ABA Free Legal Answers hits major milestone of 250K questions

ABA website reports..

After George “Buck” Lewis became president of the Tennessee Bar Association in 2008, he attended a series of court-sponsored public meetings that addressed unmet civil legal needs around the state.

During one of those meetings, he was struck by an idea.

“It just occurred to me that there were lawyers sitting in this hearing on BlackBerrys—they were BlackBerrys back then—emailing their clients,” says Lewis, a shareholder in Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz’s Memphis, Tennessee, office. “Could we provide legal services that way for pro bono clients?”

“It was just a simple idea, but it came along at the right time,” says Buck Lewis, who helped found ABA Free Legal Answers.

Lewis talked with his firm’s IT staff, who developed code for an online program that could facilitate conversations between pro bono lawyers and people who needed legal assistance. He helped launch the platform—which served as a virtual legal advice clinic and became known as Free Legal Answers—in 2011. He also shared the code with colleagues in Indiana, South Carolina and a few other states.

Lewis later joined the ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service and after discussing Free Legal Answers with other members, he began leading the association’s effort to make the program available nationwide.

Since ABA Free Legal Answers launched in 2016, more than 11,000 pro bono attorneys have registered to respond to civil legal questions from income-eligible users in 41 jurisdictions. The program is run in partnership with a number of state and local bar associations, as well as legal services organizations throughout the United States. The platform also now accepts questions on federal immigration and veterans’ issues.

“I heard for years that some jurisdictions didn’t have any kind of traditional walk-in, limited scope clinic and the ones that did were often out of reach for clients because of limitations of time and space,” Lewis says. “As emails and the internet became more ubiquitous and available at libraries and churches, and more available to the public, it was just a simple idea, but it came along at the right time.”

ABA Free Legal Answers hits quarter of a million questions

ABA Free Legal Answers reached a major milestone in November, surpassing a total of 250,000 questions. Civil legal questions receive a response from a volunteer attorney or a list of relevant resources. Volunteer attorneys respond to most questions, but they cannot answer criminal law queries.

“For more than six years, ABA Free Legal Answers has provided a critical resource for civil legal matters for those who cannot afford an attorney and have nowhere else to turn,” ABA President Deborah Enix-Ross said in a news release. “We have now topped the quarter-million mark in questions and have more than 11,000 volunteer lawyers nationwide generously providing services.

Read the full article at 

https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/aba-free-legal-answers-to-soon-hit-major-milestone-shows-evolution-over-past-decade