Illinois Legal Aid Online, which is funded in part by a $20,000 grant from the Illinois Bar Foundation, was featured in a recent Chicago Daily Law Bulletin story. Another $10,000 IBF grant to the Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice funds the creation of 5 self help centers in some of the most rural counties in the state. By Maria Kantzavelos Law Bulletin staff writer Illinois Legal Aid Online hasn't yet reached its goal of establishing technology-based legal self-help center in the courthouses and public libraries of every county in the state to increase access to justice for low-income residents and pro se litigants. But an instant messaging service, launched recently on the non-profit organization's Web site, is serving as a supplement toward that end, said Lisa A. Colpoys, executive director of Illinois Legal Aid Online. "Our goal is to have a legal self-help center in every county. It's not there yet," said Colpoys, adding that the computer self-help centers are in courthouses or public libraries in 38 Illinois counties. "And even if there is a legal-self help center in their county, they may not be able to access it because they have transportation issues, they're disabled, they work during the hours it's open. "We thought it was logical to add a help component to the Web site. It gives another access point for people all over the state." Launched in October, LiveHelp is an online chat service that can be accessed with a click of a computer mouse on IllinoisLegalAid.org. LiveHelp has Web site visitors communicating in real-time with a remote operator who helps them navigate the site's free online legal information and other resources - such as legal documents and application forms - to help people who can't afford an attorney find the resources they need to resolve their legal problems. "A lot of the people we're trying to reach aren't very sophisticated Internet users. Or they may have problems using a computer in general, or not a lot of experience using a computer. They may not have those skills," Colpoys said. "The operator fills in, and helps them find what they need." The live operators are law students from around the state who may be volunteering via laptop computers in two-hour shifts from coffeehouses or their law schools.  Or, like Samira Nazem - a 3L at the University of Chicago Law School - from their living room couch. Nazem is among the law students who underwent the required training to serve as a LiveHelp operator. She said she usually takes the 9 to 11 a.m. shift on Tuesdays. She said the volunteer work is a perfect fit while juggling her law school studies. "I wanted to contribute, but in a way that wouldn't require 15 or 20 hours a week," she said. "[Volunteering] as a LiveHelp operator] allowed a lot more flexibility for me, while allowing me to give back to the community." Visitors to IllinoisLegalAid.org in need of direction can click on the "Click to chat" option on the Web site for person-to-person help from 9 a.m to 5 p.m. Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The law student volunteers are not providing legal advice, Colpoys said. Rather, they're providing help in navigating the legal information visitors need to solve their legal problems. She said the response to the chat service feature has taken off, seeing visitors with problems that run the gamut. In the first month, LiveHelp operators chatted with more than 1,300 people, Colpoys said. The program is seeing an average of 75 people a day for chats. A random sample of about 450 chats that took place from Nov. 16 to Dec. 14 showed that divorce, child custody, child support, eviction, small claims, criminal records, visitation and foreclosure were the primary issues of visitors in need of help. It took only a few seconds for an operator to respond to a click on the feature late Friday morning, which offered the following response to get the process started. "Welcome! You are now chatting with 'Brandon'." "Brandon: Hello I can help you find information about the law in Illinois, but I can't tell you what to do. I'm not your attorney and I can't give you legal advice, you should contact an attorney. Please don't tell me anything that you want to keep private. The other side in your case can contact LiveHelp for help , too. If they do, we'll help him or her in the same way that we are helping you. "Brandon: If all of the above is okay with you, please type YES into the chat box below." For Nazem, chats with an individual visitor have lasted anywhere from two minutes to an hour. As an example of the range of problems she deals with, Nazem said, a question could be: "I want to get custody of my child and don't know what to do. Can you help me?" Or, she said, a visitor may ask, "I have a broken window in my apartment and I've called my landlord three times and he hasn't fixed it for me. What can I do?" In that scenario, Nazem said, "We've got to go to the landlord-tenant section of the Web site, find a scenario that answers that question, and help them research their questions so they can decide for themselves." In her stint as volunteer, Nazem said she has found that "a lot of people are grateful to have that human contact." When operators can't help with a particular problem, they can offer legal aid referrals. Though the chat service is not a high-cost project, Colpoys said, developing, maintaining and managing the technology and content on IllinoisLegalAid.org is "not a small job." To do that, Colpoys said, the organization relies on such funding sources as the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, which recently announced cuts in its grant funding to legal aid organizations as the results of a 50 percent slash to the foundation's state funding. IllinoisLegalAid.org provides legal resources in 24 areas of law, according to Colpoys. For example, she said, visitors can find instructional videos on topics such as how to obtain an order of protection and how to appear in court on their own. The Web site receives hundreds of thousands of visits a year, and about 80,000 visits a month, Colpoys said. Editor's note: This story ran in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. Reprinted with the permission of the Law Bulletin Publishing Company.