Surveillance Self-Defense

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit defending digital privacy and free speech, has developed online guides to protect you from online spying.

Surveillance Self-Defense includes tips and tools for how to have safer online communications including how to keep your passwords safe, encrypt your private communications, protect your online devices from hackers, avoid phishing attacks, and how to browse online anonymously.

Resources for Parents from California Courts

Parenting Resources

Find about resources that may be available in your community to help you in parenting your children during your separation.

Limited Scope Representation and Legal Technology

According to Sarah Castelhano Cassady's article, The Changing Landscape of California’s Legal Practice and Revisions to the Rules of Professional Conduct. How Limited Scope Representation and the Growth of Technology in the Legal Field Just May Jump Start Access for Underrepresented Californians, over the past thirty years, access to legal services in California and across the United States has sharply declined. "While corporate entities continue to benefit from legal services, and have in fact increased their retention of legal services over time, the representation of individuals in legal disputes has declined, leaving California courts overwhelmed with historically high numbers of self-represented parties."

According to a study commissioned by the State Bar, legal services access could be improved by attorneys entering the "gig economy" to connect with clients. A cost-saving benefit to clients is to obtain discrete services from an attorney that is tailored to the client's needs as opposed to the expense of full-service representation by an attorney. 

Under the model of "unbundling" services (called "limited scope representation"), attorneys may offer services such as document preparation, legal research, or the drafting and filing of a complaint (as many Superior Courts in California permit or even require electronic filing) virtually from any location. And clients would be able to work with attorneys from their own home at their leisure.

To facilitate limited scope representation, the State Bar adopted a new Rule 1.2 of the Rules of Professional Conduct. According to Rule 1.2, the attorney may provide limited scope or "unbundled" services if: (1) the limited scope representation of the client is reasonable under the circumstances; (2) it is not otherwise prohibited; and (3) the client gives informed consent.

An attorney still has a duty to meet competency requirements and must follow other requirements according to the Rules (acting with diligence, appropriate skill and education, limitations on business transactions with clients, restrictions on an attorney's representation after forming a client relationship, etc.).

Under my own practice, limited scope representations make up close to 75% of my clients, and when a prospective client is looking for legal services, learning the cost to prepare a legal document will be $400 sounds much less alarming than hearing $200 per hour. Generally, with limited scope representation I am able to estimate the costs of representation to receive fair payment for my work, and my clients know up front the total fee for the work they need.

Families Change

Families Change is a website of resources developed by the California Courts to help parents, teens, and children cope with separation and divorce. The site contains free guides and courses that help parents make decisions that are in the best interests of their children.

Why Do Pro Bono?

A Message from American Bar Endowment.

Why do pro bono?
Obviously, the primary reason to do pro bono work is to help those less fortunate who may have a serious need for your legal skills and knowledge. When you decided to become a lawyer you likely had a desire to promote justice and to make it equally accessible to all people.
Pro bono work clearly helps accomplish that goal. However, there are actually a number of additional benefits to performing pro bono work.

Fulfill professional responsibility
Remember why you wanted to study the law in the first place.

Gain personal satisfaction derived from providing these services
It makes you feel good, helping with the stress and sometimes depression that can come with practicing law.

Acquire new experience and training
Whether it’s a different type of law, case, or segment of society, you can gain new and important knowledge.

Demonstrating faith-based commitment
Depending on your religious beliefs, it could provide additional evidence of your commitment.

Learn cross-cultural skills
Gives you the opportunity to connect with and serve different clients.

Gain insights of the legal needs of the poor
If you don’t normally work with the poor and disadvantaged, it could change your perspective.

Crowdfunding Litigation

Crowdfunding Can Be A Great Way to Finance Your Case - Or Destroy It, by Jason Krouse 
 
"A litigation crowdfunding website or application lets anyone in need of backing for a legal matter raise money from anywhere in the world. There are two emerging crowdfunding models at opposite ends of the funding spectrum. On one end there are nonprofit efforts ... which raises money from donors, not investors ... for small-scale criminal defense cases or nonprofit organizations trying to launch legal or political campaigns. At the other end of the spectrum, ... accredited investors bet on the outcome of corporate lawsuits, which is an estimated $1 billion market."

'Hackathon' Movement

The hackathon is a workshop, meet-up or conference bringing experts from different disciplines together with technologists looking for innovative ways to tackle long-standing problems.

The idea is to create an app, service, policy proposal or other work product that can address a real-world problem.

"To most lawyers, 'hackathon' probably sounds like an invitation to commit felonies and sets them fleeing," says Dazza Greenwood, a lawyer and research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. "But to people who get it, a legal hackathon is about lawyers, engineers and policymakers interested in solving problems at the intersection of the law and technology."

By Jason Krause, ABA Journal.