Abigail Causer and Public Interest Law Initiative help provide free legal advice to those in Illinois

Jeff Williams:
Welcome to Community Voices, a production of NPR Illinois. I'm your co-host, Jeff Williams. In the studio with me today, Abigail Causer. How's it going, Abigail?
Abigail Causer:
Good. Thanks so much for having me.
Jeff Williams:
Oh, yeah. So, you're the managing attorney for the Public Interest Law Initiative. Is that correct?
Abigail Causer:
Yep. Thanks so much for having me. I am really excited to talk about Illinois Free Legal Answers. So, this is an online civil legal advice platform that is completely free.
Jeff Williams:
Nice.
Abigail Causer:
It is hosted by the American Bar Association. And then it's in, I think, something like 41 states, plus there's a federal site. So, each of those states has a state administrator and so that's what the Public Interest Law Initiative or PILI, that's what we do. We're the state administrator for the site in Illinois.
Jeff Williams:
Okay, it seems like all states would want to have this or something. Is that a strange thing that there's a certain, like 9 states that don't have this?
Abigail Causer:
Yeah, I suspect it has to do with the availability of an organization willing to be the state administrator. It does take a fair amount of work and a lot of the legal aid and nonprofits that work on it, they need special grant funding to be able to have the time to do that.
Jeff Williams:
So then as far as this goes, you're located.
Abigail Causer:
Yeah, so I'm from Champaign.
Jeff Williams:
Champaign, okay.
Abigail Causer:
The Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI), we are a statewide nonprofit. Our main office is in Chicago, and then I work remotely out of Champaign, and we have one other remote attorney program manager who covers the southern, what we call the southern region of Illinois. She's out of the East St. Louis area.
Jeff Williams:
Okay, so you came over from Champaign today? Oh, wow, thank you for making the trip! Okay, you're right on.
Abigail Causer:
Thanks for having me. Yeah, that's why it was so early. I just wanted to make sure.
Jeff Williams:
No, that's cool. Yeah, that's cool. How long have you been involved doing this kind of work?
Abigail Causer:
We have been the state administrator since before the pandemic.
Jeff Williams:
Okay.
Abigail Causer:
I think we maybe took over in 2018 or 2019. I might be getting that wrong.
Jeff Williams:
Okay.
Abigail Causer:
I joined PILI in 2021, so since I've been involved.
Jeff Williams:
Right. What are some of the best ways if people do want to reach out?
Abigail Causer:
So if you're looking for legal help and you want to know how to use Free Legal Answers, you just go to il.freelegalanswers.org. If you are, if you work at maybe like a library, or community center or anywhere where you might be encountering people that are in need of free legal services and you want to reach out about a training for your staff or getting some flyers or something, you can go to the PILI website and find the contact information there or you can go directly to Free Legal Answers and there's a contact us.
Jeff Williams:
Like a page … or a drop down tab or something like that tab. So once again, that's.
Abigail Causer:
IL.freelegalanswers.org. (https://www.illinoislegalaid.org/)
Jeff Williams:
IL.freelegalanswers.org. Then as far as the involvement, I mean, this is good for people to know. What are some of the ways, what are some of the, some needs that you've seen, like you've come across?
Abigail Causer:
Yeah, so the website's good for any civil legal question. So that's basically anything that's not criminal in nature. And that's because people who are accused of crimes have the right to an appointed attorney. But there is no such right for civil legal issues. And so that's where your legal aid and things come into play. Our most popular categories are family, divorce, parenting time, that sort of thing, safety, orders of protection, housing, consumer protection, constitutional rights, immigration, we have an immigration category. So yeah, really anything that's...
Jeff Williams:
Right, So immigration, that's probably pretty busy, right? You get quite a few.
Abigail Causer:
We're lucky in Illinois to have lots of organizations that work in immigration rights and immigration law. I would say that also the federal website or the federal Free Legal Answers is a good platform if you're looking for immigration help. But we do, we're very lucky to have a number of volunteers on our state site that have that experience and can provide that assistance.
Jeff Williams:
So now I'm backtracking a little here. So, you said you have an office in East St. Louis, correct? And so that kind of covers everything from like around the St. Louis. Metro East area down through Carbondale and down like Cabral, Illinois.
Abigail Causer:
Me and our other remote attorney, we work just remotely out of our homes. We don't really have offices in those areas. Our only office is really in Chicago. But yeah, we cover statewide and the great thing about Free Legal Answers is that any person with a legal issue in Illinois can ask a question. And any attorney volunteering on the website can answer that question from anywhere. So you don't need to be in any specific region, just your legal problem has to be here in Illinois.
Jeff Williams:
No, that's nice. That's good to know for sure. So then as far as the region, basically Champaign-Urbana, so that covers out towards You said kind of downstate, right?
Abigail Causer:
So I coordinate and organize our pro bono program in Champaign, Bloomington, Decatur, Peoria, and that area. And then our attorney program manager that covers from the East St. Louis area, yes, pretty much everything south of that.
Jeff Williams:
So you go all the way over like to Quincy and things like that then. So then those Chicago-based one, is that mostly cover through Chicago and the suburbs? Is the reach house towards Rockford or is that does that kind of more into your realm. Sorry, I just, it's kind of nice to visualize how it works.
Abigail Causer:
Yeah, our Chicago office, our senior managing attorney is up there, and she would cover the northern half of the state, which would include Rockford.
Jeff Williams:
Okay, so I see, gotcha.
Abigail Causer:
We're a very small organization, and we've already talked about three of our four attorneys, and our fourth attorney is our executive director. So, we're very small, and we initially had this brought, when my position was created, created. We had just divided the state in two and it was roughly along the lines of Land of Lincoln and Prairie State Legal Services territory. And then we created this third position. We're A non-profit. We started, PILI started as an internship and fellowship program where we tried to raise money to get, to provide basically scholarships or stipends to law students to be able to go into public interest work during their summer internships. And we've grown since then. A little over 20 years ago, we started our pro bono program. And we have, we're not like a traditional legal aid organization that has, even though I'm an attorney and we have a couple attorneys on staff, we're not taking cases or representing clients. We're organizing pro bono opportunities to try to get regular solo practitioners, regular private attorneys throughout the state to connect them with pro-bono opportunities. So, we know that traditional legal aid, like a Land of Lincoln or Prairie State, can't help everybody. Unfortunately, they have limited staff, and they have to, you know, cut off who they're able to help and what types of cases they're able to take. And so, we see ourselves as trying to fill that gap between like the greater need and who's currently being served. by utilizing pro bono and encouraging attorneys to do pro bono. So, Illinois for Legal Answers is one of our pro bono opportunities, but it's my favorite one to talk about because it's statewide and there's really no geographic limitations to it.
Jeff Williams:
Right. So, you're in a way, you're kind of like a conduit, hear what they need and then point them in the right direction.
Abigail Causer:
Yeah, we try to, we work with our legal aid partners like Land of Lincoln and Prairie State to, we'll get referrals from them for conflicts of interest specifically, but then we can connect people to like, okay, we have a volunteer in that county, so maybe we can see if they're willing to provide full representation, but also if we don't, maybe there's like a help desk we can connect you to. Or Illinois Free Legal Answers is a great sort of catch-all in that regard. And yeah, it's nice for the the attorneys too, because they can log in and just see all the questions and pick the one that they feel competent to answer. So we can provide that initial training to our attorney volunteers. But then it's really at their convenience.
Jeff Williams:
Gotcha. So yeah, I was going to say, I mean, there'd be, you know, the four of you, it'd be hard to take on cases or anything. I can imagine that you have quite a bit of questions to answer that you're keeping up with on a day-to-day basis, then it seems like. I mean, you'd be getting tons of emails and.
Abigail Causer:
Yeah, the great thing about the platform is everything, all the legal advice that's provided is on the platform. So, the platform… I guess maybe I should back up and just talk about how Illinois Free Legal Answers works. Basically, it's a secure platform that the ABA hosts. We do the PILI… the daily administration, making sure questions are appropriate, helping people with, like, that might have an issue logging in or something like that, and then providing the training to the volunteers and also outreach like this to let people know about for legal answers as a resource. But people basically log in. If it's their first time creating an account, they're going to answer a few eligibility questions. I believe the cutoff is 250% of the federal poverty guidelines. But you know, we're not asking for like pay stubs or anything. It's not an intensive, you know, number of questions that they have to go through. Once they create their account, they submit their legal question. And it is only able to be seen by our attorney volunteers. And we do make sure, obviously, we check against the attorney registration and disciplinary committee to make sure that the people signing up as volunteers are actually attorneys. It's secure in that way. And then attorneys The people who submit the questions can't see anyone else's questions except for their own.
Jeff Williams:
Okay.
Abigail Causer:
And then attorneys can log in at their convenience and choose a question that they feel competent to answer and then provide that answer. They don't provide for representation through the website and all the communication is on the website, but it's written. It's not like a video or a phone call. And then the website sends automated emails just as notifications to say like, hey, your question's been answered, log back in and you can see your answer. But then the client and the attorney could have a back and forth if they have a follow-up question or need clarification or something like that, then the attorney can log back in and reply. You can, even though it's all on the platform and not in emails, you can basically do anything in there that you could in an e-mail. So, you can attach documents, which is great if a person has maybe used another legal resource like Illinois Legal Aid Online. It's another great resource. They provide little guides to like walk you through a process if you're representing yourself and help you maybe fill out, you know, petitions or court documents. But then you could take it to Illinois Free Legal Answers. You could attach that document and say, hey, can somebody look at this for me? Can somebody make sure I did this right? Or I didn't know what paragraph 3 was really asking for. You know, what's the difference between gross and net income or something like that? But it's also good for general questions. Do I have a case? What are my rights? That kind of stuff.
Jeff Williams:
Well, it sounds as far as what I'm hearing and for people out there to know is it sounds like the privacy is good. It's like protected. It's not like something where some people can have just a fear of thinking, oh man, they're just trying to farm my data. So that's nice that this sounds like it's not from what you're saying.
Abigail Causer:
Yeah, it's totally secure. It's not a scam. Nobody should ever be asking for money or payment or anything. The attorneys are helping on a limited scope basis, but there is still an attorney-client relationship form when an attorney answers that question. And what that means is that the attorney owes a duty of confidentiality to the information they receive from the person asking the question, which means that nobody can force that attorney to answer questions about what that person said, unless, of course, really limited circumstances, if a user was ever suing for malpractice or something, then obviously their communication, what happened, that discussion is going to come up. And even still only a judge would be able to say, yes, we can disclose that information. But we don't sell your information. The ABA doesn't sell your information. And the attorneys should not be asking for money or payment for the advice that they provide. It's all on a volunteer basis.
Jeff Williams:
Right on. And I just thought I'd throw that out there so you can kind of speak to that, so people do know, because sometimes people are concerned about things like that. So it's legit.
Abigail Causer:
I mean, I would be too. It sounds like put your legal information on the internet. It's, you know, ridiculous, but it is legit.
Jeff Williams:
This is legit. Yeah, right on. Love it.
Abigail Causer:
And having the partnership with the ABA is really important and lens that credibility, I hope.
Jeff Williams:
Right.
Abigail Causer:
And then the other big thing is that it's not AI. These are real attorneys logging in and answering questions. We have some volunteers that answer a couple questions per day. We have some volunteers that log in like once or twice a month. Also depends on the subject area that they feel expert in answering questions in the frequency that those questions might pop up. that the person you're getting advice from is someone who is licensed to practice law in the state of Illinois and not a robot that might be giving you bad information.
Jeff Williams:
Exactly. Yeah.
Abigail Causer:
You know, I know if you just type into Google or whatever search engine, it's going to give you the option of a sort of automatically generated AI answer. And every time I've ever started there and looked at what it provides. Maybe the first two things might be accurate, the first two bullet points, but they're probably things I already knew. But then the third thing in everything past that has been wrong. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it's, so it's better than AI and it's free. And it's, and even if you, know, I understand people are representing themselves. AI might still be better than what they would have done on their own without it. You could still take what you put together and then go to Free Legal Answers and say, please look at this. Is this correct?
Jeff Williams:
Is this right? Yeah, no, that's great to know for sure. So now, thank you for all that information. This is going to sound maybe a little crazy or maybe you don't want to talk about it. When did you first realize you wanted to get into law?
Abigail Causer:
Oh.
Jeff Williams:
If that's cool, if you don't want to go into that, it's just kind of, you know, sort of cool for people to kind of know a little bit background maybe?
Abigail Causer:
I don't remember it, but my mom has a thing from grade school where it asks like what I wanted to be when I grew up and I wrote Lawyer and I suspect it came from watching Judge Judy at my grandma's house probably too much. But yeah, I think that's.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah, very cool. Once again, we're in the studio with Abigail Causer. She's a managing attorney with Public Interest Law Initiative. And wow, thanks a lot for coming in and giving people this information. And could we give the website one more time for people out there?
Abigail Causer:
Yeah, it's il.freelegalanswers.org, O-R-G. If you Google Illinois Free Legal Answers, the first couple hits probably aren't it because there's ads, but then you're going to look for the one with the little ABA logo next to it.
Jeff Williams:
Nice. Love it. Well, once again, thank you so much for coming in and giving us this information, Abigail.
Abigail Causer:
Thanks so much for having me.
Jeff Williams:
I think so, yeah. Nice. Right on. Thank you so.
Abigail Causer:
Much.
Jeff Williams:
You know, like sometimes things have to air before another thing. It's like, oh, next week or so. yeah. Sorry, that was a long wish. No, that was good. It's good to know. It's good to know for sure. Community Voices is events you might have missed and conversations with neighbors, artists, and area businesspeople. Suggest a guest or comment. at communityvoices@nprillinois.org. Community Voices is a production of NPR Illinois.