long lines.

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Ideabook Work Product Tool

Better Cover Sheets on Forms

We identified that Form Packets are a central ‘thing’ in the Court System. People come to court for help, and the Clerks and Self Help Centers deliver them help through a large selection of paperwork. These papers, most especially forms, are the key commodity in which their help is communicated — and what they can walk away with.

With that in mind, we propose a new Cover Page for a form packet.

It should be human-centered, with icons, pictograms, or other visuals of people.

It should be conversational, almost as if a helpful advocate is talking to the person through the sheet.

It should prep the person for what the packet contains, and what to do with it.

It should flag common problems, and key things to remember.

Categories
Ideabook Procedural Guide

Giant Visual Storyboards in legal buildings (and elsewhere)

Our proposal is for courts to make huge posters to display on the walls, that lay out the steps of a legal process. They can be replicated on handouts and brochures.

These giant maps would show an illustrated way that a person would get through the individual tasks. They could also show the back-and-forth between a person, their advocate, and the court.

They would address the need we saw, that people can’t get a clear bird’s eye view of how the system works and what to expect from the process. The map could help them contextualize the journey they are on, and to see what to plan for.

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Current Projects System Evaluation

Design Review Sheet for the legal system

We use this one-page Evaluation sheet to review a service, product, or idea. It prioritizes the user’s point of view — to make sure that the thing you’re reviewing has a good user experience. It can be used for proposals or existing things.

The sheet forces the reviewer to give a number on each factor, but the main thing is not a score-card, but thinking through where there is opportunity to better match the thing with the user’s needs and aspirations.