It’s a Tuesday morning just before 10 o’clock, and attorney Katherine Ingram has just arrived at the Clay County Library, in Fort Gaines, Ga., where she is setting up shop for her weekly legal clinic by stretching a white banner across a metal bike rack outside the building. It reads:

“LEGAL SERVICES HELP DESK HERE TODAY!”

At first glance, Ingram seems ill-equipped to help the many low-income clients that will bring an array of civil legal problems to her. After all, she has brought little with her—no laptop, legal forms, brochures, or self-help pamphlets. Instead, she sets up shop in the genealogy room, where one of the library’s public computers is located and where a line of
clients waits to talk with her.

Ingram is one of three attorneys from Georgia Legal Services Program who visits public libraries in rural Georgia to educate and assist low-income people in search of legal answers. She does so by giving them a one-on-one tutorial on how to find whatever help they require on Georgia’s statewide legal services website (www.legalaid-ga.org). The Internet-accessible terminal at the public library offers a window to the forms and legal materials her clients need, allowing Ingram to travel lightly.

“Most of the older people have never used a computer so I walk them through the basics,” says Ingram. “I show them our website and then I ask them if they have a specific legal problem. We can help so many more people this way. Often we don’t have the time to do full [representation] for them and we would have to send them a basic counsel and advice letter. Now, they can receive a higher level of service.”

Since 2000, the Legal Services Corporation has been investing in technology to help underfunded legal aid programs maximize existing resources through its Technology Initiative Grant (TIG) program. TIG’s crowning technology achievement has been the development of a statewide website initiative that has helped fund comprehensive statewide legal aid websites in 44 states. To date, LSC has devoted $13.8 million to helping its grantees develop and maintain websites that serve as a portal to legal assistance for clients and pro bono attorneys on a statewide basis.

At the Clay County Library (above) in Fort Gaines, Ga., clients seeking legal assistance (left) are given Internet-assisted tutorials by Georgia Legal Services Program attorneys, who show them how to use Georgia's statewide legal services website to research and address their civil legal problems.

“Instead of each program paying a separate developer $100,000 to create a website, they can use the template we provide and spend the money on developing content,” says LSC’s Glenn Rawdon. “We wanted legal services programs to have access to all the tools that websites provide without needing the technical expertise to build it from the ground up.”

Statewide legal services websites cover an array of subjects, such as disability rights, employment issues, housing discrimination, family law, and consumer claims. The information is typically available in both English and Spanish. In some instances, the websites also help low-income clients translate, format, and complete legal forms to be filed with the court clerk; a few states are even moving toward electronic filing of court documents for self-represented litigants.

When LSC first began funding Internet-assisted self-help measures, some skeptics questioned whether or not Web-based legal services would truly help the intended client population. Poor people don’t have computers, some critics argued.

However, a recent study conducted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation confirms what many legal aid attorneys already knew: Public libraries are playing instrumental roles in bridging the digital divide. The Gates Foundation study “Toward Equality of Access” (www.gatesfoundation.org/libraries) reports that low-income families frequently rely on public computers to conduct research, write résumés, communicate with family and friends, and complete school work.

Low-income families, the report finds, are more than three times as likely to use library computers compared to families earning $75,000 or more. The Gates Foundation has invested more than a quarter of a billion dollars to wire libraries to the Web. Today, more than 95 percent of library buildings offer public access to computers and the Internet, up from just 28 percent in 1996. With more than 14 million people regularly using library computers, they have become an invaluable tool in expanding access to legal services.

“The libraries have been such key players in this effort because all public libraries have computers, and for many clients this is the only place they can get access to computers,” Ingram says. “Our goal is to help them find the information that they need, so they can come back and use the public library computers to continue that research. I think it’s very empowering.”

Other states are reporting similar successes. In Maine, the statewide website (www.helpmelaw.org) received 105,205 visits last year, compared with 69,816 the previous year, thanks in part to libraries and their helpful staff, says Hugh Calkins, an attorney with LSC-funded Pine Tree Legal Services. “In Maine, all public libraries and schools have Internet access,” he says. “One thing clients really like about the website is the anonymity it affords them. They don’t have to bare their soul to some attorney. They can get the information that they need on their own.”

The proliferation of legal services websites has not only been a boon to resource-starved programs, it has also helped pro bono attorneys who wish to volunteer their time in a useful and fulfilling way. San Francisco attorney H. Nelson Meeks wanted to take on some pro bono cases a few years ago, but he faced major hurdles when he set out to find an appropriate client. “In some cases you were not given the time of day because the local bar association just didn’t have the mechanism to funnel pro bono attorneys to clients,” Meeks said. “If I wanted to take a case, I had to make a bunch of phone calls, and in the end, it might not be a good fit.”

With the arrival of ProBono.net in 1998, attorneys no longer were forced to deal with the haphazard and disorganized process that characterized many local pro bono networks. The website provides attorneys with a one-stop resource center to find clients who genuinely need their help. Meeks is a registered user of the site and now receives regular emails about clients who need representation in family law and immigration matters, areas in which Meeks has an expressed interest. “Now I can look at a list of available cases on the site and find one that’s in an area I want to develop some skill in,” Meeks says.

Michael Hertz, executive director of ProBono.net, says that’s exactly the point. “The beauty of the system is that it allows you to target people with very specific backgrounds and skills to meet their needs. It allows us to place cases in a matter of hours, not days or weeks.”