Legal Self-Help Center News in Oregon and Beyond

There is no shortage of news about SRL (self-represented litigant) service resources, here in Oregon and beyond. Two recent stories and a list of SRL service provider resources:

• Legal self-help in Bend (Deschutes County), Oregon: Bend Bulletin article: “Is access to legal help equitable in Central Oregon? Deschutes County Circuit Court, library and attorneys to examine resources,” by Claire Withycombe, The Bulletin, April 3, 2016.
• Family Law Self Help Center Expansion in the Anne Arundel (MD) County Circuit Court.(Note: Anne Arundel is pronounced “an-a-RUN-dal”) (Now ask me how to pronounce  Monongahela and Schuylkill)

OREGON Self-Represented / A2J  Resources:

• Access to Justice Conference (September 2016).
• PSU Multnomah Law Library Report: a good survey (though badly edited) of the legal self-help center literature and recommendations for Multnomah County Circuit Court.
• Oregon legal assistance resource guide (from the Washington County Law Library).

BEYOND OREGON:

• SRLN (Self-represented litigant network) links for lawyer and law librarian SRL service providers: SRLN homepage
• Other SRLN resources
• SRLN members get a weekly feed of current A2J news stories – very inspiring!
• Richard Zorza Access to Justice blog and his seminal 2012 report, The Sustainable 21st Century Law Library: Vision, Deployment and Assessment for Access to Justice, leveraging the expertise and collections of public law libraries.
• Pro Bono Net
• Pro Bono Net has also produced a four-part national webinar series on the role of public libraries in access to justice and legal aid-library partnership models. Recordings and materials from the 2012 series.
• ABA has fabulous SRL and A2J resources and sponsors the annual Equal Justice Conference (EJC). The annual EJC preconference on Self-represented litigants is excellent and worth attending for any SRL / A2J service professionals – and attending at least one should be mandatory.
• EJC program materials archive
• ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono & Public Service
• ABA Resource Center for Access to Justice Initiatives

Miscellaneous A2J and Legal Self-Help Resources in Oregon and Beyond:

• Small Claims Court Resources in Oregon, WCLL website (including link to OSB-filmed video)
• UPL, legal reference, and self-help issues: public law librarians around the country train public library reference staff members in their local public libraries.
• The Open Law Lab (link to OLR post on the OLL) is one of my favorite sites on law, legal communication, graphics, self-help, and much more.
• LawSites includes lot of interesting news on the self-represented, unrepresented, and legal self-help technology fronts.
• Another inspirational A2J / Self-Help story is about the former Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly in Michigan, who must have had massive organizational and project management skills, not to mention cat-herding skills. She was the power behind a 90 (!) member committee that resulted in the Michigan Legal Help service. You can see more about the Michigan Chief Justice’s “Solutions on Self-Help (SOS) Task Force” genesis and one of their reports.
• I would be remiss if I didn’t include Civil Gideon programs. Here is one example that includes a description of what Civil Gideon means: Philadelphia Bar Association Civil Gideon Corner.

Yes, of course there are more, in addition to many foreign and international Access to Justice and Legal Aid programs. Feel free to email us, Comment, or link back to this blog post.

Dead Link Note: Links Die. Yup. You probably knew that – and probably know there are way more important or awful things that can go wrong in life. In any event, if any of the above links die, just run an internet search for the new one. I try to give enough bibliographic info AND have tried to archive the above links in the Internet Archive. (Not all links can be archived there.)