On Saturday, March 23, John Mayer, Executive Director of CALI, will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming SEAALL Conference, scheduled from March 21-23, in Hot Springs, Virginia.

Women are woefully underrepresented in the tech field, often facing sexism and harassment. As startup founders, investors, or tech employees, men often outnumber women many times over. If women play a diminished role within the tech field, then female lawyers interested in representing tech companies, as in-house or outside counsel, or in creating tech or legal tech companies face a higher bar to success.

Albany Law School announced today that it has released a suite of web-based programs to help lawyers better and more efficiently serve their nonprofit clients. Through the new Non-Profit Formation Tool, lawyers can easily create documents that are critical to gaining legal status for not-for-profit organizations in the State of New York.  

The free Non-Profit Formation Tool uses guided interviews to assist lawyers in preparing two important organizational documents: the Certificate of Incorporation and By-Laws. After answering a few simple questions, lawyers and their not-for-profit clients can generate these documents with the push of a button. 

The Non-Profit Formation Tool is available to lawyers working at nonprofit organizations and private attorneys serving their clients on a pro-bono basis. The Tool was created for the exclusive use of attorneys admitted to practice in New York State for the sole purpose of providing free legal assistance to individuals who seek to form non-membership based not-for-profit corporations under New York law. To request access to the Non-Profit Formation Tool, visit albanylaw.edu/resources/non-profit-formation-tool.

Albany Law School students—enrolled in the course “The Law of Social Entrepreneurship and Exempt Organizations”—designed the Non-Profit Formation Tool’s guided interviews, which were built on the A2J Author platform made available by the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI). During the process, the students, instructed by Professor Ray Brescia, the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Chair in Law and Technology, learned about representing social entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations, grappled with the ways in which technology is impacting the practice of law, and explored ways to harness technology to improve access to justice, which is the goal of these guided interviews: to improve the ability of lawyers in New York to serve nonprofit groups across the state. 

The Non-Profit Formation Tool is the latest example of Albany Law School’s leadership in practical and pedagogical innovation. Previously, Albany Law School partnered with the Empire Justice Center—a nonprofit based in New York—and the University at Albany to produce a web-based foreclosure guide designed to assist homeowners facing mortgage foreclosure without a lawyer. Also in collaboration with UAlbany, law students generated the New York Bank Ratings Index, a web-based program that enables individuals to choose the bank that best fits their needs through a customizable series of benchmarks. 

This year, students are also working on an online portal that will provide guidance to nonprofit groups nationwide on compliance issues concerning political-activity limits under Internal Revenue Service guidelines and the federal tax code.

The students and faculty involved in these projects have written about their experiences, and the work of the law school in promoting innovation in the delivery of legal services, in the Albany Law Review, Albany Law Journal of Science and Technology, and elsewhere.

Albany Law School is a small, private school located in the heart of New York State’s capital where it has educated leaders since 1851. The institution offers students an innovative, rigorous curriculum taught by a committed faculty. It has an affiliation agreement with University at Albany that includes shared programs, and access for students and faculty to learn from one another. Students have access to New York's highest court, federal courts, the executive branch, and the state legislature. With approximately 10,500 alumni practicing across the country and several continents, Albany Law’s graduates serve as a vital community and resource for the school and its students. The school offers the J.D.—the traditional law degree—along with a Master of Science degree with several concentrations, including an online M.S. program, and LL.M. degrees. In 2019 the school launched We Rise Together: The Campaign for Albany Law School, a $30 million capital campaign. Visit albanylaw.edu.

The CALIcon Conference is one of the longest-running legal education conferences in the United States. The conference brings together law school faculty, librarians, IT professionals, and administrators to share ideas, innovations, experiences and best practices in legal education/technology that you can use at your law school.  

Join us for a complete walkthrough of the CALI QuizWright® system. We’ll show you how to create simple formative assessments that you can use in class to gauge where your students are. This demonstration will begin with the creation of questions followed by putting those questions together into a quiz. The quiz will be published to the CALI website and attendees will be able to take the quiz while we review the CALI LessonLive process.

At its Annual Membership Meeting on Thursday, January 3, 2019, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) Board of Directors appointed Dean Mary Lu Bilek to fill the vacancy of outgoing Board Member Professor Patrick Wiseman from George State University College of Law whose term ended on January 1, 2019. All CALI Board members are unpaid volunteers and we much appreciate the efforts by Professor Wiseman in their support of CALI. “We bid adieu to Professor Patrick Wiseman of Georgia State who is retiring from the CALI Board of Directors after too many years to count. Patrick is a wonderfully innovative law professor and deep dabbler in interesting technology.  His service to CALI over the many years was invaluable and we will miss him,” said John Mayer, Executive Director, CALI.

“It's an honor to be asked to join CALI's Board. This organization's leadership in promoting innovation in teaching, its focus on active student learning, and more recently its leadership in exploring and supporting the use of technology to deliver legal services to the underserved, squarely aligns with my interest and expertise as well as my law school's values and vision. I could not be more excited to be part of the dialogue about how to use technology to amplify and expedite legal instruction and access to justice,” said Dean Bilek.

Mary Lu Bilek is dean of the City University of New York School of Law, where she began teaching as one of the founding faculty in 1985. In her capacities as a faculty member, associate dean, and interim dean she promoted student-centered instruction, developed and implemented innovative practice curriculum, created a robust bar support program, and pioneered Pipeline to Justice, a new model of legal pipeline program.

In 2016, Dean Bilek was named one of the “Most Influential People in Legal Education” nationwide by National Jurist, a leading news source for law students. Prior to becoming dean of CUNY Law, Dean Bilek was dean of the University of Massachusetts School of Law where she strengthened its access and public service missions and launched the Justice Bridge Legal Center. She currently serves the Council of the Profession, the Task Force on the Civil Right to Counsel, and the Committee to Enhance Diversity in the Profession at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. She regularly presents on issues related to the future of legal education, diversity in legal education, the bar examination, access to justice, legal incubators, and legal pipeline programs.

For over 25 years, The CALI Conference for Law School Computing® has organized its schedule to bring the most relevant and up-to-date presentations to attendees. This year is no different and we are looking for law school faculty, librarians, and technologists with strong opinions, great ideas, interesting projects, and useful advice. Come and share and be challenged. If you are willing and able to speak, your conference registration fee is just $95!

All sessions are 1 hour long with 30-minute breaks between sessions. Almost everything will be recorded and posted online.

To propose a session, just visit http://2019.calicon.org/propose-a-session/, log in (remember to create an account), and fill out the form. Sessions need to be submitted by Friday, February 15, 2019. All sessions must be submitted through the CALIcon19 website.

We are going to use community voting to help with selecting sessions again this year. Your votes let us know which sessions you would like to see on the conference agenda. Starting on Friday, February 15, 2019 voting will be opened and will remain open until Friday, March 1, 2019. The number of votes for a session will be taken into consideration as part of the session acceptance process and to help with scheduling. To vote you will just need to visit the conference website and vote for the sessions you would like to see on the agenda. You do not need to be registered for the conference to vote.

We will notify speakers via email by March 15, 2019 if their session is accepted. The listing of accepted sessions will be posted on the conference website on March 15, 2019.

Conference hotel and registration information are available at http://2019.calicon.org/ now.

CONFERENCE FEES

• $295 for attendees from CALI member law schools
• $695 for attendees from non-CALI member institutions
• $95 for speakers from CALI member schools
• $495 for speakers from non-CALI member schools
• $Free for CALI Authors and CEB members

CONTACT

• 2019 Conference hashtag is #CALIcon19
• Follow CALI on Twitter at www.twitter.com/CALIorg
• Subscribe to the CALI Blog at spotlight.cali.org for updates.
• Questions, problems, ideas, suggestions, contact Elmer Masters - emasters@cali.org.  

Chicago, IL – December 10, 2018 – Today we announce the launch of a2j.org and a2jauthor.org. The “a2j” stands for Access To Justice. a2j.org is a brand new website where anyone in the world can host A2J Guided Interviews® created at a2jauthor.org. Registration at a2jauthor.org is free. A2J Guided Interviews help self-representing litigants (SRLs also known as pro se litigants) fill out a legal form or work through a legal decision or provide other legal guidance.

A2J Guided Interviews are expert systems formatted as a decision tree of questions that collect information and branch the user through an interactive interview that results in a court form ready for printing and filing. A2J Guided Interviews have served over 5 million people in the past decade from legal aid and court websites.

The access to justice gap is immense. Over 50% of people eligible for legal aid cannot get it because there aren’t enough legal aid lawyers. In some jurisdictions, over 90% of the litigants are self-represented. Automated forms are not the entire solution, but they can be a valuable tool. CALI’s goal for this project is to provide a free service to automate those things that should be automated and allow lawyers more time to practice at the top of their license.

There are hundreds of small, legal processes that can be automated and there are 50 states, so there are thousands of projects for law schools, clinics, courts, legal aid, non-profits, and volunteers with appropriate subject matter expertise.

Access to justice is a core mission for CALI – a consortium of law schools. Legal education has a significant role to play. Legal process automation is a 21st-century law practice skill that is valuable for law students. We want to facilitate a culture of responsibility in the legal profession addressing the access to justice gap and that begins in law school. Our member law schools support and benefit from this project for its ability to provide experiential learning for law students in law school courses and make justice more accessible at the same time.

CALI has a track record of success with this access to justice…

1. A2J Author has been used to automate over 1000 court forms, legal processes, and intake systems.

2. A2J Author has been used over 5 million times in the past 10 years and is ADA compliant (WCAG 2.2 AA) and mobile friendly.

3. A2J Guided Interviews have received thousands of positive testimonials from the DIYForms court-based project in New York.

4. Successful projects in over a dozen law schools where A2J Author was integrated into a law school course.

Aspiring authors must register for an account at www.a2jauthor.org where they can create A2J Guided Interviews and publish them to a2j.org to make them available to the world. Free training videos are available at www.a2jauthor.org and our YouTube channel at youtube.com/a2jauthor. We also offer periodic live webinar training. Visit the website for more information.

CALI is the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, a 501(c)(3) non-profit consortium of most US law schools that works at the intersection of legal education, technology and access to justice. CALI was incorporated in 1982 by the University of Minnesota School of Law and Harvard Law School. Follow CALI on Twitter at @caliorg. Follow A2J Author on Twitter at @a2jauthor.

CALI and Chicago-Kent College of Law launched the A2J Author project in 2004 as a result of a legal design project to study the access to justice problem in the United States.

CONTACTS
John Mayer is the Executive Director of CALI and has worked in legal education for over 30 years. He can be reached at jmayer@cali.org or followed on Twitter at @johnpmayer or 312-906-5307.

Jessica Frank is the A2J Project Manager and can be reached at jessica@cali.org and runs the @a2jauthor Twitter account.

LINKS REFERENCED
– www.cali.org – CALI website
– a2jauthor.org – Register to begin creating A2J Guided Interviews
– a2j.org – Website where A2J Guided Interviews are hosted
https://www.youtube.com/user/A2JAuthor/playlists – free training videos for A2J Author
– @caliorg – CALI’s official Twitter account
– @a2juthor – A2J Author official Twitter account
– www.nycourts.gov/ip/nya2j/diytestimonials.shtml – Testimonials about the DIYForms used at the New York State Courts (which uses A2J Author)
– https://www.cali.org/faq/15779 – Information about CALI membership.
– https://www.cali.org/content/members – List of current CALI members.