June 29, 2011
MACOMB, IL — Individuals in need of legal help, who may not have the resources to afford an attorney, now have a free service available to them via Western Illinois University Libraries. As of June 28, WIU Libraries, as well as the Macomb Public Library and the Blandinsville-Hire Public Library, will serve as public access locations for the new McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center (http://mcdonough.illinoislegalaid.org). According to Joseph Dailing, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice, Illinois Legal Aid Online has developed and maintains the underlying website on which the McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center is based.
In early May, Charles Malone, coordinator of the government and legal information unit at University Libraries, was invited by Ninth Judicial Circuit Associate Judge Patricia Walton to serve on the planning committee to implement the McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center. In her invitation letter for Malone to join the committee, she noted that the set up of the service in McDonough County presents no cost to the county or to the court.
“As many of you know, there are more and more people coming to court without a lawyer because they cannot afford to hire a lawyer. For those who are financially eligible for legal aid, Prairie State Legal Services is often not able to provide representation because it does not have enough attorneys to take every case. While the legal information found on the website is not an adequate substitute for representation by a qualified attorney, it does provide some excellent resources to help people through an often confusing process,” Judge Walton stated in the invitation letter.
Malone subsequently joined the committee. He explained that the committee’s plan to offer the Legal Self-Help Centers (LSHC) at libraries is a way to help ensure that individuals have access to the service via locations across McDonough County.
“The plan is for the circuit clerk’s office or the judge — if they discover individuals don’t have legal representation — to refer people to the collaborating libraries, including the WIU Libraries. And that’s a great idea, because lots of times people who can’t afford a lawyer probably have trouble with transportation, so they can take a bus to the WIU Libraries, or if they live in Blandinsville they can go to the Blandinsville-Hire Public Library,” Malone noted.
According to Illinois Legal Aid Online, a Legal Self-Help Center is a “community-based, collaborative project designed by a local planning committee that is chaired by the chief or presiding judge; the committee determines the specifics of the center, such as location, hours, staffing, etc.” The Self-Help Centers are Internet-based, and they offer users a dedicated website that incorporates the resources of Illinois Legal Aid Online, which provides more than 3,000 pieces of content in areas of law that most affect lower-income Illinois residents, such as:
Family law — divorce, paternity, child custody, child support
Housing law — eviction, foreclosure and other landlord/tenant and home-ownership issues
Consumer law — small claims, bankruptcy, collections
Protective orders — Orders of Protection, Civil No Contact Orders, Stalking No Contact Orders
Expungement/sealing and other criminal records information
Probate — guardianships, small estates, advance directives
According to Stacie Colston, an attorney and the outreach coordinator for Illinois Legal Aid Online, the McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center website covers Illinois civil law and federal law as applied in Illinois.
Malone noted that not only will the LSHC at University Libraries provide a valuable service for McDonough County residents, but it will also provide efficiencies to the Libraries’ users and to the librarians and library staff who work in the Leslie F. Malpass Library fourth-floor government and legal information unit .
“We’ve always had people coming to us looking to do legal research. This is so well organized it will be a time saver for us. For instance, if someone comes to us and says, ‘I want the laws on divorce,’ we would have to spend a lot of time showing them a number of resources where they could look up materials,” Malone explained. “Through Illinois Legal Aid Online, it’s already all set up. The website has a very simple initial page, and an individual can input his or her legal problem, such as divorce or foreclosure. Then it will do several things for them: it will direct them to local organizations, such as Prairie State Legal Services, that they can contact; it will direct them to the directory of libraries that they can go to; and it will display the legal articles that Illinois Legal Aid Online has for that topic. It has step-by-step narratives about each topic, plus form tabs — they can click on a tab and it produces a self-generated form they can fill out and take with !
them to court,” he said.
Colston said she is pleased that University Libraries is collaborating with Illinois Legal Aid Online and the Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice to implement the McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center. In particular, she noted that the Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice was integral to the process of getting the McDonough County LSHC up and running.
“Without Joe Dailing, we would never have convened the LSHC planning committee,” she noted. “He is also responsible for writing and implementing all the grants involved. In this case, the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation provided the grant money for the McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center.”
The kickoff for the McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center was Tuesday, June 28 at 11 a.m. at the McDonough County Courthouse. At noon, Malone and WIU Libraries hosted a training session for the navigators, librarians, clerks and others who will be coordinating each LSHC.
According to WIU Libraries’ Dean Phyllis Self, Western Illinois University Libraries is pleased to be an educational partner to promote the use of the McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center to the west central Illinois community.
“This partnership supports our efforts to establish WIU Libraries as a regional resource for governmental, legal and medical information in west central Illinois to both the University and the community at large. Many valuable information resources are free to the general public, but go unused because community members are unaware of their existence and do not know how to go about accessing these resources. The WIU Libraries’ faculty and staff are information experts who are available to assist both the University and general-community user to find useful and quality information, such as legal aid information provided in this new and rich resource, the McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center. We hope everyone will take the time in the near future to explore this resource,” Self added.
Access to the McDonough County Legal Self-Help Center is provided online at http://mcdonough.illinoislegalaid.org/. For more information about the Legal Self-Help Center at Western Illinois University’s Leslie F. Malpass Library, contact Malone at (309) 298-2719 or via email at C-Malone@wiu.edu. For more information about Illinois Legal Aid Online, visit www.illinoislegalaid.org.
Copy By: Teresa Koltzenburg
