CLUE Identifies Civil Legal Issues Impacting Marylanders’ Lives

Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS), the largest provider of pro bono civil legal services to low-income Marylanders, today announced the expansion of its Client Legal Utility Engine (CLUE) data scraping system. Owned and maintained by MVLS, CLUE is used by many community funders, universities and private law firms to scrape public data from the Maryland Judiciary Case Search. The data output informs users about matters that can help with identifying tax sale, bail reform, consumer debt issues and other legal challenges. The CLUE expansion helps MVLS volunteer and staff attorneys and paralegals identify additional legal issues clients might experience. CLUE can be found at www.cluesearch.org.

The CLUE expansion was made possible through generous support from several donors, including the Abell Foundation, Open Society Institute-Baltimore and the University of Maryland, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

“We are very grateful to our funders who see the importance of integrating technology so the legal services community can move swiftly and comprehensively to tackle legal challenges for Marylanders,” said Susan Francis, executive director of Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS). “Many of our clients come to MVLS for help with a specific legal issue and are not aware they have other legal matters to address. With CLUE we are able to determine if they have additional legal challenges through CLUE's data that is dropped into LegalServer, our client management database. With this latest expansion more attorneys, community partners and educational institutions can easily mine for legal data, identify challenges facing low-income Marylanders and help these individuals better their lives.”

CLUE Expansion

While the information on Case Search is public, it is not readily available from the courts unless using a program like CLUE. The MVLS CLUE expansion is timely as more Maryland counties move to online e-filing software in a program called Maryland Electronic Courts (MDEC). The CLUE expansion better accommodates MDEC changes, provides stronger security, and allows non-technical partners to perform searches to better utilize data pulled from the data scraping system. CLUE is now able to scrape data from cases throughout the state of Maryland, and is intended for purposes that align with MVLS’s mission to deliver free civil legal assistance because there should be justice for all, not just for those who can afford it.

To learn more about Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS) or to become a volunteer, please visit www.mvlslaw.org.

About Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS)

Founded in 1981 with a mission to provide access to justice for all, Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS) serves Maryland’s low-income residents by offering legal counseling and full representation for civil cases. MVLS matches clients with volunteer lawyers who represent them in a wide range of consumer, family and workforce re-entry situations, including foreclosure, bankruptcy, income tax disputes, landlord/tenant disputes, estate planning, criminal record expungement, divorce/custody and deed changes. For more information about MVLS’ services, visit www.mvlslaw.org.