FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Free Spanish Legal Information Website Celebrates First Anniversary

Illinois Legal Aid Online loves to hear from print journalists, TV reporters, bloggers, and other members of the press who are interested in covering the work we do.

If you have media-related questions, please contact Lisa Colpoys, Executive Director, at 312.977.9047 ext. 11 or lcolpoys at illinoislegalaid dot org.

Much of what you may need to know about Illinois Legal Aid Online is already available in the About Us section of our website. This includes our history, mission and goals, board of directors and staff profiles, and current projects.

Below is some basic information about our organization and the work we do:

• Illinois Legal Aid Online is a nationally-recognized, groundbreaking statewide technology center for legal services. We are a nonprofit organization that serves the entire state and has offices in Chicago.
• Illinois Legal Aid Online was created in March 2001 as the Illinois Technology Center for Law & the Public Interest. Substantial initial funding and support was provided by the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois, The Chicago Bar Foundation, and IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.
• We increase access to justice for lower-income Illinois residents by developing and maintaining three websites: IllinoisLegalAid.org provides legal self-help resources for the public; IllinoisLegalAdvocate.org supports legal aid advocates; and IllinoisProBono.org contains tools for volunteer attorneys. These sites were visited over 1.5 million times in 2010.
• IllinoisLegalAid.org serves lower-income and vulnerable Illinois residents who cannot afford an attorney and is visited over 120,000 times per month.
• Our websites for legal professionals, IllinoisLegalAdvocate.org and IllinoisProBono.org, have thousands of legal resources in 30 practice areas.
• IllinoisProBono.org, has more than 5,000 registered users and is visited 25,000 times a month.
• Since 2006, Illinois Legal Aid Online has helped local courts establish legal self-help centers for the public in more than 60 of Illinois' 102 counties.
• Illinois Legal Aid Online received the 2006 Technology Leadership Award from Accenture and Lumity, Meritorious Recognition for the 2010 Louis M. Brown Award for Legal Access from the American Bar Association, and a 2010 Paul H. Chapman Award from the Foundation for the Improvement of Justice for its Virtual Legal Self-Help Center.