Case Study: Ohio Legal Help
OhioLegalHelp.org went from idea to multiple sites serving the general Ohio public, select domestic relations courts, and, soon, legal aids in only 5 years. In that time, it has provided legal help to millions of Ohioans (800,000 in 2023 alone).
The Challenge
Before building the site, we realized that it needed to function primarily as a “curation engine,” to connect a given user with the relevant documents, forms, and pro bono attorney referrals that would help them. However, each of these handoffs was highly dependent on the individual user’s needs and circumstances. Because the particulars of these handoffs were driven by complex rules, we could not present this in a traditional “self serve” interface, with faceted search and filters.
In addition, we knew this project had to be more “mobile first” than any website we had ever worked on. Data had shown that its audience overwhelmingly accesses the site through small, older mobile phones.
The Solution
The core of the site is a “mini-quiz” – a guided interface to help users see the resources that are relevant to them. It also features a flexible, powerful rules engine, which allows administrators to associate a given resource with the criteria to surface it. Lastly, while not always easy, we have tested each piece of interactive functionality, and can confirm it works just as well on a 340 pixel-wide phone screen as it does on a 5K iMac.
