In 1994 I volunteered for Legal Services Corporation, a community of lawyers that provide civil legal assistance to those in need. At the time, I was Concertmaster of the West Virginia Symphony and taking advantage of the beautiful terrain by living in a remote area near Lewisburg, West Virginia. I discovered that the Legal Services Corporation branch in Lewisburg was inundated with cases revolving around domestic violence. Unfortunately, the staff was having trouble maintaining these cases while at the same time providing services for the rather perfunctary legal duties which the majority of their clients needed.
From talking to staff at the branch, it became clear that some sort of flexible and continually updatable system which they could maintain and provide clients with basic simple legal services would be helpful. To address this I wrote LegalLangauge.
LegalLanguage is an interpreted specialized language which I wrote in C. Using LegalLanguage, lawyers could write simple scripts that could then ask clients questions, give guidence, and print out the appropriate forms. Legal Services in WV broadened the use of LegalLanguage from Lewisburg to other branches to help them run more efficiently.
- LegalLanguage C code
- Example LegalLanguage script which allowed some clients to process their own divorces.
