This year’s Technology Initiative Grant’s annual conference is slated for next week, January 15th through the 17th in Jacksonville, Florida.  This is the only national conference to focus specifically on technology in nonprofit legal service environments.  This year’s conference highlights online intake and triage, support for self-represented litigants as well as data analysis and visualization. Pro Bono Net’s Executive Director, Mark O’Brien, LawHelp Program Manager Liz Keith, LawHelp Interactive Program Manager Claudia Johnson, LawHelp Interactive Coordinator Mirenda Watkins,  LawHelp Program Associate Jillian Theil and LawHelp Program Coordinator Xander Karsten are slated to participate in a variety of panels this year. Pro Bono Net’s Director of Technology and Operations, Doug Carlson, will also be in attendance.

Mark O’Brien and Mirenda Watkins will join Marc Lauritsen of Capstone Practice Systems, Mike WIlliams, Chief Clerk at the New York Bronx County Family Court as well as Vince Morris and Kim Marshall at Arkansas Legal Services Partnership on a panel exploring the history and future of LHI in “LHI- You’ve come a long way baby.”

Mirenda, Liz Keith and Mike Williams will sit down with Susan Ledray of Minnesota’s Fourth Judicial District to explore both physical and online best practices when creating services for self-represented litigants in “Creating On-Ramps to Online Resources: User Centered Design for Self Help Environments.”

Liz will also speak about trends in online intake and triage with Illinois Legal Aid Online’s Gwen Daniels and Northwest Justice Project’s Joan Kleinberg in “Online Triage and Intake: To Infinity and Beyond.”

Claudia Johnson will join Caroline Robinson of Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, Jeff Hogue of Legal Assistance of Western New York as well as Gwen Daniels and Dennis Rios of Illinois Legal Aid Online in “LEP Dreaming of the Future,” a panel focusing on harnessing technology to address the needs of LEP communities.

Xander Karsten will join LawNY’s Anna Hineline and Legal Server’s Ivy Ashton in “Introduction to Data Visualization and Process Analysis.”

Finally, Claudia, Liz and Jillian will be hosting Affinity Group gatherings covering LawHelp Interactive, LiveHelp and social media.

We also hope to see many of our partners and stakeholders at the conference, in panels, and at our LawHelp Networking Session: What’s New, What’s Next in 2014, on Friday from 8:30-9:30 AM.  Not only is the session a great opportunity to meet other admins from around the country and see what will be changing in the next year, we will also hear from Sue Encherman, the Director of Administration at Northwest Justice Project and Barbara Siegel, Project Manager at Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association, about exciting work taking place on LawHelp.org and probono.net projects in Washington and Massachusetts.

Directly preceding the conference itself, Claudia Johnson and Mirenda Watkins will be hosting an in-person training for the LawHelp Interactive community on creating online forms and managing interactive forms projects.

To learn more about this year’s conference and many other sessions of interest to the legal services technology community, visit the TIG website.