Robert Ambrogi

Does your company or law firm believe in supporting access to justice? If so, have I got an opportunity for you. As many of you know, this year I am president of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation, a legal charity that supports access to justice programs operating throughout Massachusetts. This is the MBF's 50th anniversary year. To celebrate (and to help raise funds for the programs we support), we are holding a gala dinner on Oct. 23, 2014, in Boston.

The number of lawyers with legal blogs is dwindling, according to the latest Legal Technology Survey Report from the American Bar Association's Legal Technology Resource Center. For 2014, 24% of respondents in the annual survey said that their firms have blogs, down from 27% in 2013. Asked whether they personally maintain a legal blog, 8% said yes, down from 9% in both 2013 and 2012.

Last month, I wrote about A2J Author, a tool used by legal aid programs and others to create automated guided interviews to assist people in need of legal help. It is primarily used to help self-represented individuals create court and legal forms, for online intake at legal services programs, and to help guide individuals to appropriate legal help. Now, A2J Author is in the running for a 2014 Innovation Justice Award presented by the Hague Institute of Internationalization of Law. It is one of 16 finalists in the category that honors successful innovations, defined as…

Last February, I reviewed PacerPro, which I described as a better way to search federal court records than PACER. This free search tool provides an interface to PACER, while actually improving on the service with features such as real-time universal search, aggregated search results and one-click downloads of entire dockets. In the last week, there have been some notable developments regarding PacerPro. Most notably, PacerPro announced a major new release that adds two significant features:

Eloquent remembrances about Browning Marean have been written by those who knew him well. See the posts by Craig Ball, Tom O'Connor, Chris Dale, John Tredennick, Ralph Losey, Monica Bay and Josh Gilliland. These folks built friendships with him over many years, traveled to conferences with him, sat on panels with him, shared meals with him,…

The University of Massachusetts School of Law has launched what it is calling an incubator designed to help new lawyers start their careers while serving modest-income clients who might not otherwise afford a lawyer. Justice Bridge is described as a legal access center and law practice incubator that will help enable new lawyers to deliver high-quality, affordable legal services to clients of modest means.

At the ILTA annual conference in Nashville today, Microsoft Corp. announced the release of a preview version of a new document management and collaboration platform designed for law firms and legal departments. Called Matter Center for Office 365, it works with Office 365 and allows legal professionals to securely find, organize and collaborate on files within the familiar Office environment.

I recently reported here about the ABA Journal’s Hackcess to Justice, the first-ever hackathon held during an ABA annual meeting. First prize went to William Palin, a Massachusetts lawyer. Over the course of the two-day event, he created PaperHealth, an iOS app that provides a quick and easy way to create a legally binding health care proxy or a non-binding living will on an iPhone or iPad. As it turns out, Palin had previously created another legal app, PaperWork. Developed for use by family law attorneys in Massachusetts, PaperWork allows users to create PDF…

In two posts last year, I wrote about Box, the file sharing and collaboration platform, making a push into the legal industry through integrations with several mobile and web legal platforms (here and here). Today, two weeks before its major BoxWorks2014 user conference in San Francisco and just a few days before the International Legal Technology Association conference in Nashville, the company announced major new clients in the legal field and new law-related partnerships and integrations.

It is estimated that all the programs and resources devoted to ensuring access to justice address only 20 percent of the civil legal needs of low-income people in the United States. And with dwindling funding due to decreases in IOLTA and other funding sources, the problem is only growing worse. Given this situation, technology is…

The cloud-based practice management platform Rocket Matter has announced that it now allows integration with Outlook email. By installing a plugin in Outlook, users can associate a Rocket Matter case and billable time or costs with an email directly within Outlook. If an email has an attachment, the attachment will automatically be uploaded to Rocket Matter and be accessible through its web interface.

Some interesting and helpful idea came out of #hackcesstojustice. No, it hasn't cured cancer, but small steps help too. @ABAJournal — Scott Greenfield (@ScottGreenfield) August 8, 2014

If you have any doubt as to the success of the ABA Journal's Hackcess to Justice event on Thursday and Friday, consider this: Even Scott Greenfield said nice things about it. The first-ever hackathon held during an ABA annual meeting, the event was a competition in which teams were given two days to develop technology that could help expand access to justice for those unable to afford…