The CVLN Team at Empire Justice Center attended the virtual New York Statewide Civil Legal Aid Technology Conference in April, which educates civil legal services leaders across the state on how technology can improve the delivery of legal services. The CVLN Team found the conference to be informative and discuss which sessions they found most insightful.
One of the tech conference highlights for CVLN Regional Attorney Coordinator, Amy Bogardus, was the lecture entitled Operationalizing “Change Management” Through Staff-Management Technology Committees. This lecture spotlighted the importance of encouraging supportive growth of your employees’ digital literacy through audience appropriate and inclusive training. It also emphasized the usefulness of having a technology committee and provided best practice tips for creating a successful one within your legal service organization.
Regional Attorney Coordinator, Laura Dwyer, attended the AI and Access to Justice segment. It was fascinating and showed great promise in providing access to justice, but was also troubling because of the potential for bias, discrimination, and misuse.
Project Leader, Remla Parthasarathy, greatly appreciated the Accessibility ABCs session. She learned a great deal, from dyslexia-friendly font to trauma-informed design, but her main takeaway was the importance of considering all potential users before developing your site.
Program and Marketing Manager, Jackie Segouin, attended the Rural Justice and Remote Proceedings session. The discussion of remote proceedings during the COVID-19 pandemic and how the court system pivoted to virtual operations in the span of days, brought up questions of how this could be implemented to rural communities. Could remote proceedings increase access to justice for rural courts?
To learn more about building long-term remote legal help programs, and to find five apps that may be helpful, read Notes from the Conference by Jeanne Ortiz-Ortiz, a Senior Program Manager at Pro Bono Net.