Legal Assistance Corp. of Central Massachusetts - 020088
Abstract Number: 020088
October 2002
Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts (LACCM) created the LiveJustice website to provide tenants facing eviction or living in substandard housing immediate access to legal advice and assistance through this interactive website. LACCM created this website in response to the large number of tenants who would appear in Worcester Housing Court without sufficient knowledge of their rights and lose to landlords with attorney representation. Until now, the primary method of accessing legal information has been through telephone hotlines. The delays inherent in hotlines forces callers to wait on hold for long periods of time or to leave a message and wait days for a return call before they are able to speak with a legal advocate. Even when callers do get to speak to an advocate, the hotline system does not provide for representation in most cases.
Through the LiveJustice website, tenants and social services agency workers can consult with an attorney or trained paralegal who can provide live legal assistance online. Legal advocates and their clients will be able to simultaneously engage in conversation and share documents and forms through the use of a standard web browser.
The primary features of LiveJustice:
Full service: LiveJustice is a virtual front door to Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts (LACCM). Tenants can get help from the Web site for simple problems. If they need continued representation, they will be referred to a lawyer at LACCM for full representation.
Live: Instead of leaving a message and waiting for a return call or sending an email and waiting for a reply, tenants can talk to an advocate live and get immediate help with their problem.
Form sharing: Tenants and advocates can fill out important court forms and other documents online. Tenants will be able to print out these documents and use them to help with their case.
Cobrowsing: Tenants and advocates can browse Web pages together. The advocate can show the tenant a Web page that contains the answer to the tenant's questions. The tenant can read the answer, ask follow up questions, print it out, and email it.
Searchable knowledgebase: Our more than 250 answers to common tenant questions are stored in a searchable knowledgebase. The knowledgebase keeps track of the most requested documents and prioritizes the documents based on this information.
Robert Nasdor Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts 405 Main Street Worcester, Massachusetts 01608 Phone: (508) 752-3722 ext. 3011 Fax: (508) 752-5918 RNasdor@Laccm.org
LSC:
America's Partner for Equal Justice 
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