Sample Syllabi

Date

Reading & Assignments

Skill Work

• Please read the Introduction and the first three articles in the recently published Chicago-Kent Law Review Symposium, “Justice, Lawyering and Legal Education in the Digital Age.”Here is a link to a web page with all the articles of the symposium.Introduction by Ronald W. Staudt and Marc LauritsenAccess to Justice and Technology Clinics: A 4% Solution by Ronald W. Staudt and Andrew P. MedeirosIf Only We Knew What We Know by Conrad Johnson and Brian Donnelly

  Thinking Like a Lawyer, Designing Like an Architect: Preparing Students for the 21st Century Practice by Tanina Rostain, Roger Skalbeck, and Kevin G. Mulcahy.

Skill exercise for the first class:

• Explore the Illinois Legal Aid Online web site. Locate the A2J Guided Interview® that produces a petition to waive court fees in Cook County Circuit Court. Complete the interview, as if you were a pro se litigant, and print the forms needed to waive court fees in Cook County, IL.
• Bring the completed fee waiver forms to class

Bring your laptops to class. Time permitting we will help you to install A2J Author®.

• What is LSC?
• Types of Grants
• TIGs Impact

LegalAidKY video on “How to Use A2J Author®”

NYCourtsA2J video on New York’s “Do-It-Yourself Forms” program, designed in A2J Author®.

Jeanne Charn, a pioneer in clinical legal education who teaches at Harvard Law School, just published a startling article in the Yale Law Journal about the Civil Gideon movement and reform of courts to support expanded self help:

Celebrating the “Null” Finding: Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Access to Legal Services

122 Yale L.J. 2206 (2013).

“We should measure improved access to legal services by the extent to which self-empowered consumers are able to resolve everyday legal problems on their own or with limited assistance. ”

Recommended Reading:

In 2010, Phil Malone and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School evaluated how technology could facilitate access to justice and made recommendations for deploying that technology in the Massachusetts Trial Court in Best Practices in the Use of Technology to Facilitate Access to Justice Initiatives.

Artificial Legal Intelligence, Chicago Lawyer, Sept. 2013.

• A Plain Language Handbook: Write For Your Reader, NWT Literacy Council: This handbook gives you the tools to write or edit your documents in plain language.
• plainlanguage.gov: This site explores the plain language movement and offers examples, tips and tools including guidelines, a word suggestion list, before and after comparisons, and more.
• The Center for Plain Language: This site provides information, guidelines and tips on communicating in plain language.
• The Principles of Readability, DuBay, W. H. 2004: This article gives a short history of literacy studies in the U.S. and a short history of research in readability and the readability formulas.
• Peter Morville’s column about information architecture and findability.
  User Experience Design
• usability.gov – a site built by US Dept of Health and Human Services:
  Writing for the Web

Richard Granat’s Virtual Law Learning Center which gathers links to a variety of excellent sources on elawyering.

Technology-Assisted Review in E-Discovery Can Be More Effective and Efficient Than Exhaustive Manual Review,
Maura Grossman and Gordan Cormack, 17 Richmond J Law & Technology 1 (2011).

Bibliography:

Resource Guide: eLawyering and the Future of Legal Work, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (April 29, 2010) Resource Guide

• preparation for class,
• field work at the Daley Center or other approved site,
• research and drafting of your StoryBoard,
• Hot Docs training,
• A2J Author training,
• work on your HotDocs template and
• work on your A2J Guided Interview.

Work on Storyboard, which is due October 8.

http://vimeo.com/72755493

Recommended Reading:

ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services, White Paper: An Analysis of Rules that Allow Lawyers to Serve Pro Se Litigants (2009).

For a very recent view of how courts treat self represented litigants watch the oral argument before the Ohio Supreme Court in Case No. 2013-0611, Disciplinary Counsel v. Thomas Jones, Jr., August 1, 2013.

The latest help reference is Help Topics for HotDocs Developer 10.

HotDocs Standards and Practices:

Standards and Practices for HotDocs Server Applications in Legal Services – A 30-page resource prepared and maintained by Capstone Practice Systems. This resources addresses template standards, naming conventions, selecting, planning and designing applications, pointed component files, HotDocs versions and other topics relevant to developing templates for deployment in HotDocs Online.

HotDocs Knowledge Base – Knowledge Base is a supplement to the HotDocs Helps installed on your computer as part of the normal HotDocs installation. The articles in this Knowledge Base generally contain more advanced information than is found in the HotDocs Helps.

HotDocs Knowledge Base – Knowledge Base is a supplement to the HotDocs Helps installed on your computer as part of the normal HotDocs installation. The articles in this Knowledge Base generally contain more advanced information than is found in the HotDocs Helps.

TIG 07193: Legal Aid of Western Ohio Online Intake