Legal Aid intake tool automates manual onboarding process and cuts wait times

Gippsland Community Legal Service (GCLS) is a legal aid organization based in Australia that provides legal services on issues ranging from family violence intervention to tenancy and housing. 

Recently, Principal Lawyer Simon Suttie sat down with Josef’s CEO and Co-founder, Tom Dreyfus, to dive into the organization’s work and how the team is clearing bottlenecks for its rental stress program with two self-service intake tools on Josef.

Watch the conversation in full or explore GCLS’s tools below.

How the tools work

GCLS’s intake tools make it easier for people facing rental stress to get the support they need. Rental stress can involve struggling to pay rent, spending more than 30% of your income on housing, or more.

The tools’ user-friendly, self-service interface enables community members to share their experiences with GCLS via an interactive form. Once received, all responses are then sent straight to Actionstep for GCLS’s lawyers to review–fast.

The tools follow three, key steps:

1. Clients answer key questions: Clients or their case workers interact with the tool and share their responses to an interactive set of questions about their experience.
2. The tools assess eligibility: Based on their responses, the tools determine the client’s eligibility for GCLS’s help. The tools either refer users to the team or direct those ineligible to other trusted resources for support.
3. Referrals are submitted: Eligible referrals are automatically sent to GCLS’s matter management system, Actionstep, where lawyers can then quickly access cases and get started reviewing them.

How the tools help GCLS

The tools help GCLS work smarter—levelling up internal operations and cutting out unnecessary manual tasks so the team can focus on what matters most. Notable benefits of the tools include:

• They’re handy time savers: Around-the-clock access means less phone call triaging, and more clients able to submit requests themselves.
• Triage is automatic: The tools filter out ineligible referrals automatically, meaning the team isn’t weighed down by repetitive triage. The tools do the work for them!
• There’s no manual data processing: With the tools being connected to Actionstep, client information only needs to be inputted once. Populated matters are instantly ready for the GCLS lawyers to review.

How the tools help GCLS users

In instances where GCLS can’t help with a particular case, the tools share relevant, trusted resources to ensure everyone can get the help they need. 

Simon says, “Through Josef, we can direct people to other organizations and resources with almost no time spent on our behalf aside from the actual construction of the bot.”

Key wins for service users include:

• No time wasted on the phone! Users don’t have to wait on hold just to speak with a member of the GCLS team. They can submit their requests whenever they like.
• Users know their next steps faster. With the tools’ built-in logic, users can find out their eligibility as soon as they complete their request–there’s no unnecessary waiting around.
• A better client experience. Rental stress is a hard, sensitive topic. By removing long phone calls and lengthy wait times, clients can get the help they need easily, without any unnecessary barriers adding to what Simon describes as already “traumatic” situations.

Learn more

Watch Simon and Tom’s full chat, or learn how other organizations have supercharged intake and triage with Josef.

• 1000s access legal services via Community Legal Western Australia’s referral tool on Josef
• How Consumer Action supercharged intake with Josef to help more people