The Wicomico library staff was both tech-savvy and highly motivated to get legal help for their patrons, and contacted MVLS to provide a remote legal clinic by with video chat software to their patrons. As video chat technology improves, it provides attorneys with an increasingly workable way to provide face-to-face advice, and even representation, to people in far-away towns and cities.

Wicomico clinic volunteers will provide advice on divorce, custody, landlord-tenant, bankruptcy and other consumer issues. These are the legal issues commonly faced by the Wicomico residents who walk into the library asking for help from the trusted community resource. Now library staff will be able to offer residents the option of returning on a designated date to pose their questions to actual attorneys, instead of directing them to scroll-through self-help websites on their own.

Another common issue for Wicomico residents are criminal records. Many people come to the library to get employment support through the library’s Job Search Center, but get written off by employers because of expungeable items on their records. The Wicomico clinic will also provide expungements by video chat. Attorneys will prepare the petitions, and then email them to the client to print and sign at the library. The library staff will mail the petitions for attorneys to file. Because MVLS is a legal services nonprofit, clients won’t have to pay for filing fees, as they ordinarily would if they had to go it alone.