By Eric Kleiman

Ohio’s Self-Help Superhighway
Congresswoman Pryce announces expansion of www.OSLSA.org

In Ohio, legal aid leaders scoff at the idea that low-income clients can’t or won’t utilize the fruits of the World Wide Web to seek access to civil justice.

Last year, the Ohio State Legal Services Association (OSLSA) launched the Ohio Domestic Violence Resource Center at www.OSLSA.org, where abuse victims can log on to download and print out motions for restraining orders, and then learn how and where to file them. The site also includes directories of shelters, counseling services, and legal advocates searchable by locality for Ohioans anywhere in the state. For those who aren’t plugged into the Internet, the web site can be accessed from any number of public venues, including women’s shelters and libraries.

“The conventional wisdom that suggests our client population isn’t sophisticated enough to use the Net isn’t really wisdom at all,” LSC President John Erlenborn says. “All the empirical evidence we have shows that thousands of low-income clients across America are taking advantage of Web-based resources when they’re unable to secure representation.”

Erlenborn joined U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH) in Columbus on Aug. 28 to announce Ohio’s latest expansion of self-help technology. Hi-tech gurus at OSLS were awarded $200,000 in federal funds to expand the online domestic violence center concept into other legal arenas, such as housing, consumer, and disability law. The prototype is set to go live in the fall of 2003. It will allow clients to file motions, pleadings, and other court documents in accordance with local court rules.

“This is so important, to have a system that will account for those differences,” says Rep. Pryce, noting Ohio’s Byzantine variations in county-by-county filing requirements. “This system also will provide other types of self-help support on routine matters. It might help a consumer draft a letter to a creditor to dispute a charge or write a landlord to assert a basic tenant right.”

Pryce, the highest-ranking GOP woman in the U.S. House of Representatives, continued: “We’ve all seen the many ways that technology has made the world a more accessible and open place. As a result of the innovation funded by this grant, Ohio’s justice system will become more accessible and help ensure that more Ohioans can realize the promise of equal justice under law.” –E.K.