hello watching the same paul forum on as p and imus show all the morality host of truth as hell community connections series and i'm filling in as your host today and i'm sitting here with mary ray of legal services state support in minnesota and we're here to talk about your website law help and then org before we get started on that tell me a little bit about the hierarch relationship here of law help men with legal services state support in general how how does that work marry well law help them and dot org was developed as a project of legal services state support and legal services state support is a project of seven legal aid programs around the state and back in one thousand nine hundred one those seven legal aid programs all got together and decided that they could work together to leverage their resources and not duplicate their services even though each program was serving a different part of the state and providing legal aid and so that they all got together and said let's let's work together to provide continuing legal education and let's work together to just leverage our resources do better work for more people well and so now in the internet age everybody's jurisdiction is everywhere pretty much and so now i suppose this helps commenced which was legal education for attorneys working in legal aid and then community education you know we were still printing things you know we were doing community education booklets in fact sheets words which were great but we had to take those out to offices around the state mail them out to offices around the state and people you know had to come and pick them up to read about what their legal rights and responsibilities were and read a printed phone number in a book and you know as things were changing it took a while to catch the information up because it was mostly in print mostly and word of mouth and then you know with the internet age of course everything could be put on line so it's been a great boon to reaching more people who really need  the services of legal aid and maybe don't live close to an office maybe they're in a rural area or they just want to find out if they have a legal issue to begin with or just find out what are my rights  maybe they don't have a legal issue or maybe they've got a serious legal issue and they know they need legal help and i've got to get to legal aid and what's the fastest way to do that they don't open the phone book anymore they go right on line so yeah well and so this is essentially sort of a fact sheets and fact sheets are like a one to three page kind of overview of a legal issue let's say that your legal issue is even action you know you're a tenant and your landlord wants to  and you don't believe that what is being done is is right you know but you really don't know and i will i don't know i've never been and once tried to dictate to me before i lost my job i haven't paid my rent for a month can they just walk me out that kind of thing act you can go to law help m n dot org and go to the topic of the main topic housing and then within that topic you'll see various subtopics you know how to rent an apartment what does it mean to sign a lease what happens if i get evicted and then you click on the subtopic that you're interested in and you'll see a list of resources some of those resources are factual it's we also have a booklet but if actually it would be like a quick overview what is eviction  and then it answers your questions and you may read it as a user you may read it and go oh ok ok i guess i need to you know this is what i need to do or well what they're doing isn't really victim me i just got a letter from the landlord saying you know we really need to do you know pay your rent your overdue or whatever so it really helps clarify things for people i think often when it comes to civil legal things we're unsure then sure whether or not you have a real case and whether it's worth paying the money to actually get official legal consuls and right or so this is sort of a first step in deciding whether or not you need to spend that money to try to pursue you know go against your landlord and  vixen or well it's really yeah exactly it's really crazy right it's really a wait of to to be informed to get the information to see if you even need to make a decision maybe you just need to get the information and as far as paying an attorney the the law n dot org site is connected with legal aid and that's the seven legal aid programs that our office supports and legal aid is free legal help so if you get referred to a legal later tourney these  site they're not going to pay so you can actually do this for free or i'm sure low cost in some instances or is it all totally free well you know i think to really answer that question i should say a little bit about what is legally ok legal aid legal aid is a is a is a group of attorneys who provide free representation for people that are of limited income and for the purposes of legal aid in minnesota limited income would one hundred twenty five percent of the federal poverty guideline and the federal poverty guideline is established by the federal government every year in two thousand and thirteen in fact in february the federal poverty guidelines came out for tw thirteen and the let's see i wrote this down one hundred twenty five percent of the twenty thirteenth federal poverty go in for a family of four right now is a little over twenty nine thousand dollars for a family of four for a family of four and that's one hundred twenty five percent of the federal poverty guideline which is generally where you need to be to qualify for legal aid and so if you're on the legal aid site and you you know think wow i really i think i need a lawyer like i've read this this  evicted i think i need to contact a lawyer and you make me you know twenty nine thousand for a little bit less than definitely you should go to your local local legal aid office and you will get legal help and it'll be free you know if the attorney there determines that you you have a case but as far as the information that's available on the site that's accessible to anyone that is it accessible to anyone at no cost doesn't matter what your income is you know and on the subject of being of the population tear in minnesota and we're trying to serve them ideally we would like to have every one of our resources available in all languages but that's a huge task because there are legal resources and they have to be translated by a credible translator and then of course you know the law the accuracy of how the law is being expressed has to be you know dealt with too so that's a that's a big job but we are trying to do it and we're doing it well i think i think we have the most resources in spanish in somalia but we do have many resources in those other languages that you mentioned do and so what let's talk about the process then so i'm an individual with an issue i'll mention something that came up  during one of the shows that we did on truth to tell a few weeks ago we had a woman on our show who is dealing with foreclosure and she was able to get help for people who were willing to help her but she had to get her taxes in order and apparently you know it's very easy to find help with your current tax return for free or very low cost but getting help with back taxes would be your site be a resource for someone dealing something like that absolutely and i'm glad you brought up taxes because it's tax time and on the front page of law help them in dot org there is a tax time tool kit and what that tool kit basically does is take you to a resource page where resources about taxes have been you know kind of gathered together on one page so a list of links about you know your rights with taxes with revenue or revenue recapture with the renters refund whatever the topic might be as far as minnesota taxes go and federal taxes go you know how to claim there and if you're having problems with your taxes there's also links for free legal help and you might qualify for an attorney particularly if you're having a problem and you haven't been able to pay taxes and someone's trying to capture your any refund you might get or even your wages you know sometimes that happens and there are definitely tax lawyers available for limited income people those attorneys would be free and for current or even past tax actuation absolutely i think that can be a huge barrier for some people absolutely and other issues that you know i was surprised to see a divorce on the list or you know something that you can get help with it seems like kind of a complex legal issue so how would how would someone what kind of help would you get through help and if you go to law help and then orgy one of the first topic she'll see is family law and family law would be things like divorce stablish mina paternity any picture of the problems child custody problems and you know in divorces there can be a lot of of problems and disagreement you'll find information on family mediation how to you know avoid going to court in a divorce maybe it's something that the two people can just agree about in the divorce as you mentioned is very simple you know it's when it gets complex when there's  and when children are involved yeah and actually sometimes you know for the general public as we mentioned who may not actually need an attorney at all but they just don't know how to go about filing for divorce alone you know i really maybe i make a little bit too much money but i really don't want to pay for legal help because i think this is pretty straightforward and we have form help or on our site and on that site are automated forms for filling out your divorce divorce papers right on line and it's really simple and the form is automated so it kind of talks you through it asks you the questions and you can save your work and come back to it later maybe have to go get some financial information and come back and plug it into the form and that are similar to like if people have used support and we're talking today specifically about law help men which is an online resource for several civil legal matters also offered in many different languages we found out and we were talking about divorce   now and you had mentioned a story earlier about a woman who approached you with the domestic violence issue and that also crossed over into a vixen issue or breaking a leas breaking a lease and so please elaborate on that because this is you know talking about ways that this can help you there's lots of statutes and things that that come up that people aren't always aware of because they aren't  publicized necessarily and how does how does that help them and work with that right one of the things that law help him and does is connect you with your local legal aid office as we've mentioned if you need to go in and talk to somebody and get some legal help and frequently people will she went into the office and she was trying to get out of a lease she felt uncomfortable and she had an order for protection against her x and she but she felt like being in that apartment was not safe he knew where she lived and so she wanted to get out of the lease but she didn't know  if it was legal so she went into the office and the legal aid attorneys there are assured her that actually there was one lawful way to break the lease and that was if she was a victim of domestic violence which she was and she was extremely relieved to know that and she wouldn't have known it because it's a law that hasn't existed for that long in minnesota as she would have known it and there's a fact sheet about domestic violence victims right to break their lease on law help and then so you could have she could have gone and found it too in this case she happened to go to the office but another feature of law help and org that i work on that i wanted to tell you about michelle is live chat ok and that is a function of the website where say you're on the website you're looking around ok i can't really i'm not really sure where to look i don't really know what kind of legal issue this is and there are as as easily as the website is laid out some people are just not comfortable poking around a website even if it seems really straightforward and i think will help is if she go or in this case you know i am on is a live chat operator and if the person can't find something they click a little button and then the the operator comes on in this case it would be me and the person just it's like instant message the person just types in you know ok i'm looking this is what i'm looking for i want to get a divorce i have kids we can agree and then i come on and say hi can i get you to answer yes or no there's a brief disclaimer saying that i'm not attorneys i can't give you legal advise and then basically i show the person where to find the information i might put a link right into the chat ok here's a fact sheet on your right to break your lease if you don't feel  safe and so it's and another thing that's great about live chat too is if you know in the course of a chat i determine wow somebody this person really needs a lawyer and i'm not a lawyer but i can tell that they really need one maybe they've said they had a court date coming up and they're not sure what to do and they don't have any money or you know maybe they need to fill out an order for protection because they're afraid for their child and their own safety i can immediately refer them to a legal aid office so they don't have to try to figure out ok where do i go what do i do  i can say by county where do you live what your zip code and then tell you ok call this number and then it's immediate it's an immediate connection to a legal aid office but often during these chats it's apparent that the person just needs information and they really don't have a legal problem yet and i think that's one of the best things about this site is it's preventative maybe you just need to find out what your what your legal rights are you know when you find out you go o they can't do this to me like i say this all the time in my circle of friends that wouldn't be nice if everyone just had a lawyer you know at the ready that they can call and be like you know i'm thinking about doing this but i'm just not really sure what the legal ramifications might be what issues might come up what should be on my radar absolutely no and so is that something that you could then just put into a chat with someone like you absolutely absolutely i wouldn't i wouldn't be able to necessarily say yes you have not because i'm not an attorney i can't give legal advice but i would be able to say well here's a document or a link or something you should read because this will probably answer your question and because i'm familiar with the resources on the site i may know oh wow as soon as they read this they're going to be like ok i have nothing to worry about where gee this is is a serious thing i should probably talk to someone or at least read more when issues of you know we are in a community media station here and we work with a lot of low income communities what about issues like fair use or copyright and thing like that do you work at all with those issues we don't those are technical those are things that so let's talk about do you have any other specific cases that you'd like to share that somebody might not necessarily think that they even need legal advice but it ended up coming and handy absolutely we had i had somebody on live chat come come on and and say you know i'm splitting up and we're trying to figure out you know what the parenting time is going to be with you know my my x you know how much time is he going to get to have with the kids and you know i and then it seems like with some of these chats people start to open up a little bit i think it's because they have somebody that's listening somebody that's right they're willing to help them and they're on a website that's very know user friendly and easy i think the website is not intimidating it's laid out very clearly and then i think the fact that we have the live help you know is really just the chat feature is wonderful and a lot of people take advantage of it now is that chat feature available all the time i wish it was about the hours now let's talk about the hours that the live chat feature of help them in is available from approximately nine to four pm monday through friday ok we have talked about in dreamland we'd love to have a twenty four seven forgettable and you know hopefully we'll get some some other community partners we have so many partners on this site and takes it really does take a village for this site and our our partners are the courts  and the law libraries and the legal aid offices and the attorneys that work on these issues help us create the resources and referral information that that populate this site so hopefully you know we can get more people involved in maybe volunteering you know to demand that that live chat but for right now it's our staff so there's about four or five of us and we're we're basically legal information i guess pseudo librarians ye to the site but we in the case of this of this person i was talking to it became clear from the conversation that maybe the person should consider an order for protection and we have an automated or for protection form there that the person can fill out so it felt at the end there was a lot of gratitude expressed and i felt really good about that that while i pointed this person they came in with one issue yeah and we kind of determine during the course of the conversation that maybe something else is going on so and so if they are if there's somebody that has an issue they come to your site and it's not during a live chat hours can they then e mail you messes we do have we do have feedback people can call our office but one of the great things about the site is that if you're looking if you really do know you need to talk to somebody you can go there's a legal directory there and you can enter your zip code and then click find legal help and immediately go to an office where you can get advice and talk to someone if it's off hours and you know you just need to talk to somebody you know and and legal aid offices have their hours too but you know people people call back they're pretty good they call our office or they come on live chat and if it's if it's something where they need legal advice we send them to their legal aid office the closest one to them  and so do you have any sort of examples of a time where you might think that when i even consider that you need legal help but it's an issue where you probably should step in and check first and i feel like you always hear about well there's a lot of court t v shows out there about people thinking about these things after the fact but what what sort of a preventative issue that you could consult legal  for well i think that a tax issue would definitely be a preventative issue you know you want to make sure that you know you know what your rights are i think i think for for any kind of child you know family thing i think there's a lot of things that you can prevent you know a lot of problems that you can prevent by dealing for instance with mediation as mentioned before you know information what is mediation what would happen if i didn't go to court about this issue because sometimes the court going to court is not the best solution you know sometimes the best solution is trying to work it out but you still need help working it out how do i do that and if you can get in touch with the family mediation praja that can help you talk it out with a mediator somebody that knows about you know how to help resolve issues that couples are having you know or unmarried people that have a child in common it can be really great way to avoid going to court and i think that's a lot of what of what we hope our site does is help keep people from from going to court you know and it frees up resources for the courts and it also just makes life easier for for the people that we don't you know would have to follow a judgment you know that comes down from a court so and if you can resolve all of this from your own desk in your own computer at home i mean that does save a lot of trouble particularly for people who are you know have families at home or don't have reliable transportation necessarily to get some of these offices and oh go ahead but i was just going to ask you what's what's next for this project and you've mentioned trying to extend your chat hours to potentially having people available all the time that would be great that's that's in dreamland but yeah mainly the the primary focus for us for this site is just continuing to innovate you know using technology whenever we can like we've developed the form helper so that people can do automated forms right online that's that's huge that's been really really big  the usage of the of those online they can submit those online as well to the proper channels they can you have to well in some cases you have to print out the form and take it to the courthouse so you know we're trying to keep innovating in that way so it becomes as you say just easier to do things right from your desktop and and then the other thing is keeping abreast of the law the great thing about online is that if something changes because the end of the legislative session of the law has changed we can go providing the legal services session summaries what has happened in these areas absolutely so we're looking for some good reading and there you go help is a great place for anybody to go or gee even if you're just curious about about legal topics and even if you're not having an issue at all and you want to and like you mentioned prevention you know maybe you're going to rent an apartment and you'd like to see what does it mean to sign a lease what am i getting what's the best way to go about getting into a landlord tenant when i imagine that there's a lot of issues coming up with you know certain rental properties going in for closure and then what are the tenants rights and things like that absolutely and when the foreclosure thing was really just hitting we were able to put a lot of information immediately up about that with a foreclosure crisis we were able to get foreclosure information up for people right away and that was just so great because the faster we get the information to people the more they are able to react and have a good outcome as their way to sort of sign up for updates from the site or do you have to just check in regularly unfortunately no there's no there's no updates like that right now however on the front page there is a little news on the on the right hand of a geisha or there's a little news tab like when i mention the tax time tool kit that would be where timely information is posted like that would be basically your what's new online help you have to go to the site to get it ok yeah so kind of put it in your regular rotation of web sites that you  go there and the layout of the site is actually pretty convenient and pretty easy to navigate i looked at it myself before the show good and nice little disclaimer up there as well so it's on line twenty four so yeah i'm there i'm not there twenty four