Urban Insight and Pine Tree Legal Assistance are pleased to announce that Urban Insight has donated software that helps website visitors navigate complex legal problems in a logical, organized manner to Pine Tree Legal Assistance. Pine Tree Legal Assistance will make the software available for free to help website users ask for legal assistance and learn about their legal rights.
The GuideClearly web software is accessible at https://www.guideclearly.com/ and will be managed and maintained by Pine Tree Legal Assistance, Maine’s largest civil legal aid provider, and also the operator of StatesideLegal.org, a website that provides legal help of military members, veterans and their families.
GuideClearly was developed and prototyped by Urban Insight, the LA-based digital agency responsible for numerous legal aid tech projects, including ReadClearly, WriteClearly, and the Drupal for Legal Aid Websites platform. The GuideClearly software quickly gained popularity among legal aid technologists and website managers for its ability to easily create interactive guides for website users without any coding necessary.
“GuideClearly-powered interviews help users navigate what are often complex legal problems in a logical, organized manner, which can provide tremendous value to statewide legal aid websites,” says David Bonebrake, Program Counsel for Technology at the Legal Services Corporation. “We’re excited that Pine Tree Legal Assistance will continue to support this important tool and hope that states continue to use it to help low-income people meet their legal needs.”
“We are so delighted to be able to contribute this software to the legal aid community where it can continue to evolve and help even more people,” said Gergely Lekli, Director of Technology Infrastructure for Urban Insight.
With a friendly design for both creators and users and a generous allowance of free sessions, GuideClearly has allowed programs from Maine, to Kansas and Idaho to create interactive guides and mini triage tools and easily embed them on their websites.
“GuideClearly has been such a valuable tool for Kansas Legal Services,” Melissa Nolte, Website Coordinator, said. “We are able to guide our site users through a process that seamlessly and intuitively narrows down their search for services or information. It is simple and easy for users to use as well as for staff to create. Urban Insight provided GuideClearly at a time when I was at a loss about how to really help users in their website search. I heard from users about their frustrations in searching,” Nolte said, “and when I discovered GuideClearly, I was thrilled to create this helpful approach for our many users.” She adds, “Kudos to Urban Insight for giving legal aid the opportunity to help website users with the often unfamiliar terrain of asking for legal assistance or learning about their legal rights in a non-threatening format.”
Pine Tree Legal Assistance uses several GuideClearly embedded guides on their own site, and are proud to accept this generous gift from Urban Insight on behalf of the legal aid technology community. “We were an early adopter of GuideCearly,” Jack Haycock, Client Focused Technology Innovator at Pine Tree Legal Assistance, said. “We are so grateful that Urban Insight has entrusted us with their creation. We will do our best to be a good steward of GuideClearly for the legal aid community, and will start by making the service 100% free for all users.”
