Maryland Center for Legal Assistance pilots in‑house app to speed brief legal advice and share templates safely

The Maryland Center for Legal Assistance on Monday demonstrated an in‑house data and communications app designed to speed brief legal advice, improve consistency across the state’s Court Help Centers and deliver templated documents by text or email without creating ongoing client files.

Deputy Director for Remote Services Lindsay Bramble said the center — a subsidiary of Maryland Legal Aid that operates Maryland Court Help Centers — handled 179,118 interactions in calendar year 2025 and uses a limited‑scope model that provides discrete attorney advice rather than ongoing representation. “We expand access to justice by providing free, compassionate, innovative, and high quality legal services,” Bramble said, explaining the organization’s need for tools that preserve brief‑advice ethical guardrails while giving staff useful context about prior consults.

The app includes two primary features: a Related tab that links prior consults (typically by phone number) to an active consult so staff can see recent advice and avoid repetitive intake; and a LinkManager that creates database‑hosted links to staff‑generated templates and fillable PDFs that can be texted or emailed immediately to litigants.

Russ Bloomquist, the app’s lead developer, said the Related tab shows previous consult notes only during an active consult and that access is role‑based and limited. “The notes are only visible during an active consult,” Bloomquist said. Supervisors have additional scrub and edit privileges, and the system is locked monthly to prevent browsing older notes. The team also built a confidential flag: if a consult is marked confidential — for example when a caller may be using a shared phone or a domestic violence concern exists — those prior notes will not surface for subsequent staff.

Bramble said the organization piloted the Related tab with a testing group of staff attorneys and supervisors and ran roughly 7,000 consults during the testing phase. “In these 7,000 … consults, there was only 1 conflict that we identified,” she said, and the group subsequently proceeded to a phased, statewide rollout combined with training.

Bloomquist described the tech stack as deliberately simple and maintainable (PHP backend, JavaScript frontend, MySQL database) and said the app’s texting runs through Twilio. He emphasized designing for real‑time use and staff workflows so the system minimizes extra clicks and collects only required reporting data.

On document delivery, the LinkManager lets staff upload a template or PDF to the app; the system encodes files in the database and issues a short, public link staff can paste into an SMS or email so litigants can open documents on their phones without attachments. Bloomquist said the 2025 beta sent more than 71,000 messages and that the current template library contains about 109 templates. “Most litigants prefer to receive a text message over an email,” he said, underscoring a mobile‑first design approach.

Attendees asked about sharing the technology. Bloomquist said the codebase is in‑house and somewhat sprawling but that the organization’s executive team has mandated open‑source releases when feasible; he said he would be willing to share code or lessons learned and that the group hopes to release an open‑source version within about a year. Bramble said the app is not currently designed to replace full intake systems used by LSC‑funded legal aid programs but that MCLA is exploring warm referrals into systems such as LegalServer to pass on basic information for full intake.

Staff and users reported operational benefits: faster handoffs from phone to walk‑in, fewer repeated explanations to litigants, and time savings for attorneys. Bramble acknowledged remaining limitations — phone numbers are an imperfect linking key, shared or changed numbers can prevent linking, and staff training is essential to avoid overreliance on prior notes — and said managers monitor call lengths and quality. The center aims for a 10‑minute average consult and uses a 90‑second wrapup window between calls for data entry.

Bramble closed by urging other programs to let user needs drive innovation rather than adopting technology for its own sake. The session ended with an invitation for attendees to complete a post‑presentation survey and follow‑up questions for the presenters.