Posted May 24, 201811:49 am
Legal aid programs invest significant resources in delivering legal advice, brief service, and extended representation to clients. The problem is, for the considerable number of advice and brief service cases, they seldom know whether the help they provided solved the client’s problem. Having a streamlined system in place to measure outcomes would address this issue and improve programs’ effectiveness, efficiency, and services to clients.
In 2017, the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland (Cleveland Legal Aid) successfully implemented a pilot project to text clients who received advice or brief service so it could learn the outcome of the help provided. The pilot collects outcome data related to housing conditions, eviction, foreclosure, simple divorces, criminal record sealing, and debt problems. It also collects feedback on the program’s community education presentations and shared information about services via text — facilitated by Cleveland Legal Aid’s new tech-savvy approach to communication.
Click here to read the full Innovations in Legal Aid blog post.