The Minnesota Legal Services Coalition, the staff at Legal Services State Support and our website developer, Electric Citizen, are pleased to announce the official launch of the newly redesigned and rebuilt LawHelpMN.org on the Drupal open source, content management platform. Users of LawHelpMN.org will find robustly improved features such as the Self Help Library – a thoughtful compendium of fact sheets, booklets, do-it-yourself forms and other resources – as well as the Provider and Clinics Directory – now powered by a database of referral information updated in real-time.
The defining feature of the new site is its innovative navigational assistance tool: the LawHelpMN Guide (the Guide). Designed to deliver a customized set of self-help resources and referrals that address an individual’s specific legal concern or problem, the Guide generates curated results in response to an individual’s answers to a series of simple questions. These “guided” questions are intended to narrow a person’s legal topic and, if needed, assess their potential eligibility for services based on a variety of factors including location and income. The LawHelpMN Guide is intuitive and easy to use by either the person seeking information or an attorney, advocate, or anyone assisting them.
Since the launch of the original LawHelpMN.org over a decade ago, the Minnesota Legal Services Coalition and its State Support office have worked to improve the site’s usefulness and responsiveness as part of our access to justice commitment. The newly redesigned and rebuilt site takes that commitment further than ever before with the adoption of a platform customized to meet a continuum of legal needs and challenges across Minnesota.
“Today’s launch of a re-imagined LawHelpMN.org is a great leap forward in the collaborative and inventive efforts of the civil legal aid, pro bono, and judicial communities to provide continued access to justice in an increasingly accessible and straightforward manner,” Drew Schaffer, Executive Director of Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid said. “Already, over 1,000 Minnesotans a day use LawHelpMN.org to understand and to vindicate their most basic of civil rights. It is our hope that the new and improved site will enable a growing number of Minnesotans to find the legal help and information they need to enforce their rights and to stabilize their lives.”