Illinois Legal Aid Online (ILAO) was created in March 2001 as the Illinois Technology Center for Law & the Public Interest, pursuant to the recommendations of an October 2000 statewide assessment of legal services technology needs. Substantial initial funding was provided by The Chicago Bar Foundation, the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois, and IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. The "Tech Center" was created by twelve partner organizations as a unique and unprecedented statewide collaboration of Illinois legal services providers, funding entities, the private bar and law schools.

Illinois Legal Aid Online was housed at Chicago-Kent College of Law for its first four years, which generously donated space and technical resources to the organization, in addition to supporting us financially. The Chicago Bar Foundation, the Lawyers Trust Fund and Chicago-Kent were all instrumental in the formation and growth of Illinois Legal Aid Online and provided not only necessary funding, but early leadership, motivation and vision. The Chicago Bar Foundation's seed funding was made possible by a generous gift from the Estate of George Brode.

The Tech Center made its online debut in July 2001 by launching three websites, one for each of the communities we serve: lower-income Illinoisans seeking legal help, legal services attorneys and staff members, and pro bono attorneys and legal professionals. Our websites have gone through several iterations and have evolved substantially to now include state-of-the-art multimedia training, easy-to-use interactive legal documents and forms, foreign language resources, and online collaboration tools. These sites were visited over 1.4 million times in 2009.

In March 2005 Illinois Legal Aid Online was incorporated as an independent nonprofit and soon thereafter moved to our current location. In March 2006 we won the first Technology Leadership Award presented by Accenture and Lumity for our website, www.IllinoisLegalAid.org. This website has been recognized as one of the nation’s foremost Internet-based resources for delivering legal information to the public.

In 2006 ILAO partnered with the Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice to develop and establish technology-based legal self-help centers in county courthouses and public libraries across the state. Our goal is to have a legal self-help center in every Illinois county. By the end of 2009 there were 38 centers, which serve tens of thousands of people in need of help each year.

For the last decade Illinois Legal Aid Online has successfully used technology in innovative ways to increase access to justice by streamlining the delivery of free and pro bono legal services to the poor, and providing easy to understand legal information and assistance to the public. We are looking forward to serving lower-income Illinoisans and the attorneys who represent them for many years to come. 

Last update: 06/03/2010