Expanding Access to Justice with a Statewide Legal Resource Portal
BACKGROUND
Urban Insight partnered with Judicare Legal Aid to design and develop Wisconsin Law Help, a powerful, user-friendly, statewide legal‑help and referral website. Built on open-source software and accessibility best practices, the platform connects people, especially those turned away by legal aid, with plain-language legal resources, guided self-help tools, and referrals.
In 2025, the State Bar of Wisconsin recognized this impact by naming Wisconsin Law Help the Pro Bono Organization of the Year.
Wisconsin’s civil‑legal landscape faced a pressing challenge: in 2024, the state’s two major Legal Services Corporation‑funded programs had to decline between 16,000 and 20,000 eligible applicants because of limited staff and funds.
Judicare Legal Aid, in collaboration with the statewide coalition CLAAW (Collaborative Legal Aid for Wisconsin) and other stakeholders, secured a TIG (Technology Initiative Grant) from the Legal Services Corporation in 2022 to build a centralized, user‑friendly self‑help portal.
The mission: empower pro se litigants with accessible information and streamline referrals to legal aid providers.
THE CHALLENGE
Each year, thousands of Wisconsinites eligible for legal aid are turned away due to lack of resources. Legal information was scattered across multiple organizations, inconsistent in quality, and difficult to understand — especially for those without legal representation.
Urban Insight was engaged to translate the vision to serve these residents into a scalable, sustainable web application — one that could serve rural, urban, and tribal users across the state with minimal friction and maximum accessibility. Key obstacles included:
- Resource fragmentation: Legal self‑help resources were scattered, inconsistent, and not tailored for users without legal representation.
- High volume of unmet need: Thousands of individuals across Wisconsin were forced to navigate complex legal systems on their own.
- Complex referral logic: Matching users to the right legal aid provider required dynamic eligibility checks (location, income, issue type) and real‑time triage.
- Accessibility & literacy concerns: Users included non‑lawyers, low‑literacy readers, ESL speakers, and individuals from underserved communities.
- Sustainability & replicability: The platform needed to be maintainable, extensible, and ideally leveraged by other legal aid providers across the state and beyond.
- Reporting requirements: Align with the Legal Services Corporation's Technology Initiative Grant (TIG) requirements.
THE SOLUTION
Urban Insight led the full design and development process — from technical architecture through User Experience (“UX”), content planning, and development. The site is built on the Drupal for Legal Aid Websites (“DLAW”) platform (a free, open source version of Drupal maintained by Urban Insight), with custom modules and tools that can be reused by other legal aid organizations.
Guided Triage & Referral Tool
We built a user-friendly, step-by-step guided interview that helps people identify their legal issue and connect with the right legal aid provider based on location, income, and issue type. Urban Insight developed the custom logic, integrated real‑time eligibility checks (e.g., Federal Poverty Thresholds (“FPL”)), and built the tool as a module that can be reused by other sites built on the DLAW platform.
User Testing & Usability Evaluation
Urban Insight conducted structured usability evaluations and user research with key audiences — including legal aid staff, individuals navigating legal issues, and self-represented litigants — to ensure that the guided interview and referral tools were intuitive, accessible, and effective. Iterative testing and feedback loops directly informed content hierarchy, interface design, and language clarity to improve real-world outcomes. Usability testing showed a significant increase in user task success rate compared to prior legal aid websites.
Plain‑Language Content Strategy
Urban Insight collaborated with content partners to structure legal topics (housing, family law, consumer, domestic violence) into digestible, low‑barrier language. This content was optimized for clarity, accessibility, and plain‑language comprehension.
Accessibility & Mobile/Tablet‑First Design
Recognizing the audience needs, the site was built mobile/tablet‑friendly, to follow WCAG 2.1 AA best practices,, and included accessible navigation, screen‑reader support, and clean information architecture.
Collaborative Stakeholder Workflow
Urban Insight managed technical discovery sessions with Judicare, CLAAW, law schools, state law library, and legal‑aid partners during planning. This ensured the platform’s architecture aligned with the broad ecosystem and future expansion goals. The stakeholder committee included law schools, libraries and legal‑aid providers.
Open Source + Future-Proof
We extended DLAW with custom logic for referrals and integrated statewide taxonomy vocabularies. Our work is built to be maintainable, replicable, and open to the legal aid community.
IMPACT
- Awarded 2025 Pro Bono Organization of the Year by the State Bar of Wisconsin.
- Unified participation from law schools, legal aid providers, libraries, and courts.
- Already serving thousands of users navigating issues in housing, family law, domestic violence, and more.
- Recognized as a model for legal aid coordination across rural and urban communities.
- Urban Insight’s development of the triage/referral module and DLAW enhancements positions other legal‑aid sites to adopt and replicate the solution — multiplying impact.
“An idea that started over a decade ago is finally a real thing that exists — people can go online to Wisconsin Law Help and get resources, information, and guidance. That’s really exciting for us.”
