Tennessee legal‑aid groups expand Gavel clinics, helplines and chatbots to reach residents statewide
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Summary
Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services and partnering legal‑aid offices described using the Gavel document platform, a statewide helpline (including a senior helpline) and chatbots on wwhelpfortn.org to provide brief civil legal help; they reported nearly 35,000 Free Legal Answers responses and roughly 60,000 helpline calls since 2013.
Laura Brown, executive director of Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services (TALS), outlined several higher‑tech programs TALS operates to widen access to civil legal services across Tennessee’s 95 counties.
Brown described a portable “clinic in a wagon” that brings laptops, wireless printers and configured Gavel stations to partner sites so volunteers can run wills, powers of attorney, advanced directives and parentage/child‑care forms without host organizations maintaining the technology. “We literally have a little black wagon, and all of our technology is in that wagon,” Brown said, adding she can get stations set up within about 25 minutes.
She summarized Tennessee Free Legal Answers (started in 2011) as a 24/7 written Q&A service that has answered nearly 35,000 civil legal questions and provides an alternative to in‑person representation for brief legal needs. Brown also described Tennessee’s statewide helpline (including a senior helpline for those 60 and older under the Older Americans Act definition) and said the helpline model uses an answering service to schedule 30‑minute attorney callbacks; she reported the helpline has handled about 60,000 calls since 2013 and currently achieves roughly a 95% capture/scheduled callback rate.
Brown also reviewed chatbots and online tools on wwhelpfortn.org, including a legal wellness checkup, a family‑champion bot for pro se divorce and parenting plans, a workers’ comp bot co‑developed with the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and a renter‑defender bot with a housing roadmap for eviction defense. These tools convert official Administrative Office of the Courts forms into guided Q&As that can be emailed or printed for users.
Brown said TALS runs the state disaster legal helpline under a FEMA contract and opens it when there is a federally declared disaster; she said she authorized opening it in response to current emergency needs while awaiting a federal declaration.
Next steps: Brown invited attendees to contact TALS staff for implementation guidance on kiosks, chatbots and helpline partnerships; no funding commitments or policy changes were decided at the session.
