5 Reasons Why You Should Attend CALIcon19 Conference

Posted on May 10, 2019 by scottlee

You might be wondering, “is the CALIcon19 Conference worth my time?” In short, YES! Here are five reasons why you should register for CALIcon19:

Education & Learning: The education program is a robust lineup of 30+ engaging sessions that goes beyond the typical lecture-classroom style. You will leave with an understanding of how forward-thinking professionals are implementing best practices to transform and improve the legal education community.
Value-added: We understand that budgets are tight these days. This why we have not increased the registration fee from last year. Click here to see everything included with your registration fee. Get your boss on board with you attending CALIcon19. Download and customize this letter that details the benefits your attendance can provide your law school.
Keynote Headliner – Speaker David Yearwood PH.D., CSTM: Dr. Yearwood brings a wealth of experience in the use of technological tools in education to enhance teaching and learning. Keynote Session Title: The Education Conundrum: Teach as you were Taught, OR Teach for the Future?
Thursday Night Reception: From a private tour of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, complete buyout of Lucky Strike Phoenix, and hosting a virtual carnival, our Thursday Night Reception has become our signature event. This year will be even bigger and better. You’ll be able to test your ability in various sport settings with a modern day twist. Some would say a “Paradigm Shift.”
Networking Opportunity: With 300+ legal educators and technology professionals in attendance, you will network and build connections with others in the community whom you can swap stories with year-round when it comes to identifying solutions for similar challenges.

Thank you to our SPONSORS!

Posted in CALI Spotlight | Comments Off

CALI’s A2J Author platform helps Albany Law School Launch Innovative Web-Based Tool

Posted on February 11, 2019 by scottlee

Albany Law School Launches Innovative Web-Based Tool
to Assist Lawyers Serving Nonprofits

Albany, N.Y.—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.

Posted in A2J, CALI Announcements, CALI Spotlight, For Faculty | Comments Off

Webinar: Using an open formative assessment platform for legal education

Posted on January 18, 2019 by scottlee

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.

Who Should Attend?

Law faculty/staff looking to increase the output of their efforts employing formative assessment methodology in the classroom.

RESERVE YOUR SEAT

Can’t make it to the live presentation? RSVP and we’ll send you the recording.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Posted in CALI Spotlight, For Faculty, Webinars | Tagged QuizWright | Comments Off

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) Welcomes Dean Mary Lu Bilek of CUNY School of Law to the Board of Directors

Posted on January 5, 2019 by scottlee

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.

Posted in CALI Announcements, CALI Spotlight, For Faculty | 1 Comment

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction/CALI (a non-profit consortium of US Law Schools) announces a new, free website service… a2j.org and a2jauthor.org … for courts, law schools, non-profits and lawyers to create expert systems for pro se litigants to address the access to justice gap.

Posted on December 11, 2018 by scottlee

For Immediate Release

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.

Posted in A2J, CALI Announcements, CALI Spotlight, CALI Tools, General Topics, Legal Practice, Open | 1 Comment

Nominations for CALI Board is Open

Posted on October 2, 2018 by scottlee

Help us shape the future of Legal Education

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) is seeking nominations of qualified and enthusiastic individuals from the legal education community to fill vacant positions on its Board of Directors. If you or know someone that would like to contribute to the research and development, strategic planning, and governance of CALI, then click here.

About CALI

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that does research and development in online legal education. Over 90% of US law schools are members.

CALI was incorporated in 1982 by the University of Minnesota Law School and Harvard Law School.

Posted in CALI Announcements, CALI Spotlight, For Faculty | Comments Off

8 Reasons You Should Assign CALI Lessons to Your Students

Posted on September 17, 2018 by John Mayer

This gallery contains 1 photo.

8 Reasons You Should Assign CALI Lessons to Your Students If you teach in a US law school, you should be looking at CALI Lessons and assigning them to your students. -1- CALI Lessons are another way to learn the … Continue reading →

More Galleries | Comments Off

QuizWright gets a Question Bank

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Elmer Masters

We’ve added a Question Bank feature to CALI QuizWright^®, our formative assessment system. The new feature uses multiple choice questions selected from CALI Contracts Lessons. The 150+ contracts questions are available to everyone who uses QuizWright. Over the course of the fall semester we plan on adding more questions, both in contracts and in other areas of the first year curriculum including torts and property.

With one click you can add questions from the public Question Bank to your personal question bank. You are free to edit your copy of a question, customizing it for your class. Questions can be added to as many quizzes as you’d like.

QuizWright Question Bank

To get started faculty, law librarians, and staff at CALI member schools can log in to the CALI website and select QuizWright from the CALI Dashboard drop down menu. Once you’re in QuizWright click on Question Bank in the left hand menu. Clicking on the question in the list will show you details about the question including the answer choices, what CALI Lesson it came from, and who wrote the original question.

To add a question to your personal question bank click on the copy icon to the left of the question. The icon will change to a check mark indicating that you’ve successfully copied the question. To edit the copied question click on the My Questions link in the left hand menu. To use the copied questions in a quiz select Add a Quiz on the left and select the copied questions to include in a new quiz.

For more information please visit the about QuizWright page.

If you have any questions about QuizWright or the Question Bank feature just drop me an email: emasters AT cali.org

Posted in CALI Spotlight, CALI Tools, For Faculty | Tagged assessment, QuizWright | Comments Off

The Race to the Bottom and How it Might Help Access to Justice

Posted on April 20, 2018 by John Mayer

I just ran across another legal tech startup that is going to automate a common legal problem space and sell access to their web-based questionnaire for $29.95 or some such. It’s potentially a huge market because millions of people must deal with this legal situation every year. There are hundreds of possible startups like this – each centered around a single vertical that can be automated with a little javascript and a some marketing.

TurboTax was the first way back in 1987 (that’s when I first bought it) when it was a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet with a ton of macros made by a company called Chipsoft. Now the 1040 and accompanying forms were and are hard to automate, but the market is huge (100 million potential uers) every year. There is a lot of law to keep up to date and it changes every year. Intuit bought Chipsoft for $223 million back in 1993.

Here’s my prediction. Every single “simple” legal problem that is process definable or form-oriented will go this way, but for much much less money. My thinking when we started working on A2J Author over 12 years ago is that courts and legal aid should do this for themselves and law students could help them by taking courses that include an experiential component. This would give law students the ability to be smart users, builders, and purchasers in the new normal of the automated process marketplace.

Even complicated legal matters can be broken down into steps – some that can be automated and some that shouldn’t. This could either make law practice more efficient or it could result in smaller, chunkier work for lawyers doing unbundled, limited license work.

This won’t put lawyers out of business either. When I started my first programming job in 1983 coding COBOL on an IBM mainframe, I read about a new code generator in ComputerWorld that was going to replace programmers. Instead, every new advance in coding has just meant that programmers had to change their development environment and upgrade their skills. This too shall happen to lawyers. It seems like it’s happening rapidly, but it’s actually going to take some time. Law moves slowly. Very slowly.

If this becomes a “race to the bottom”, then cutthroat competition will lower prices and maybe quality. This will make it very hard for companies to find sustainable income. There will be winners and losers and this might not be all good for the quality of legal service delivery. Even so, the market is not very good at measuring the quality of legal service delivery. Why is that?

Court forms are a kind of domain-specific language that courts and lawyers use to communicate with each other about legal matters. Courts have a monopoly on how the forms are formatted, but not on the guidance that is given in filling them out.

That is where lawyers add value and can differentiate themselves. Maybe automation and explanation is proof that the lawyer you are thinking of hiring actually understands what you are hiring her for.

John Mayer
Executive Director, CALI
@johnpmayer
jmayer@cali.org

Posted in CALI Spotlight | Comments Off

CALI Announces Katherine Alteneder, Executive Director at Self-Represented Litigation Network, as the CALIcon18 Conference Keynote Speaker

Posted on April 19, 2018 by scottlee

Keynote Session: How Do Lawyers Get Paid If Access to Justice is Free?

KATHERINE ALTENEDER

Executive Director at Self-Represented Litigation Network

Keynote Session Description:

The rise of the self-represented litigant has disrupted the civil justice system. Courts no longer rely on lawyers to manage the litigants, but the due process remains so courts have had to step-up and create user-friendly systems for lay people. By providing comprehensive, 24/7 self-help services such as forms, instructions, tailored procedural guidance, and triaged case flow management; courts can create transparent and navigable systems. However, the bespoke approach contemplated in an adversarial process is lost without lawyers. Lawyers are still very much needed, however, their new role is only beginning to be understood. It is one that has paradoxically narrowed in focus yet, because of technology, expanded in delivery opportunities. Legal education has an opportunity to equip new lawyers with the legal and practical skills to be successful in today’s legal market that demands 24/7 services accessible by cellphone from anywhere in the world while engaging more autonomous clients who seek refined and targeted legal advice, strategy and big-picture analysis. This talk will explore the many opportunities that are presenting in this re-aligning market, and consider the negative and positive impacts, particularly with respect to technology, on access to justice.

Katherine Alteneder’s Bio:

With a deep background in designing and implementing access to justice initiatives for legal aid, the courts and private practice, Katherine’s philosophy throughout her career has been to build common sense, consumer oriented solutions by learning, innovating and sharing. After clerking for a trial court judge, Katherine worked at Alaska Legal Services Corporation, initially handling DV matters and later as the Aging Grant Coordinator. In 2001, Katherine joined the Alaska Court System to develop the statewide Family Law Self-Help Center, which resulted in the nation’s first virtual self-help center. Operating solely through telephone and Internet capabilities, the Center was also one of the early TIG grantees. In 2008, Katherine moved to private practice, establishing a successful unbundled practice supporting self-represented litigants in Alaska, and helped to create the first Unbundled Law Section of a state bar. An early member of Self-Represented Litigation Network, she has led the SRLN since August 2013. Katherine is particularly interested in building delivery systems for rural and vulnerable populations and creating community based legal assistance environments that prioritize judicial engagement and leadership to re-imagine services and approaches used by the private bar, legal aid, court staff and non-legal community providers so that everyone can get the legal help they need, when they need it in a format they can use. Katherine sits on the Advisory Committee for Voices for Civil Justice, serves as the Senior Advisor to the Justice for All Project, is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Policy, and member of the Board of Advisors of the Journal of the National Association of the Administrative Law Judiciary. Katherine, a graduate of Northwestern University and Seattle University School of Law, resides in Virginia.

About CALIcon18

The 28th Annual CALI Conference for Law School Computing® brings together leading technology professionals, faculty, librarians, and institutional leaders to discuss the transformation of legal education through technology and innovation.

CALIcon18 is June 7 & 8, 2018 at American University Washington College of Law in Washington DC. For details including registration information and list of sessions, visit the CALIcon18 website at http://2018.calicon.org/.

Thank you to our CALIcon18 Sponsors

Posted in CALI Announcements, CALI Spotlight, CALIcon, For Faculty | Comments Off

CALI Spotlight