About me:

My name is Tyler Lantzsch, I am a rising 2L at the University of Toledo College of Law as well as an ATJ Tech Fellow this summer. This summer, I have the opportunity to work in a space that is possibly the crossroad of law and technology. Michigan Legal Help (MLH) is a website aimed at helping individuals with simple legal matters through the use of legal information put into easy to understand language. Through the use of videos (Such as this video on serving divorce papers), articles, checklists, and forms, MLH is able to help those throughout the state of Michigan with their simple legal issues. Michigan Legal Help also has a Guide to Legal Help that screens individuals eligibility for legal aid while also generating information and contact resources for lawyers in their particular counties. The work MLH does helps the rest of the legal aid network in Michigan to handle their caseload in a way that is much better than the days prior to the website. MLH sees close to 9,500 visits per day to the webpage, that is 9,500 times per day that MLH gives legal information to a person who, otherwise, would likely seek the help of a legal aid attorney or simply would not go forward with their legal matter. These numbers show just how important MLH is to the cycle of access to justice in the state of Michigan.

My Project this Summer:

This summer at MLH, I will be helping create new articles for the website as well as working alongside staff attorneys to create a new automated texting program that will allow MLH to help people through the winding road that is a legal proceeding as well as collect end result data from their information and self-help tools. This data that is collected will help those at MLH to understand how many of their users are using the do-it-yourself forms and seeing the legal process through until there is a result and how many are simply filling out the forms and filing them away to never be seen again. This information will help them determine topics on the website need more attention and what tools they should look to develop to further. This project is being funded through a 2-year Technology Innovation Grant (TIG) and is currently in the very early stages of testing. In just my short time working on this project, I share in the same vision as the rest of the Michigan Legal Help team, that long-term communication with site users will help them maneuver through the legal process as well as help MLH create better tools and provide better information to help more people in the future.

Michigan Legal Help is a website that impacts the lives of those that many in the legal profession do not think of, my self included. When I came across this job posting, I had never thought of a civil legal information website being so helpful to so many in the community it serves. That might have just been my naive, 1L brain or it could be the sign of a much larger problem that so many are fighting to change; ignorance. The ignorance to the need of civil legal aid across this country and the ignorance as to how many of these individuals are in a system that has forgotten about them (or never cared in the first place). On television shows and movies people see the likes of court appointed attorneys for criminal cases or attorneys working to get people off of death row that were wrongfully convicted. But, the Access to Justice issue on the civil side of the law is something that many just do not talk about (especially in a smaller law school). Now, could I have missed a miscellaneous lunchtime speaker on civil legal aid and its importance? Sure! But that is part of the issue, these types of organizations and jobs that combine law and technology exist and it is not a regular topic of legal conversation. It is organizations like Michigan Legal Help and ATJ Tech Fellows program that will not only highlight the need but give students and others in the space the voice to speak on these issues and help to innovate solutions to minimize the impact.