Fighting Poverty with Data Mining Tools for Legal Services

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February 27, 2020

Feb 27, 2020

The need for legal aid among low-income communities isn’t a new phenomenon, and its relevance continues to grow in recent times. That’s why organizations like East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) aren’t just providing legal services – they’re also training the next generation of advocates.

“EBCLC is the highest-volume free legal services provider in Alameda County, California, and we train more than 150 law students each year in our clinics,” says EBCLC Data Scientist Lawrence Karongo, who’s leading up a data-centric approach to serving those in need.

EBCLC legal clinic

This forward-thinking strategy requires sophisticated tools, notes Karongo, which EBCLC didn’t have access to until recently.

“Our advocates utilize a highly diverse set of strategies to fight poverty, and our old system wasn’t set up to track and report on our community outreach, impact litigation, and policy change work,” he says. “For all these reasons, we needed a system that was highly customizable – something that could support our frontline attorneys in managing everything from eviction defense and asylum applications to employment advocacy and business entity formation. We’re really happy to have found all that we need in LegalServer!”

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