Elmer Masters presenting Court Cloud and the Free Law Reporter
This past week, half of CALI traveled to Ithaca, New York to attend the Law Via the Internet Conference. LVI is an semi-regular international conference where those involved in making primary legal materials available on the Internet meet to discuss the challenges and successes of their endeavors.
This year’s conference marks the 20 year anniversary of Friends of CALI The Legal Information Institute as well as the 10 year anniversary of the Montreal Declaration on Free Access to Law. The conference had over 400 attendees from over a dozen countries that ranged from academics to non-profits to civic minded hackers. There were five tracks and approximately4o presentations. Two CALI projects were discussed in Track 4: Application Development for Open Access and Engagement.
On Monday, Director of Internet Development Elmer Masters debuted Court Cloud as well as discussed his work on the Free Law Reporter. Court Cloud operates on a similar platform to cloud hosting service DropBox. It would allow courts to drop word files of their court opinions into Court Cloud simply by dragging and dropping into a file on a clerk’s computer desktop. Court Cloud will then transform the documents into html, xml and PDF. A copy these are return to the court via the same desktop folder and the court is free to do with them what they wish. Court Cloud is secure and is also available to store these opinions for the court. Finally, a copy of the case is uploaded the Free Law Reporter. It’s a win for the courts who are provided with free opinion storage and conversion and a win for the public who will be provided with free access to the laws that govern them. This project is still in early beta, but if any court is interested in testing Court Cloud, please contact Elmer at emasters AT CALI.org .
Tuesday morning, Executive Director John Mayer discussed A2J Author, a collaborative project between CALI and the Center for Access to Justice and Technology at the Chicago-Kent School of Law. A repeating theme of LVI was that access to primary law wasn’t enough – there need to be tools that makes the law more accessible. A2J Author fits that need perfectly. It is currently used by legal aid organizations to create intake forms or to assist pro se individuals to complete forms that they can then turn into the court. It operates much like a free version of LegalZoom, except that the individuals are walked through the process step-by-step using easy to understand language and avatars to make the process less threatening. These forms have been used over 400,000 times last year alone. Examples of the available forms can be found on the Law Help Interactive website. In a dovetail with CALI’s mission towards improving legal education, this software is also being used by law school clinics. In creating forms, participating students learn the primary law and procedures behind them and are exposed to cutting edge legal practice technologies. These forms are then made available to legal aid organizations so that they are able to assist more people. Yet another win-win situation for all involved, which we really like to faciliate here at CALI. If you have any questions about A2J, John would be delighted to discuss it further with you. He can be reached at jmayer AT CALI.org .