News Archive
More coverage of the newest MLH Self-Help Center of Macomb County
Yesterday's Grand Opening of the newest SHC in Macomb County
The center will be in the law library on the fifth floor of Macomb County Circuit Court in Mt. Clemens
Macomb County residents who need information about how to handle civil legal matters but cannot afford an attorney will have a new place for help.
The Michigan Legal Help Self-Help Center of Macomb County is to open its doors Thursday in the James C. Daner Law Library on the fifth floor of the Macomb County Circuit Court building in downtown Mt. Clemens.
This will be the third self-help center in metro Detroit, with other centers located in Smart Detroit in the Penobscot Building in downtown Detroit and in the Adams-Pratt Law Library in the Oakland County Circuit Court in Pontiac. There are six other local self-help centers throughout the state, according to a written statement.
The Macomb County center will be free for visitors.
Visitors can use computers and printers for free articles, court-approved forms and toolkits to help them resolve legal problems on their own. They also can receive help using the Michigan Legal Help website in English or Spanish at www.MichiganLegalHelp.org or www.ayudalegaldemichigan.org.
The center in Macomb County will be open 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 1 p.m.-4 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
It is being offered through a joint effort with the Michigan Legal Help Program, Baker College and Legal Aid and Defender Association Inc.
Interns from the paralegal program at Baker College will help visitors find what they need on the website, find referrals to a lawyer or community service programs and answer questions about court practices and processes. They will not be able to give advice and will be supervised by staff from the Legal Aid and Defender Association Inc.
The Michigan Legal Help website has legal information about family law matters, protection from abuse, housing issues, consumer law, expungement, public benefits, income tax issues, estates and guardianship and individual rights. The nonprofit organization is funded by the Michigan State Bar Foundation, the Michigan Supreme Court and grants from the Legal Services Corp.
Contact Christina Hall: chall99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @challreporter.
Grand Opening of the MLH Self Help Center of Macomb County!
We are excited to announce the launch of our newest Self Help Center in Macomb County! The grand opening celebration will be tomorrow, October 22nd, from 11:30am - 1:30 pm. There will be an esteemed panel of speakers beginning at noon, including Michigan Supreme Court Justice David Viviano. We hope you can join us there at the Macomb County Court's law library!
Details in the attached press release.
MI Supreme Court Finds Sharp Increase in MLH Use
The MI Supreme Court analyzed patterns of useage for the Michigan Legal Help resourece, and their results confirm what we see every day:
More and more people are visiting the website to acess information, and many of them choose to complete the automated interviews we have prepared to assist people in competing court forms for all sorts of civil matters.
Based on this year's traffic and record of completion, we are on track to produce over 60,000 interviews by the end of 2015!
Change is good!
One constant in life is change...here at Michigan Legal Help, we have some new changes to tell you about!
- New Content! Last month we added three new toolkits to MLH. In “I Need to Revoke (Undo) My Husband’s Paternity” and “I Need to Revoke (Undo) My Paternity of My Wife’s Child,” you can learn how the new Revocation of Paternity Act works to change paternity of children born or conceived during a marriage. A new automated online interview allows you to draft the forms you need to handle this legal problem. In “Small Estates: Transferring Property When Someone Dies,” you can learn about how to distribute someone's property after death when there is only a small amount of property to distribute. This toolkit also has an interview you can use to figure out how much each heir inherits, and helps you draft the forms you need.
- Ayuda Legal de Michigan: The Michigan Legal Help team has been busily working to add new content to Ayuda Legal. In the past few months we have added many new toolkits in Spanish. Three Protection from Abuse interviews have also been added.
- Self-Help Centers: The Michigan Legal Help Self-Help Center Network of Calhoun County opened on May 1st! This group of five self-help centers can be found in the public libraries in Albion, Tekonsha, Homer, and Battle Creek (both Willard and the Helen Warner Branch).
- New Staff: As the Michigan Legal Help team loses one staff attorney, we gained a new outreach and development team member. If you'd like Michigan Legal Help to do outreach in your area, please contact us!
- New Laws: Whenever a law changes, we have to make needed changes on Michigan Legal Help. We do this as quickly as we can, but sometimes it still takes a while. The biggest change lately has been the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage. We're working to update our resources here - thank you for your patience! Please check back soon if you aren't finding what you need.
New legal information available!
Do you have questions about getting your Michigan ID or Driver's License? We've got answers for you witih our two new toolkits! These tools replace the former MichID website, which has been decomissioned.
Are you recently unemployed? We also have a new toolkit that explains how unemployment benefits work and how you can apply for them. We'll be adding more toolkits soon about appealing denials of unemployment benefits and other related topics.
Finally, we've added several new toolkits and videos to our Spanish-language website, AyudaLegaldeMichigan.org. If you or someone you know would rather read legal information in Spanish, Ayuda Legal can help.
Changes to Michigan's Expungement Laws
Michigan's expungement laws changed recently. The new rules allow someone with one felony conviction and two or less misdemeanors to set aside the felony conviction. Or, if you have one or two misdemeanor convictions and no felony convictions, you can ask to set aside one or both of the misdemeanors. You must still wait for five years from the date of sentencing, release from prison, probation, or parole to file your application. Find out if you qualify to set aside your conviction by using our Automated Online Application to Set Aside Conviction interview.
Michigan Legal Help Evaluation Report
Part of making Michigan Legal Help the best resource it can be is doing a formal evaluation of our work. Here's a report looking at the effectiveness of MLH in helping people navigate the divorce process: http://goo.gl/yYmw3O
We spent several months designing the study, four months collecting data by surveying divorce case files in clerks' offices and interviewing court and self-help center staff, then several more months analyzing the data and reducing it to a written report. This project was funded primarily by a Technology Initiative Grant from the Legal Services Corporation.
What's New on MLH: End of 2014 Edition
Happy new year, everyone! Here's a quick year-end report on what's new at Michigan Legal Help as we say goodbye to 2014:
- We have three new toolkits launching this month: Name Change, Stepparent Adoption, and Managing Child Support Debt. Also, I Need a Quitclaim Deed to Transfer Real Property launched in the last month or so. Each of these toolkits comes with informational articles, common questions, an interactive online interview, and checklists of instructions.
- Our Income Tax toolkits are updated for the new tax year! Don't forget that these include links to lists of places where low income people can get their taxes prepared for free.
- We continue to add new content to ayudalegaldemichigan.org and we have LiveHelp available in Spanish.
- We have completed an evaluation of the efficacy of the divorce interview and learned a lot about Michigan Legal Help as well as self-represented divorce litigants generally. We're still putting the finishing touches on the report, but we'll be publishing it soon.
- Please continue to help us spread the word about Michigan Legal Help. You can order PR materials to distribute in your community on the PR Materials page of the website - these are now available in English and Spanish!
- What have people been saying about Michigan Legal Help? Here is some feedback we've gotten from users: "Thank you for making the help available at no cost." "This site was amazing it has truly helped me. Thank you so much!" "A very sad time for me, but this was so helpful as I am an hourly person and it is hard to get downtown. I am grateful for this service and it was very user friendly."
Thanks, everyone, for making 2014 a great year - we're looking forward to an even more productive and exciting year in 2015!
As we wind up another year...
As we wrap up another calendar year, we are reflecting on some of our year-end milestones. In 2014, we:
- Launched 14 new toolkits, including 16 new interviews
- Helped over 452,000 people learn more about their legal problems
- Helped 273 people fill out legal forms every day
- Chatted with over 2,600 people through LiveHelp
- Launched a Spanish-language version of MLH, AyudaLegaldeMichigan.org
- Launched 4 new videos explaining challenging legal processes
- Received feedback from many users expressing thanks for Michigan Legal Help
Would you like to say “thank you” by contributing to this great statewide resource for people representing themselves? Any amount helps us keep growing!
We may have missed "Giving Tuesday" but we welcome donations year-round. We just made it a lot easier to donate to Michigan Legal Help - just click and go: http://www.michiganlegalhelp.org/make-donation. Many thanks!
