Using Guided Interviews to Serve Non-Profits

This session will describe a class project, incorporated in a course entitled "The Law of Social Entrepreneurship and Exempt Organizations," in which students utilized A2J Author to prepare two guided interviews.  Thse guided interviews will allow end-users who may want to create a non-profit under New York Law to prepare a certificate of incorporation and by-laws for the organization in accordance with NY state law.  While the students learned the substantive law of non-profits through the course, they also learned business process analysis and A2J Author programming to develop these two guided interviews. We are in the beta-testing phase through which students are presenting the interviews to community members and practicing lawyers to get their guidance and feedback before we formally launch the two interviews and make them public, which we expect to happen by the end of June 2018.  This work was done with the guidance and assistance of Jessica Frank and John Mayer from CALI.  Presenters will include Ray Brescia, professor of law, Albany Law School, who led the course; Alexandria Decatur and Julia Kosinski, two students who participated in the project and class; and Jessica Frank and John Mayer of CALI.

The goal of the presentation will be to show the methodology by which we developed and tested the A2J Author for use in this context, but also how using A2J Author dovetails nicely with substantive/doctrinal law courses.