On Line Resources in Maine

Helping Patrons Find The Law

What follows is a survey of on-line legal resources in the state of Maine.

The URLs are collected at the end of the presentation.

The Legal Guide for Immigrants to Maine provides legal information on sixteen topics that can toggle back and forth between English and Spanish.

Many of the Legal Aid providers have at least contact information available in the languages of at least some of the more numerous immigrant groups.

Pine Tree Legal Assistance has a lot of substantive legal information available in Spanish and a site search that functions in Spanish, as well.

The Pine Tree Legal Assistance site has a comprehensive library of information useful to low-income individuals.

The Pine Tree Legal Assistance site also has an extensive library of interactive court forms available in two different formats.

The interactive PDF forms have rollover information to help a patron fill out the form, and can do complex mathematical computations.

The HotDocs interactive forms preparation system asks the user a series of questions and prepares the forms based on the information provided.

It includes a wide range of information about dealing with various government programs, consumer rights, employment issues, taxes, housing and so on.

The HotDocs system also provides interviews that will help estimate a family’s eligibility for Food Stamps, or TANF welfare benefits, or calculate how much child support they might receive in a divorce or determine whether a court would modify their child support amount.

Legal Services for the Elderly provides detailed coverage information for all of the Medicare Part D providers in Maine and other legal issues affecting the elderly.

Maine Equal Justice has important information on many benefit programs available in Maine.

The Disability Rights Center provides information about various programs for Maine people with disabilities.

The Attorney General’s Consumer Law Guide is mostly about dealings between individuals and businesses and much less about enforcing rights in court.

HelpMeLaw is an over-arching site that provides a gateway to legal information for Maine people from all of the sites we have been reviewing and many others.

It has four sections: Maine Courts Helpful Organizations Legal Library, and Search

The Maine Courts section of HelpMeLaw provides links to information about the courts and court procedures from the Court website and many others.

The “Helpful Organizations section provides descriptive and contact information for the various organizations that can provide direct legal help to Maine low-income people.

The HelpMeLaw Library has drill-down topics that lead to information from many different sites.

Although HelpMeLaw has a few articles that actually sit on the HelpMeLaw site, most, like all of these are found on other sites. This little globe indicates an outside link like this link to Maine Equal Justice.

The real heart of the HelpMeLaw site, however, is its search function. It searches only selected information related to legal issues important to Maine low-income people.If the user provides some additional information as to their county, their age, and their income, very specific results can be provided.

Here are the results for a “divorce” search. HelpMeLaw only provides the top three returns, but you can get more by clicking on “More Results.” The search also returns organizations that provide assistance with “divorce” issues and whose service area includes the patron’s county.

Scrolling down, the search also returns other information and resources that might not come up with just a simple word search for “divorce,” like the IRS information on the “innocent spouse rule.” Finally, at the bottom, there are other, non-legal aid organizations for the county which might be helpful for people involved in “divorce.”

Maine Legal Information URLs

HelpMeLaw – http://www.helpmelaw.orgMaine Courts – http://www.courts.state.me.usPine Tree Legal Assistance – http://www.ptla.orgKIDS Legal – http://www.kidslegal.orgMaine Equal Justice – http://www.mejp.orgLegal Services for the Elderly – http://www.mainelse.orgDisability Rights Center – http://www.drcme.orgImmigrant Legal Advocacy Project – http://www.ilapmaine.orgLegal Guide for Immigrants to Maine – http://www.ptla.org/immigrants/englishAG’s Consumer Law Guide – http://www.maine.gov/ag/consumer/consumer_law_guide.shtmlMaine State Bar Association – http://www.mainebar.org/lawyer_pamphlets.asp