Frequently Asked Questions for Volunteer Attorneys

Who is the site administrator?

Jeff Brown serves as administrator for Wisconsin Free Legal Answers on behalf of the Wisconsin Access to Justice Commission, the project's sponsor in Wisconsin. Volunteers can contact Jeff by email at jbrown@wisatj.org with questions about using the site.

How does WI Free Legal Answers work?

Wisconsin Free Legal Answers is based on the walk-in clinic or dial-a-lawyer model where clients request brief advice and counsel about a specific civil legal issue from a volunteer lawyer. Lawyers provide information and basic legal advice without any expectation of long-term representation.

Users who meet eligibility (see Eligibility below) sign the user agreement, create a username and password, post a request for legal advice and provide facts about their situation that will help the lawyer answer the question. Users will be asked to select a category (such as “housing” or “debt”) that best describes their question. The lawyer may ask for additional information before responding to the user’s request, but the user will have a choice to respond to that request or not. Users' name and county, but no other identifying information will be shared with the volunteer lawyer. Users are informed that there is no guarantee that a question will be answered. If a question is not answered within 30 days, the user will receive an email from the website administrator instructing them to seek assistance elsewhere. The user will also be provided with a list of additional resources.

Lawyers who would like to participate must create a username and password, provide contact information and their bar number, sign the lawyer use agreement and receive approval from the website administrator. Before the lawyer’s account is activated, the website administrator checks to ensure the lawyer is licensed in Wisconsin and in good standing with the State Bar of Wisconsin. Once a lawyer has been approved by the website administrator, the lawyer receives an email notification and can begin answering user questions.

Lawyers may log in at any time to review a list of user questions and select the one(s) they want to answer. Lawyers can filter the questions by categories (such as “housing” or “debt”) to help determine which questions they would like to answer. Volunteers can preview the full question and check for conflicts before deciding to take a question and answer it. Once a lawyer takes a question from the list, the lawyer has 3 days to answer it before the question is automatically returned to the queue. Lawyers can and often do ask follow up questions if they need additional information in order to answer the client's question. The lawyer’s identity is not revealed to the client unless the lawyer decides to do so. Once a lawyer answers a question, the client has a choice to accept the answer or send a follow up question to the lawyer.

Lawyers will be able to view a log of past questions they have answered.

Who is eligible to use this service?

Eligibility for use of this serve is limited to the following:

• The user must have household income less than 250% of the federal poverty level (this limit may be lifted in times of national or state emergencies);
• The user may not have liquid assets exceeding $5,000 in value (this includes checking and savings account balances, as well as the value of any stocks or bonds);
• The user may not be incarcerated;
• The user may not request assistance with criminal law matters.

Users must provide their name, county, and zip code in order to request advice.

Users agree to post no more than 3 legal questions per year on 3 different topics. They can follow-up with an attorney on each question as many times as the attorney and user choose to do so.

Can I earn CLE credit?

Yes. Starting January 1, 2017, Wisconsin lawyers can claim CLE credit for time spent researching and answering questions through this qualified pro bono program. Lawyers can track their time in the Free Legal Answers system and record their volunteer time on the same page as they respond to the client's question. Lawyers may claim up to 1 hour of general (not ethics) CLE credit for every five hours of pro bono provided up to a maximum of 6 hours in a reporting period when filing their CLE report with the Board of Bar Examiners.

What kinds of lawyers should participate?

All lawyers are welcome! While there are certain types of legal questions that regularly come up (especially family, housing and consumer), we need lawyers with different areas of expertise and practice to volunteer. We hope the website will appeal to lawyers who want to give back but have been unable to participate in traditional pro bono work due to family obligations, schedule or geographic location. We also hope to engage lawyers who already provide pro bono and are willing to give more of their time in a different way.

What happens if a lawyer cannot answer a user’s question?

A lawyer might be unable to answer a user’s question for a number of reasons. Some examples might be a conflict of interest, user’s failure to respond to lawyer requests for additional information or the question is determined to fall outside the lawyer’s area of expertise. If a lawyer determines that they cannot answer a question, the lawyer can easily return the question back into the queue so that another volunteer lawyer may try to assist the user. If a lawyer takes a question and doesn't respond to the client at all within 3 days (even if it is just a question back to the client), the question will automatically return to the open questions queue.

What type of relationship exists between the user and lawyer?

When a user submits a question and receives an answer from a lawyer, there will be a lawyer/client relationship formed between that client and the lawyer who responds. That relationship, however, will be limited in scope and duration as described in the use agreements for both users and lawyers. The representation will be limited to providing an answer to the legal question and will not involve any ongoing representation of the client beyond the act of providing such an answer online. The lawyer is providing short-term, limited legal services to a client (the eligible user of this site) without expectation by either the lawyer or the client (the eligible user of this site) that the lawyer will provide continuing representation in the matter. Both the eligible users and lawyers must consent to the limited nature of this relationship both as to scope and duration as indicated when they accept the terms of the use agreement. Eligible users and lawyers who do not accept the terms of the use agreement will not be allowed access to the site. Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules 20:1.2(c) and 20:6.5 directly address limited scope legal clinics like Wisconsin Free Legal Answers. 

How do lawyers check for conflicts of interest?

As a volunteer with Wisconsin Free Legal Answers, you will be providing limited scope pro bono legal services in a program that is sponsored by the American Bar Association and the Wisconsin Access to Justice Commission. Therefore, under Wisconsin Supreme Court Rule 20:6.5, the general rules for lawyers as to conflicts of interest are modified. The only conflicts of interest that would preclude a lawyer from answering a question for an eligible user of Wisconsin Free Legal Answers are conflicts of interest that the lawyer actually knows of at the time that they view a client’s question. This means that the possibility exists, and the clients agree that they understand, that a lawyer who answers a question, or another lawyer with whom they practice in a firm, may actually be representing other parties with an interest in the question. The user’s name will be provided to the lawyer so that the lawyer can make sure not to answer the question if the lawyer knows that (s)he would have a conflict of interest. The client does not receive the attorney's name.

What about professional liability insurance coverage?

Volunteer lawyers who provide brief advice and counsel through the website will be covered by professional liability insurance maintained by the American Bar Association for the pro bono assistance that they provide through the website. The ABA has a specific pro bono rider to its general organizational policy for this purpose. If a claim of malpractice arises, the ABA administrator can trace each answered question back to the attorney who answered it. The ABA or the Wisconsin administrator may have to contact lawyers participating in the program from time to time related to this insurance coverage.

Is there a confidentiality issue with client information/lawyer advice being housed on the internet?

This site is designed to insure client privacy. Since the web program is administered through a secure messaging platform that limits access based on a screening, confidentiality will be maintained since only the website administrators have access to content between a client and a lawyer. Information available to the website administrator and the lawyer responding to a client request shall remain confidential, subject to the limitations of the Privacy/Confidentiality Policy. However, client requests for information and the response of the lawyers participating in Wisconsin Free Legal Answers may be maintained in a database for review in order to measure the effectiveness of the project. Steps will be taken to maintain the security of this database and it will only be utilized by the administrator but an absolute guarantee of security is not possible when using the internet and internet based systems.

For each visitor to the Webpage the web server automatically recognizes only the consumer domain name. This is the information that is collected for statistical purposes.

Aggregate information is collected on the pages consumers’ access or visit on this website.

The information collected is used to improve the content of this website and is not shared with other organizations for commercial purposes. Information may be disclosed when legally required at the request of government authorities conducting an investigation, to verify or enforce compliance with the policies governing our website and applicable laws or to protect against misuses or unauthorized use of our website.

Navigating the Website and Selecting Questions to Answer

When your account has been approved by the website administrator, you will receive a notification email. To get started you will go to wi.freelegalanswers.org and select “Sign In”. After you enter your username (which is your email address) and password, you will automatically be directed to a page that lists all the questions that have been posted for lawyers to answer.

You will notice that the questions are coded by flags. These flags lets you know how long each question has been in the queue. Questions with red-outline flags are those that have been posted for more than 10 days and questions with filled-in red flags are questions that have been in the queue for at least 25 days and will be closed if no lawyer is able to answer them. Questions that are not answered within 30 days will be closed and the client will be notified.

You have three ways in which to view questions in the queue:

1. You can view a list of all the questions in the queue; this is the default view.
2. You can view a list of questions that have been in the queue for 25 days or longer by clicking on the “Importance” option under the "Sort" button.
3. You can view questions by legal categories by clicking on the “Filter” button. 
4. You can easily view any question you have taken to answer by clicking "Home" on the menu and looking at questions in your personal queue.

The client is asked to use the Subject line to tell you, in their own words, what the question is about (for example, eviction, divorce, bankruptcy, etc.). The Category and Subject functions are tools to help lawyers quickly decide which questions they would like to review and answer.

Selecting Questions You Want to Answer

You can read the first few lines of each posted question by clicking the "Preview" button. If you decide you want to see more details of the question, click the subject to be taken to the question detail page. When you have found a question you’d like to answer, click the “I want to answer this question” button on the bottom of the question detail page. If you eventually decide you do not want to take a question you can click the "I want to return this question" to send it back to the full queue. You can also decide if you want to answer a question immediately by clicking "Answer Now" or answer the question later by clicking "Answer Later". Please respond within 3 days of taking a question. If you fail to respond within 3 days, the question will be moved back into the queue.

Once you have taken the question, you will be able to reply to the client and provide an answer or ask follow up questions. The client will not know your identity unless you choose to provide it. If you ask the client a question, you will receive an email when the client responds along with a link to log back into the website to respond.

How Do I Subscribe to a Category?

If your area of practice is specialized and you only want to answer certain types of questions, you can subscribe to a Category and receive an email notification each time a question in that particular Category is posted.

To subscribe to a Category (for example, immigration), click on the “Manage Subscriptions” tab at the top of the screen. Scroll down to the Category you are interested in and click on the red circle. When the red circle changes to a check mark, you have successfully subscribed to that category. You may also choose where you want to get subscription emails. To change it from your username email, click on your email address next to the green check and enter your different email address. Click the save icon to save your email address. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Entering Hours for CLE Credit

Each time you respond to a question, you will see a space below the answer box to record your time researching or responding to the client's question. You may log your time in tenth of an hour increments. You may view your hours at any time by clicking on “Log My Hours” from the menu. If you forget to record your time, you can always do it manually by clicking on Log My Hours in the menu.

How do I contact the administrator with a question?

If you have a question or run into a technical problem with the site, you may email the site administrator.