Online Media Legal Network

This page is for an old project that is not be part of Google Summer of Code currently. If you are a student looking for projects to get involved with we suggest you check out the projects linked to from the main page of this wiki.

The software that runs the site www.omln.org is built as a plug-in to the excellent open-source Rails CMS BrowserCMS. It has always been our intention to release the plugin under an open-source license. The application has a fairly flexible system of ContentBlocks and Portlets that integrate to create admin and user-level tools.

The core purpose of the OMLN application is to allow lawyers and law school clinics that provide free or low-cost legal services to get matched via a web application with clients - primarily online publishers and independent journalists - that need legal help. As a bonus, it contains a full-fledged Content Management System because of it's integration with BrowserCMS. The OMLN application could be useful to legal aid providers and/or organizations providing counseling or other professional services.

Definitions:

• Clients are seeking services.
• Matters are the services they are seeking.
• Members provide the services to clients.
• Managers manage everything.

Possible projects:

• Help clean up the codebase and make it ready for public release,
• Create a simpler way to deploy and configure the plugin, sort of a pre-configured "toolkit" approach for different service providers,
• Create a richer interface for the management of Clients, Members, and Matters.
• Create a set of tools to make accepting new Matters and Client possible via the web. Currently they are vetted manually and then entered into the application.
• Create a richer full-text search interface for Members and Managers.

Your ideas are welcome!