Roadshow introduces LegalAve to Albertans

 

We recently returned from Jasper, Alberta, the last leg of our spring 2015 roadshow with stops in Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, and Calgary.

 

We’re building a Public Legal Education and Information (PLEI) website where Albertans can find information to address their family law concerns from one place rather than going to several different websites. We value community input on this work. During the past two months we embarked on a journey throughout mostly southern Alberta to talk to librarians, social workers, various other professionals, and the general public about LegalAve and test if our design of the website so far meets their needs. Here’s a recap of our trips.

 

Four of our team members started the roadshow in Lethbridge, where they presented at the Southern Alberta Library Conference (SALC) during a breakout session on “Building a Family Law Network: How a small non-profit is tackling the big issue of providing legal information to Albertans.” We also had a booth at the conference, which gave us the chance to demonstrate LegalAve to librarians. This roadshow marked our second round of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) in addition to the first UAT we conducted in Edmonton late last year. The team at Family Justice Services in the Law Courts accommodated our UAT with the staff and the general public. We received helpful feedback from interactions at the booth, the UAT, and the presentation, and had great conversations with everyday Albertans as well as with professionals from the PLEI sector and related organizations.

 

While in Lethbridge, we consulted with organizations such as Lethbridge Legal Guidance, Legal Aid Alberta and Lethbridge College - key partners who have provided us with valuable input that has assisted us with effectively identifying the existing legal information gaps and what content the website should provide. 

 

From Lethbridge, we headed to Medicine Hat for more UAT with the staff of Family Justice Services and their clients. We spent the day interacting with Albertans who volunteered to participate in the UAT and voiced their impressions of how the website looks and functions. The feedback was very good and we are already acting on some of the suggestions  made as part of our ongoing website development strategy to improve LegalAve.

 

 

The next stop was Calgary. We  set up a booth for two days at the Alberta College of Social Workers Conference. We talked to attendees about LegalAve and had them test drive the website. The conference was an opportunity to demonstrate how LegalAve will help Albertans address their family law concerns, and support organizations providing legal information and related services in their efforts to meet the legal needs of Albertans. In addition to having conversations with people who visited the LegalAve booth, we also took the opportunity to meet with some of our collaborators and stakeholders in Calgary to update them on LegalAve’s progress, including Native Counselling Services of Alberta, Family Justice Services, Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family, CARYA, Catholic Family Service,and the emergency shelter operated by the YWCA for victims of family violence.

 

 

We  represented ALIS  at the annual Law Day event in Calgary and Edmonton. We  were able to interact with Albertans of all ages, including many families, about LegalAve .

 

 

We  wrapped up the roadshow with the Alberta Library Conference in Jasper. We presented ALIS’s approach to collaboration in developing the LegalAve website to a group of librarians during a breakout session. Conference attendees who visited the LegalAve booth were able to test out the demo site and share their feedback and excitement for our launch this fall. The conference was a way to share the LegalAve website with librarians attending the conference from all over Alberta - as far north as Fort McMurray. 

 

The roadshow was a good opportunity for ALIS to introduce LegalAve to Albertans, answer questions about the project, and invite other organizations and professionals to collaborate with us. The trips also allowed us to engage in discussions with the general public, various non-profits, and court staff about how LegalAve could meet their legal information needs.

 

We plan to continue to reach out to Albertans in the north and other parts of the province over the next few months. 

 

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