Watch Sam's chat with the Legal Aid of North Carolina team.
He chats with Chief Innovation Officer, Scheree Gilchrist, Innovation Lab Program Manager & Staff Attorney, Megan Hennings, and Chief Communications Officer, Helen Headrick.
Together, they talk Sam through the organization’s new Josef document and guidance tools designed to help clients with all things housing.
The trio give some background into how they approach innovation for sustainable, long-term impact, why confidence always beats perfection when you’re building self-service tools, and more.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube, or read our recap below.
Legal teams often look for a quick fix: a chatbot here, a form there.
But Scheree is clear: “It’s always easy to think of a one-off tool. The challenge is to build sustainable, systemic change.”
That’s the job of LANC’s Innovation Lab. When it launched, the team set out to improve service delivery through new ideas and processes, tech-driven or otherwise.
But the vision has evolved. Now, they’re cultivating something deeper: a strategic, long-term culture of innovation that’s spreading.
The LANC team are well versed in launching self-service tools.
Their latest on Josef include a housing appeals tool that turns complex, static court forms into simple guided processes. The tool walks tenants through each step, helping them understand where they are in the legal process and automatically generates the right forms ready to file.
A new reasonable accommodation letter generator helps tenants communicate with landlords early about their needs. Things like accessible parking or unit modification, so issues can be resolved sooner rather than later.
“People come to us looking for precise answers to urgent, life-altering problems,” says Scheree. “Specificity is everything in legal aid.”
“Josef is in the sweet spot. It’s easy enough to learn, but powerful enough to scale. And our staff can use their legal knowledge without needing to be software engineers.”– Megan Hennings, Innovation Lab Program Manager & Staff Attorney, Legal Aid of North Carolina
The best resource in the world can’t help if no one can find it. That’s why LANC takes a layered approach to deployment.
That means embedding tools on their high-traffic website, working with community partners, maintaining in-person services, and developing mobile outreach strategies.
“We’re meeting people where they are,” says Helen. “Whether it’s online, at a DV shelter, or in a library with a social worker helping out.”
“We can’t test forever,” Megan says. “We have to innovate alongside the day-to-day.”
To keep up with demand, LANC follows a hybrid innovation development model that enables the team to move quickly without becoming dependent on external providers.
Most recently that’s meant enlisting Josef’s Professional Services to co-build LANC’s first suite of tools, and, in the the meantime, Megan and the team have upskilled on the platform via Josef’s self-directed Designer & Builder Program.
“We’re outsourcing the scaffolding, but owning everything else,” says Scheree. That includes the data, strategy, and long-term maintenance. “That helps us protect confidentiality, control costs, and build internal capacity.”
“Josef is in the sweet spot,” adds Megan. “It’s easy enough to learn, but powerful enough to scale. And our staff can use their legal knowledge without needing to be software engineers.”
If we were to sum up LANC’s advice so far, we’d say:
As Scheree puts it: “We don’t need a polished, beautiful thing that’s useless. We need things that work.”
Ask the question “How do people feel?,” says Scheree.
Success in legal aid isn’t just about forms filed or cases closed. It’s about dignity. Empowerment. Building things that make people feel seen and respected.
Legal Aid of North Carolina is showing what that looks like practically, one tool at a time.
Explore how you can make legal aid available on demand via self-service Q&A, contract and workflow tools on Josef.
We'll be in touch soon to arrange a time to speak.