Tell us about a favorite memory related to ILAO
Before ILAO – before the internet – I would visit legal aid offices and staff would show me the new materials they’d created to explain the basics of something like landlord-tenant law. In my memory these were always trifold brochures on harvest gold paper illustrated with clip art of people who looked like the original (human) cast of Sesame Street. Aside from the duplication of effort in creating different versions, the challenges and limitations of distribution always made these efforts seem a bit futile.
Then there was this thing called the internet, where you could put information and people could find it if they knew where to look (this was pre-Google). Many (though not all) of the challenges and limitations involved in producing and distributing empowering legal knowledge suddenly fell away.
Very few of us in the founding group could be described as techno-futurists. But we had an interesting mix of people who were in various combinations tech-savvy, client-centered, creative, iconoclastic, pushy, and stubborn. Together we managed to arrive at a vision of an entity that made providing legal information a service in its own right, not just a consolation prize for people whose cases weren’t taken by a legal aid program.
When you think back to your original hopes for ILAO, what feels fulfilled?
People who play the lottery are fond of saying “You can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket.” Creating and investing in ILAO was an act of faith that the ability to help people would evolve as technology evolved. But if there was no entity with that as its central mission, the benefits would be missed or minimized. We had no conception ca. 2000 of all-seeing search engines (Yahoo!, anyone?) or smartphones or chatbots or AI.
But we knew instinctively that if integrating this technology into the ecosystem for legal aid delivery wasn’t someone’s primary focus, the work would be an afterthought. Creating something that had – and has and will have – that as its central focus feels very much like a hope fulfilled.
Why did you get involved with ILAO?
ILAO must remain a place where passionate believers in both the power of knowledge and the potential of technology can come together to create a more just future.
A message to the people who use ILAO:
You may not be able to get a lawyer’s help for every problem you face, but it is only fair that have a way to understand the legal dimensions of that problem, the potential consequences, and your best options for finding a solution. ILAO is how the legal aid system in Illinois makes that information and help available to everyone.
