Chicago-Kent College of Law -- Record Online

Center for Information Technology and Law: 
News & announcements for the week of February 25, 2002
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We Need Creative Thinkers and Visionaries
for Summer Associate Positions!



Practice Law on the Internet!
 
Help low income litigants get legal services!
  Get practical client experience!
 
Work with experienced lawyers!
E-Lawyering: Use the Web to increase access to justice!
 


If any of these opportunities interest you,
a Justice Web Collaboratory (JWC) Summer Associate Position
is Perfect for You!

JWC Summer Associate positions provide law students the opportunity to explore Access to Justice issues, including the use of technology in legal services, alternative legal services delivery models, e-lawyering and pro se litigant assistance. The JWC will be hiring 6-8 law students to work full time for the summer of 2002 on the following JWC Projects:



Illinois Technology Center for Law & the Public Interest (ITC)

Students work with the ITC, a statewide collaboration of legal services providers, whose mission is to provide low-income individuals with greater access to the legal system through the use of technology. JWC Summer Associates will assist in the development, maintenance and upgrading of innovative web resources for legal aid and pro bono attorneys, pro se litigants and the public. Specific activities include the following:

  • Working with and supporting expert attorneys selected from the Illinois legal aid community to develop and maintain legal training and practice support materials for the Illinois poverty law web portals (www.itcweb.org);
  • Research, drafting and editing of web based legal education materials and legal forms with instructions for attorneys and the public;
  • Developing appropriate user interfaces for web based document assembly.

For more information, please contact Lisa Colpoys, Interim Executive Director, Illinois Technology Center for Law and the Public Interest at lcolpoys@kentlaw.edu or 312.906.5321.


Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants
A Consumer-Based Approach

Chicago-Kent College of Law and Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design are collaborating to examine court processes and recommend modifications to eliminate or reduce procedural barriers to access for self-represented litigants. This project represents a bold attempt to harness the most advanced process design technologies and the power of the Internet in order to fundamentally reengineer civil court processes in which self-represented litigants seek to access judicial services. In the first phase of the project, graduate students in law and design fanned out across the U.S. to gather customer observation of self represented litigants. Students and faculty traveled to Colorado, Delaware California and two counties in Illinois to study existing innovations and to interview members of the judiciary. In the second phase, the research teams fed this data into the latest in system design methods, to redesign civil court processes from a consumer's prospective.

Now is your chance to make a difference! Give back to your community! Help establish the groundwork for making the law accessible to all of the public! In the final phase of the project, researchers and programmers will build a Web site prototype that will incorporate the results of the design process. If you have web design and programming experience and are proficient in programs such as ColdFusion, DHTML, Advanced HTML, JavaScript, SQL, FLASH 5.0 and PhotoShop, we need you!

For more information or to sign up to participate in this innovative project, please contact Todd Pedwell, Manager, Justice Web Collaboratory at tpedwell@kentlaw.edu or 312.906.5328.


Academic Research Assistants

Work with faculty to research and prepare articles and other publications regarding Access to Justice. This is an exciting opportunity to explore the use of the Internet as a support mechanism for unrepresented pro-se litigants and in the practice of law. Research and evaluate E-Lawyering practices currently in use and examine the ethical issues facing those lawyers practicing law on the Internet!

To discuss getting involved in this cutting-edge research project, please contact Professor Ronald Staudt via email at rstaudt@kentlaw.edu or contact his assistant, Gail Fialek, at gfialek@kentlaw.edu or 312.906.5319 to set up an appointment to meet with Professor Staudt.

 


 

 

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