The SAEF Legal Aid Open Beta is Now Live!

Written by
Eamonn Keenan

Hi there! Thanks so much for visiting the SAEF Legal Aid website. I’m so excited that we’re finally able to offer free tools and resources to help Chicago parents and families find free & affordable legal help.

I wanted to share with you some background on our first product launch: a simple questionnaire that finds you free and low-cost family legal help. 
‍
Over the past two years, our passionate team collaborated with experienced legal professionals to develop the Open Beta version of our self-help questionnaire. This is the first time we are offering this tool to the general public – and we’re really excited to hear what you think of it!
‍
There are a couple of other considerations that went into our team’s idea of an Open Beta. Specifically, we plan to actively test and make changes to our free tools and site. These changes will be designed to advance our mission of building the most accessible tool to help anyone in Chicago seeking legal help. 
‍
Here are some changes we expect to make:

• Our team continues to have discussions with different kinds of legal service providers that we would want to refer our users to. To ensure the accuracy of our referrals, we may have to include additional questions to accommodate for the needs of new partners.
• We’re constantly looking for feedback on the design, accessibility, and experience of our tools & website! To that end, we may implement small design changes and fixes – but none that will impact our core service offerings.
• Lastly, we think it’s critical to be honest about the fact that we’re going to make mistakes. There’s no blueprint for building something that no one has ever built before. We only ask that you be patient with our team as we work through our mistakes. In turn, we’ll commit ourselves to transparency by promptly communicating what those mistakes are and how they'll be fixed. 

If you have any feedback, notice any mistakes, or otherwise have anything you’d like to share about what we’re doing, I’d like to hear from you. Reach out to me at eamonn@saeflegalaid.org – I look forward to connecting!