Aloha,
Happy Kamehameha Day weekend! For those of you thinking, “what is that?” Kamehameha Day honors Kamehameha the Great, who unified the Hawaiian islands.
Welcome back to my blog on my journey at Legal Aid Society of Hawaii (http://www.legalaidhawaii.org/). As the A2J Tech Fellow, many people have come up to me with their comments on how technology could drastically improve their efficiency. I agree.
Legal Aid Society of Hawaii has already committed countless hours to use technology to share legal information in a variety of media. Their YouTube channel can be found at (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCidcoPSY4bRTzf22e2UjxIA/featured) and provides information to viewers in many areas of law.
Please watch their main video that plays on their website below.
One of my projects here at my home base is to develop a portal for pro bono attorneys to use so they can get cases easier and faster. This project is intended to help pro bono attorneys pick up cases that they normally would not have by having all the resources they need at their fingertips, thereby serving more people who normally would not have been helped. The current site that many Hawaii pro bono attorneys use can be found at (https://hawaii.freelegalanswers.org/) and is powered by the American Bar Association.
My second project includes a chatbot that responds to people who access the main legal aid website. The purpose of the chatbot is to communicate with end users who may not know how to navigate the website and find the legal solutions they are seeking. Here at Legal Aid, there are so many people who need help but are unable to get it due to ineligibility, they do not have time to come in, or other factors that prevent them from seeking help. The current site that end users would normally go to is (http://www.lawhelp.org/hi). The intent of this chatbot (or should I say Chad-bot) is to create a streamline process to give end users the resources they need at the starting page.
To create the dialogue and sample chatbot, I used Chatfuel (https://chatfuel.com/). This program is very easy to use and very user friendly. More news on this chatbot latter.
Writing the code for these two projects has quite some challenges. But as one of my favorite musical composers, Stephen Schwartz, once said “every project has challenges, and every project has its rewards.” I definitely see the reward of these two projects and will be working hard to get things done right.
Until next time!
Mahalo nui loa,
Chad Au