Learning and Serving in Puerto Rico

On May 3rd and 4th, 2018, the LegalServer team convened with a group of new and experienced users for a live two-day training event in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Training for a Cause

The University of Puerto Rico and Servicios Legales de Puerto Rico (SLPR) provided a great space to conduct the training at the Puerto Rico Bar Association, even as the island continues to recover from the devastating effects of last year’s Hurricane Maria. LegalServer is contributing to the recovery efforts by donating its software to SLPR - a nonprofit civil legal aid organization - so they may better serve Puerto Ricans in need.

On day one of the training program, Xander Karsten and Jeff Hogue guided attendees through recently developed and emerging LegalServer tools, and then turned to focused training on existing features. The topics included:

• The revolutionary new Guided Navigation tool that supports complex logic
• Customized Profiles and Permissions for tailoring the user experience
• Data capture and Custom Fields for Administrators, and
• Process Management and Branch Logic

Along with the standard training programs, advanced users enjoyed a breakout session with a deep dive into advanced problem solving. Topics included access restrictions, pro bono management, and other more complex tracking scenarios.

Leveraging Community Knowledge To Help New Users

On day two, experienced attendees volunteered to collaborate with local users and administrators of Servicios Legales de Puerto Rico, and shared strategies and best practices in managing reports and designing intake processes. All involved found this activity engaging and rewarding, as experienced users gladly shared their knowledge of the system with Puerto Rico’s civil legal aid community.

I really enjoyed sharing information with SLPR. It was great to hear about their work and grow that sense of community.

Much of the second afternoon was dedicated to Reports. Starting with the basics, users learned about topics such as:

• Creating new Reports
• Using Matters and Timekeeping modules, and
• Setting Filters and Columns

Later, advanced Reporting techniques were covered, including:

• Scheduled Reports
• Embedded Reports
• Complex Filtering, and
• Charts and Graphs

The final training topic of the two-day event involved LegalServer’s robust APIs. Users learned how to build a basic API of their own, along with various examples of APIs that are used in the real world by civil legal aid teams and public defenders.

The Journey is Only Beginning

As we reflect on our time in San Juan, we are reminded how important Puerto Rico is to our collective community, and while there remains much that we can do to help, we feel blessed to be a part of an effort to increase access to justice throughout the island. We are thankful for the great work these organizations do and for their incredibly generous hospitality in hosting our National Training!

Thank you, Puerto Rico!