The Legal Service Corporation Technology Initiative Grant (TIG) Program is pleased to announce that two more recipients have completed their online intake grants and are now offering robust, accessible online intake options to low-income individuals in their respective states. Utah Legal Services (ULS) and Northwest Justice Project in Washington (NJP) were both awarded TIGs to adapt and improve Legal Aid of Western Ohio's successful online intake initiative.

The recently completed projects show online intake's incredible value to the legal aid community, including its capacity to save time at legal aid call centers, lower the volume of data entry into case management systems, and ultimately help providers stretch their budgets further to serve low-income clients more effectively.

Ten weeks after launching its web-based intake system, Clear*Online, NJP was able to report several major project successes:

• Over 2200 people completed the online application in that ten week period; of those, 1570 passed the preliminary eligibility check.
• 23% more clients from NJP’s targeted high priority areas (surrounding denial of government benefits and eviction) entered the intake system.
• 86% of the screeners report faster intake screenings achieved by transferring answers from the online intake interview into Legal Server, NJP’s case management system.

Similarly, ULS's online system launch has been quite successful. As noted in the program's final grant report:

This project has succeeded in designing an A2J online intake application that is directly integrated with Kemps Clients for Windows (Kemps), ULS’ case management system. The application was made available for testing on March 21, 2011 and was officially launched on ULS’ website on June 16, 2011. The application includes the ability to check for potential conflicts and/or duplicates prior to the information being imported into the system. The result is a more efficient and higher quality intake procedure that saves staff an average of half the time of data entry per intake normally required.

Final reports for both projects are available below and will be archived on TIG's Final Report Samples of Replicable Projects page. These reports highlight project successes and challenges, review the mechanics of CMS-integrated case management systems, and explain the planning that goes into developing successful online intake and triage systems.

TIG encourages LSC funded providers to explore further innovations in web-based intake and triage, including comprehensive A/B testing of client interviews and developing triage systems designed around principles that ensure optimal use of justice community resources.

Final Reports

• TIG 09558: Northwest Justice Project Clear Online
• TIG 09478: Utah Legal Services Online Intake
• TIG 07193: Legal Aid of Western Ohio Online Intake