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Welcome!

The Document Assembly Line volunteer program aims to train and organize volunteers to build, translate, verify, and maintain digital guided forms that everyday people can use to fill out critical legal forms online. You can see some of these on Court Forms Online. We would love your help!

Context​

Since before COVID‑19, all over the US, many people have not been able to get to critical court services or legal help. For example, parents who need to leave home for various reasons need specific forms and processes to set up legally supported access to medical care or schools for their children through family or community members.

Digital forms—online guided interviews—are a proven way to bridge that gap for many, helping clarify forms and processes with access from home, yet those digital forms remain scarce. During COVID-19 this project, the Document Assembly Line (DAL) at Suffolk LIT Lab, in Massachusetts, ran a massive volunteer effort, and now partners with courts and organizations in numerous states to provide free online forms. We are currently looking to grow our new volunteer initiative to increase our reach across the US.

Current initiative

Remote administration and logistics volunteer opportunities​

⭐️ Sign up to express your interest here.

Objective: We are starting a new volunteer push to help people in under-served communities across the United States obtain the legal protection they need, even when they cannot reach a courthouse.

At this stage we are assessing the feasibility of expanding our new volunteer program, and organizers are a crucial piece of the puzzle. This journey will require organizational stamina and that is why we are starting with our organizers.

Volunteer organizer role: We need people who can coordinate and steadily grow a volunteer base that builds, translates, tests, and maintains online legal forms. As a team, we are looking for people who can communicate well, work independently, track progress, and assess strengths and obstacles. We will need some volunteers to have comfort with one or more of the following tools: email, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, project boards, spreadsheets, and GitHub. Your work will shape how we roll out the program and keep it responsive to state‑specific needs.

⭐️ Sign up to express your interest here.

Volunteer opportunities​

You can join one or more of several volunteer teams:

  • Organize volunteers: Strengthen our volunteer organizing efforts.
  • Legal subject matter experts: From state-specific legal experts to law students, folks from the community who can make sure our forms are legally accurate.
  • Build and update forms: Help us make new forms and work through our backlog of interview improvements and updates to take our existing forms to the next level.
  • Translators: Review translations for accuracy.
  • Other roles: We need to bring many skills and perspectives to the table to reach our goals.
    • Local community organizers for the communities we are trying to serve.
    • Usability testers give us feedback on our forms.
    • Bug hunters test interviews for bugs.
    • Data verifiers verify that information, like courthouse addresses, are up to date.
    • Plain language wizards.
    • Documentation writers.
    • Copy editors.
    • Everything else!

All volunteer work is done remotely, and all training, meetings, and communication happen online, via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and GitHub.

Volunteer organizers​

We plan for the volunteer organizing team to recruit, onboard, coordinate, and assess strengths and obstacles for the volunteer program. We could use folks with good communication and coordination skills, the ability to work independently, and the ability to track status and progress of projects and volunteers. In addition, we will need some volunteers to have comfort with one or more of the following tools: Email, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, project boards, spreadsheets, and GitHub.

Volunteer organizing is an ongoing project and you can participate when you are able. We also encourage you to think about how this role fits with your current commitments.

Legal subject matter experts​

A couple of levels of legal experience can be useful here. We need some with deep knowledge who can review our forms to make sure we are apply the law correctly, especially for state-specific and legal-area-specific forms. We could also use those who can do crucial work that takes less expertise, such as checking whether our forms are up to date with the latest versions of the current court PDFs.

Lending your expertise is on a per-participant and per-form basis. We can spread the work among those available and will continue to actively seek out more help. As far as reviews go, the time for each review will depend on the complexity of the form and there usually need to be several rounds of review/edits, but they can be spread out over time and among volunteers.

Builders​

Update interviews from a backlog of tasks. This involves coding in Docassemble, but no coding experience is necessary to join this team. We will teach you everything you need to get started and support you with regular check-ins. You just need to be willing to learn!

Building interviews is an ongoing project, and the updates team requires a long-term commitment. Volunteers should be able to commit at least 5–10 hours per month for at least 3 months.

Translators​

Review draft translations for accuracy to help make interviews more accessible. The translation team primarily needs native speakers to ensure clear translations.

We ask for translation volunteers as needed, by notifying the translation team via email and Teams. To get notified, complete the signup form so we know you are interested.

Other​

It would be impossible to list all the types of support these kinds of projects need. If you have other experience or skills to contribute, we would love to hear from you! Examples include:

  • Local community organizers for the communities we are trying to serve.
  • Usability testers give us feedback on our forms.
  • Bug hunters test interviews for bugs.
  • Data verifiers verify that information, like courthouse addresses, are up to date.
  • Plain language wizards.
  • Documentation writers.
  • Copy editors.
  • You!

Expectations​

We expect volunteers who are actively training or working on a project to check in regularly. In general, check-ins are brief. They are usually Zoom meetings, but in some cases we may use asynchronous updates in Teams.

The purpose of check-ins is to keep the project on track by sharing your progress, plan, and questions or blockers with your team:

  1. Progress. What did you do last week?
  2. Plan. What are you going to do this week?
  3. Questions/blockers. Is anything preventing you from making progress?
    Blockers can include questions, tech support issues, uncooperative third parties, etc. We often address questions and blockers live during meetings, or we can follow up later.

Also, let us know if you need something else to work on.

Sign up to volunteer​

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Thanks for the great response! We are now focusing on the "volunteer organizing" team to help expand the program. For all other roles, you can still submit the form and we will reach out when we can take on more volunteers in those positions.