Illinois Legal Aid Online's redesign earns praise of being the best website in the country

• Author: Richard Acello
• Pages: 31-31

IF OSCARS WERE

AWARDED FOR LEGAL AID

WEBSITES, Lisa Colpoys

might be working on her

acceptance speech.

Since its launch in Augus t, the execu-

tive director of Ill inois Legal Aid Online

has been fielding compliments about the

redesigned, refocused IL AO website.

David Bonebrake, a program c oun-

sel for technology at the Lega l Services

Corp., has cal led it the “best legal aid

website in the country.”

“We are getting positive feedba ck from

users of the website, our legal pa rtners

and funders,” Colpoys confirms . “The

new design, the new functiona lity, the

simplicity is all focus ed on how mem-

bers of the public can easily a ccess legal

informat ion.”

Colpoys realized not long ago that t he

Illinois site needed improvement.

“It wasn’t mobile friendly,” she

explains. “Another issue that we trie d

to remedy was ease of find ing informa-

tion. Often the infor mation will be cat-

egorized using legal t erms like ‘consumer

law’ or a term people don’t understand.

If they’re having a car r epossessed, they

might not know to click on consumer

law, so we tried to simplify the nav igation structure and

use common terms so people can g et the information.”

For example, headlines on the new website prov ide

simple directions for getti ng a divorce. Other headlines

include “Enforcing my child support order” and “My

landlord is try ing to evict me.”

The site also seeks incre ased interaction. “Users can

rate content and leave comments, and they c an connect

with the various so cial media channels,” Colpoys says.

“The website detect s where [users] are located, so we can

deliver more localized content, a nd if they become mem-

bers, they get a dashboa rd that allows them to register

for events and m anage information mor e personally.”

LEADING THE WAY

The Illinois site is providing a model for other st ates.

“We worked with Michigan to help them design their

website; we provided guidance t o Florida, which is also

building a website and a network of self-help centers. We

continue to get calls f rom those interested,” Colpoys says.

“One of the great things about the new site i s it was built

with the open source sof tware Drupal.

“There are several ot her legal aid websites that use

Drupal, so we can sha re our work and take advantage

of other people’s work.”

A hunger for legal aid information exis ts on the web.

In 2015, ILAO’s five websites received 2.9 mill ion visits

from about 2.3 million user s. Texas’ stat ewide legal aid

site, TexasLawHelp.org, logged about 1.1 million users

from Jan. 1 to Sept. 20, 2016, totaling more tha n 7 mil-

lion page views, a 91 percent increa se in users and a 63

percent hike in page view s over the same period in 2013.

District Judge Lora Liv ingston in Travis County,

Texas, chair of the ABA Sta nding Committee on Legal

Aid and Indigent Defendants, li kes what she sees in

Illinois.

“I’ve seen it displayed and demo’d, and it is really well

done,” she says. “It’s easy to navigate, uses clear la nguage,

and it’s really user friend ly. Other state s are holding it

up as a best practice for what t heir sites should look like

because of the feature s and ease of navigation.”

Livingston says a site such a s Illinois’ is overdue.

“It’s very clear that for the general public and the

population who come to court to repre sent themselves,

the legal world is one that is dicult to nav igate,” she

says. “Even lawyers are cha llenged sometimes.” Q

A Website Clicks

Illinois Legal Aid Online earns praise as the best site in the country By Richard Acello

Access

to

Justice

LISA COLPOYS says the new ILAO website is more mobile and user friendly.

PHOTOGRAPH BY WAYNE SLEZAK

Business of Law

MARCH 2017 ABA JOURNAL || 31