The recently completed redesign of the LawHelpMN website required transferring all existing content from the previous platform to the new site. This was an opportunity to clean house on content that was out of date or inconsistent with the new site’s goals. One goal of the rebuild was to simplify the design and streamline content choices to avoid duplication and present the best possible resources. State Support created a content governance policy to guide decisions about what to include in the Self Help Library and the LawHelpMN Guide.
The content governance policy expresses a continuous balancing act in the management of user experience and expectation on LawHelpMN, with the general availability and quality of resources. In many subject areas, like consumer protection, there is an abundance of useful resources to help clients. The challenge for us is to determine which to include and which to exclude. Research shows that users take longer to make decisions when there are more choices, and can easily become frustrated or overwhelmed. We want users to easily find relevant, helpful and understandable content to answer their legal question.
With the establishment of guiding principles for LawHelpMN content, we are better able to make these decisions. State Support’s Education for Justice (E4J) fact sheets and booklets—written by legal aid staff and reviewed and updated annually—are our primary content. If E4J resources address a topic in a relevant, helpful and understandable way, we will decide not to link to another resource that says the same thing in a different way.
Because civil legal issues are our core area of expertise, they comprise the topics we focus on. For example, LawHelpMN includes some general criminal law information, but we do not include or link to numerous criminal topics. We also prioritize information that is written in a clear and accessible way and that helps people understand and resolve their legal problems. Resources that are complex or written in legalese don’t meet this standard and are therefore not included.
We additionally strive to link out to content that is authored and maintained by our partner organizations, as opposed to directly posting PDF or Word documents. A document authored by someone else may become out of date without our knowledge, leading to additional frustrations and potential problems for our users. Our best practice is to link out to the source of the information so that any updates are naturally included. Finally, we do not link to for-profit websites.
State Support welcomes suggestions of content you think should be included on LawHelpMN. We review suggestions on a monthly basis, using our content governance policy to decide whether or not to add a resource. If you have a suggestion, contact us at statesupport@mnlegalservices.org.