Access to justice, state-wide: CLWA connects all WA residents to legal services with Josef

Community Legal Western Australia faced a mammoth task. 

How do you provide effective legal help to a state population spread across more than 2.5 million sq km? For context, that’s bigger than France, Germany, Italy, Portugal (and more!) combined. 

The state has its metropolitan centres, but also countless remote communities where accessing legal services isn’t the easiest task in the world.

With Josef, CLWA set out to create a tool built for scale. Its needs were far-reaching and the goal was inarguably ambitious. Now, using CLWA’s Online Referral Tool, WA residents can easily connect to their nearest community legal centre out of a total of 26. 

As part of a broader effort to decrease the obstacles blocking easy access to justice in WA, users can now “find the right legal help in one place, at a time that suits them”. 

We at Josef are in awe. We caught up CLWA to learn about their build and hear how they’re using no code automation to serve clients across the state.

Tell us about your recent Online Referral Tool. How did you settle on this automation idea?

There are 26 community legal centres in WA that cover different geographical, demographic, and legal areas. We wanted to build a bot that would ask users questions about their demographics and legal issues. Once inputted, the bot would then refer them to the right community legal centre (CLC) in Western Australia.

What pain points were you looking to solve with the tool?

We found that it can be difficult for people with legal issues to find the right place to get help. At the moment, a lot of time is spent on phone lines providing this information and there’s a history of the ‘referral roundabout’.

What’s a ‘referral roundabout’?

Historically, people who need help would be directed to one CLC and call them, only to be provided with another contact number for another service.

The Online Referral Tool has complete information about services across the state, so when people answer questions about themselves and their issue, they can now find the right legal help in one place, at a time that suits them.

We love a good problem-solved. What further benefits does the tool provide? 

Now that we’ve automated a certain aspect of our work, it’ll reduce the time spent on the phone providing easily replicable information and create a better experience for people who need help.

Automation equals time saved plus a huge increase in access to justice. Conditions improved for clients & colleagues alike!

Community Legal Western Australia represent and support community legal centres operating in WA. Between 2021-2022, Community Legal Centres in WA assisted over 22,000 people by providing legal advice, representation services, education activities, lawyer services, legal tasks and more. 

To learn more about their work, visit communitylegalwa.org.au 

To see what they built on Josef, visit their Online Referral Tool.