July 23, 2008

Enhanced legal aid phone services

A new telephone triage project at LSS is expected to improve service for people who use telephone-based legal aid services.

The project’s objectives are to reduce wait times and dropped calls for LawLINE, enhance services for clients with family and civil law issues, improve access to legal services, and better match clients and staff based on service needs and expertise.

Now when people phone the LSS Call Centre and LawLINE, staff will assess callers' needs and refer them to the services most appropriate to their situations, including legal information outreach workers, LawLINE, and family duty counsel.

Once the triage system is up and running smoothly, LSS plans to expand the project to include brief advice by external telephone advice lawyers, who will log on to the LawLINE queues from remote locations.

To reach the LSS Call Centre/LawLINE service, phone 604-408-2172 (in the Lower Mainland) or 1-866-577-2525 (toll free).

For information about what kinds of issues LawLINE handles, check the LSS website.

LSS received a Law Foundation grant to support this project.