Tech Training in a Poverty Law Program

1. Tech Training in a Poverty Law Program LSNTAP Webinar Series September 2007 This presentation can be found on LSNTAP.Org (www.lsntap.org/techlibrary)

2. Presenters • Sue Encherman, Director of Administration- Northwest Justice Project • David Tilove, Director of Info & Technology- North Penn Legal Services • Steve Gray, Techie Lawyer Guy- LSNTAP & Legal Services of South Central Michigan

3. Training Overview • In House • Northwest Justice Project • North Penn • LSSCM • Out House • LSNTAP Trainings • Legal aid sponsored statewide, regional and national events • Local nonprofit oriented events • Self Directed • What Has Worked for You?

4. In House Training - Intro Surveying the Tech Training Landscape • Does your program have a tech plan that is updated annually? • If you have a tech plan does it include tech training? • What percentage of your program tech training do you handle in house? • Less than 25% • About ½ • More than 75%

5. In House at NWJP • Training problem at NWJP we are trying to solve: large multi-office statewide program. Very expensive and time consuming to do in person trainings. • Friday Fundamentals: short webinars using Legalmeetings, held on select Fridays on tech topics of interest to all staff.

6. In House at NWJP Friday Fundamentals- Talk it Up Hi Everyone: Our first training was a success! We had about 26 participants; 19 logged on thru Webex. • Next training:  Friday, January 12th    (They will be the 2nd Friday of every month.) • Time: 1:30pm to 3:00pm (We are extending trainings by 30 minutes to have time for questions- some may end earlier- you can come and go as you please.) • Subject: Working with Graphics in Microsoft Office Suite applications • Trainer: Sandy Rylander • Contact: email Bridgette if you plan to attend. Bridgettem@nwjustice.org We did learn the following however and will institute these rules for all future trainings; • We will start on time at 1:30 - please log on 5 minutes before we start • Please put your phone onmute and take it off mute only to ask questions so office background noise does not interfere with the call. • Do not put the call on hold or the whole conference call will hear music and no instructor.

7. In House at NWJP Keep the Momentum Going Hi Everyone: Our second training was a success! We had about 19 participants; 17 logged on thru Webex and got great hints on using Graphics, Next training - #3:  Friday, February 9th   (They are always the 2nd Friday of every month.) • Time: 1:30pm to 3:00pm (We are extending trainings by 30 minutes to have time for questions- some may end earlier- you can come and go as you please.) • Subject: Creating/Updating a Table of Contents, Page Numbering, and Section Breaks in Word • Trainer: Sandy Rylander • Contact: email Bridgette if you plan to attend.

8. In House at NWJP Keep the Communication Open Talk it up in newsletters: “The Friday Fundamentals series of 1.5 hour trainings over GoToMeetings.com continues to be a big success! 119 people from various geographic corners of the Alliance have participated in the first six trainings, which have included Creating Fill-In Forms, Tables of Contents, Working with Graphics, Using Styles, Using and Creating Tables in Word and Outlook Q &A. Trainings are held on-line on the 2nd Friday of each month. Email announcements are sent out to the ATJ Leadership listserv and to all NJP staff. Watch your email for the announcement of the September training.”

9. In House at NWJP Survey Your Staff • Use on-line surveys to determine training needs for in-house trainings, statewide conferences, etc • Ask often, ask direct • Include all staff: attorneys, legal assistants, accounting , etc • When you hear of a need- act on it

10. In House at North Penn • David Tilove, Director of Information and Technology Description of North Penn program • NPLS serves 20 counties in Northeastern Pennsylvania from 12 staffed office ranging from 1 staff to 20. Approx staffing: 30 attorneys, 16 paralegals, 33 support and admin About 10,000 square miles. Program budget of $6 million. Merger in 2001 from 4 pre-existing programs. • Major software; PRIME Case management, WordPerfect - migrating to Word, HotDocs (using National Server) Bankruptcy software (Top Form and New Hope)

11. In House at North PennSite-based Hands-on Trainings • A formal setting – i.e. computer lab, participants all in one place and hands on. • Rare: Used twice in the last 5 or 6 years for info on new case management software. • In-house trainers augmented by staff from other Pa legal services programs (Trainers trained and then spread out to train individual programs). • Excellent for hands on for large groups but used rarely because of cost and limited availability of facilities (largely community colleges) • Future options for smaller groups: Instant lab: 6-8 NPLS laptops in a meeting room of an area hotel with wireless internet and a projector.

12. In House at North PennAll Staff Meetings • Held twice a year. Agendas include training, some CLE. Some tech training. • For advocates – demos of new HotDocs applications: for staff future care documents, bankruptcy pleadings intake scripts for housing problems. • For support staff: Increasing skills with Case Management system: research, reports, shortcuts. • Word training (most Word training will be on-line; some in person sessions need to see when the eyes glaze over) Three hour training for support staff on Word scheduled for staff meeting 9/28.

13. In House at North PennOffice Tech Visits • Two tech staff. • Intent is to visit each office at least twice a year – separately or together, with an checklist going in but to provide help on those issues that don’t rise to the surface. The “Oh I thought that error message was supposed to pop up every time I turned on the computer – or “I just don’t notice that any more” or what you see when you look over someone’s shoulder and realize they don’t know how to work with more than one program open at the same time.

14. In House at North PennLegalMeetings 3 staff are now hosting regular meetings and trainings. Used 5 or 6 times a week. Very easy to set up and for staff to get on. Here are some training examples from this week: • First training of non-centralized intake staff on using structured intake questions in PRIME ( VLAS TIG project adapted for PA by NPLS) 1 hr 15 minutes, 8-10 intake staff • Secretary wanted to know how to get a report from PRIME of her office’s open dependency and termination cases showing the court docket number for the case of each child in the family. (Published court schedule shows docket # but not name)

15. In House at North PennProgram Website Home Page • Most staff have this as their home page. The common reference point makes it easier at time to give instructions because people have a common starting point ( statewide web, reference center) and as easy access to tutorials, etc (see compliance page off staff home page) http://www.northpennlegal.org/staffhome.htm • Links point to Microsoft tutorials • Friday admin mailing. We collect info from management for a weekly email to staff. Tech section includes some tech tips. Links are repeated on the staff home page. • Example: reminder of help available from Lexis including a recorded session on basic skills and showing how to upload a brief and have the cites automatically checked.

16. In House at North PennScreencasts • PRIME Tutorials prepared by John Kemp http://www.northpennlegal.org/Tutorial/PrimeCalendarBasics.htm • Turbodemo (s/w used with PRIME tutorials). This is a narrated tutorial on using the Pa Legal Aid Network (PLAN) reference center. We had asked the statewide training coordinator to do session for our new staff. After the second one we distilled his presentation so as to add flexibility to our scheduling and not impose further on his time. It had been added to the reference center and tutorial is now being used by a number of other PA programs. http://www.northpennlegal.org/Tutorial/PLANRef/play.htm • Camtasia Studio- used for short Outlook tutorials http://www.northpennlegal.org/Tutorial/outlook1/outlook1.html

17. In House at North PennSnagit for Screen Captures

18. In House at LSSCM • Steve Gray, Tech Manager Description of LSSCM program • LSSCM serves 14 counties in South Central Michigan from 5 field offices and 2 statewide offices (state support and farmworker). 70 full-time staff. • Major software: Pika CMS, Word/Excel, Firefox and Thunderbird and Adobe.

19. In House at LSSCMOverview of Tech Plan In House • Screencasts – Wink, Camtasia and Screen-o-matic • Monthly CRP Calls • Tech Quickies at every 1/4ly program meeting (all staff) • Office Tech Visits - same day as office staff meeting • Individual Sessions - phone + Teamviewer • Intro to Program Tech document Out House • LSNTAP Webinars • Statewide Tech Taskforces and Annual Training • Local NPO Tech Sessions • VTC Subscription – Self directed online tutorials

20. In House at LSSCMLSSCM Highlights • Screencasts –Screen-o-matic is free web-based simple screencasting software. For details see me recent blog post - http://lsntap.org/Spiffy_screencasting • Monthly CRP Calls – We have a “This month in troubleshooting” running agenda item. • Tech Quickies - I get ½ hour at every (1/4ly) program meeting of all staff. • Individual Sessions – Teamviewer is free easy to use remote desktop sharing. • Intro to LSSCM Tech document – for students and new staff

21. Out House OptionsLSNTAP Trainings • Something for all Staff • Accessible – short and attend from comfort of your own office • Upcoming Agenda: • SWEB111: The Power of XML for Poverty Law (and the Index Tool too!) (09/28/07) • ED110: CyberPiracy & Predatory Practices: Protecting the Client Community (10/12/07) • LM102: Energizing Online Meetings and Trainings (10/26/07) • SUR103: Doing Online Surveys: A Primer on the Poverty Law Survey Tool (11/16/07) http://lsntap.org/upcomingtrainings

22. Out House OptionsLegal Aid Sponsored Statewide Events • Michigan – Tech Day at the Roadshow Agenda: • Taming Your Wiki - Part 3Most legal aid programs in Michigan have set-up a MPLP hosted wiki. In this hands-on session we'll cover additional aspects of customizing your wiki. • Pika Update - What is going on in the world of Pika Case Management System both in Michigan and Nationally • Steve's Best Freebies 20 free apps that will change your life (or at least make some parts of it a little more tolerable). • Intro to OpenVPN - Is your program interested in setting up secure remote access to your office or between offices? Here's a free open source software tool that could do the trick. • Getting the most out of Mozilla Firefox - There are literally thousands of addon extensions that have been written to increase the functionality of Firefox - the popular open source web browser.  We'll explore as many of the spiffiest extensions that we can get in in an hour. • Also do ½ hour tech on each substantive day

23. Out House OptionsLegal Aid Sponsored Statewide Events Penn - PLAN statewide training conference has a tech track. Often scheduled in a way that limits participation to the techies, it is nonetheless useful as a springboard to other training efforts. Material is posted to the PLAN reference center:

24. Out House OptionsLocal Nonprofit Tech Events Many areas have orgs that offer tech trainings designed for non-profits. For Example: NPower Seattle

25. Out House OptionsSelf Directed Training Virtual Training Center - Bar Foundation purchased group subscription to online software training service for Michigan legal aid programs. - http://vtc.com

26. Tech Training in a Poverty Law Program LSNTAP Webinar Series September 2007 This presentation can be found on LSNTAP.Org (www.lsntap.org/techlibrary)