In 2025, hundreds of thousands of Ohioans turned to Ohio Legal Help when they needed help navigating a legal challenge. Some were facing eviction or struggling to understand their rights as tenants. Others were navigating divorce, custody, or protection orders. Many were simply trying to understand what steps to take next during a difficult moment.
For each of them, Ohio Legal Help provided a place to start.
As a statewide hub of legal information, forms, and resources, Ohio Legal Help is designed to help people understand their legal options and take meaningful action. The platform provides clear, plain-language guidance and step-by-step tools that help individuals navigate complex legal processes with greater confidence. Whether someone is preparing court forms, researching their rights, or looking for a lawyer or community resource, Ohio Legal Help helps people find the information they need to move forward.
The demand for accessible legal information continues to grow. Across Ohio, people are navigating legal challenges that affect their housing, safety, families, and financial stability. For many, Ohio Legal Help serves as a first step in understanding what those challenges mean and what options may be available. By making legal information available online, at any time, from any device, Ohio Legal Help ensures that people can access help when they need it most.
The progress we have made over the past year reflects the strength of partnerships across Ohio’s legal and public service communities. Courts, legal aid organizations, state agencies, bar associations, and community organizations all play an essential role in shaping the resources and tools that Ohio Legal Help provides. By working together, we are able to identify emerging legal needs and develop solutions that help people navigate the justice system and resolve their legal issues.
In 2025, this work centered on three interconnected areas of focus.
Impact reflects the growing number of Ohioans who rely on Ohio Legal Help to understand their legal issues and take action.
Insight highlights how listening to partners across the state helps us identify emerging needs and develop practical resources that respond to them.
Infrastructure focuses on the technology and court partnerships that make it easier for people to access legal help and successfully navigate legal processes.
Together, these efforts strengthen the systems that support individuals seeking legal help across Ohio. By combining trusted legal information, innovative technology, and strong partnerships, Ohio Legal Help continues to expand access to justice for the communities we serve.
With gratitude,
Every visit to Ohio Legal Help represents a moment when someone is searching for answers. For many users, that moment comes during a time of uncertainty. Someone may be trying to understand how eviction works after receiving a notice from their landlord. A survivor of domestic violence may be researching how to obtain a protection order. A family may be trying to navigate the process of dissolving a marriage or establishing custody.
In these moments, clear and trusted legal information can make the difference between feeling stuck and knowing how to move forward.
In 2025, hundreds of thousands of Ohioans turned to Ohio Legal Help to help them understand their options and take the next step. Most accessed the site from their phones, often late at night or outside traditional business hours but when questions still need answers.
The people who rely on Ohio Legal Help represent many communities across the state. Most users report household incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and many face additional challenges that can make accessing legal help more difficult. Nearly half identify as individuals that may experience additional barriers, including experiencing homelessness, violence or abuse, living with disabilities, being an older adult or a veteran.
Despite these challenges, Ohioans continue to use Ohio Legal Help to take action. In 2025, the most visited topics included Protection Orders, Name Change, Eviction Timeline, Transfer-on-Death for Home, and Dissolution. These pages reflect some of the most common legal challenges people face when trying to stabilize their housing, protect their safety, or resolve family matters.
This year, Ohio Legal Help received national recognition through the American Legal Technology Award in the Courts category for its work expanding access to justice through technology. The American Legal Technology Awards honor organizations and innovators whose work demonstrates excellence in legal technology and improves how legal systems serve the public.
The recognition highlights Ohio Legal Help’s commitment to designing user-centered legal technology that helps individuals better understand and navigate the civil justice system. By combining plain-language legal guidance, document automation, and strategic partnerships with courts and legal service providers, Ohio Legal Help continues to develop tools that make legal processes more accessible and easier to navigate for people who would otherwise face significant barriers to legal help.
This national recognition reflects the growing impact of Ohio Legal Help’s work and reinforces the importance of technology-driven solutions that improve access to justice for communities across Ohio.
A core value of Ohio Legal Help is listening closely to partners across the legal and public service communities and translating those insights into practical resources for Ohioans.
Through our Legal Aid Advisory Council, legal aid partners shared that they were seeing an increase in questions from unmarried parents seeking clarity on their legal rights and responsibilities. In response, Ohio Legal Help created a comprehensive plain-language resource explaining parental rights for unmarried parents and outlining the legal steps families may need to take.
Ohio Legal Help also partnered with the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles to address challenges Ohioans were experiencing with new federal Real ID requirements. Many residents encounter documentation issues when names do not match across official records, including situations involving name changes. Working closely with the BMV, Ohio Legal Help developed a Real ID overview to help residents understand documentation requirements and resolve discrepancies before visiting a deputy registrar.
In addition, collaboration with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services led to the development of an online assistant that helps parents request a review of their child support orders. By simplifying this process, Ohio Legal Help helps families more easily navigate an important step in managing their financial responsibilities and ensuring child support arrangements remain appropriate.
Across all of this work, Ohio Legal Help connects users to additional support, including courts, legal aid organizations, bar association lawyer referral services, public defenders, and community organizations. These partnerships ensure that people are not navigating the legal system alone, but are supported at every step with both information and access to help.
Ohio Legal Help’s mission is not only to provide information but also to build the infrastructure that allows individuals to successfully move through complex legal processes.
In 2025, Ohio Legal Help continued developing new technology designed to remove barriers and simplify complicated legal challenges. One example is the development of a Driver’s License Reinstatement tool. Using AI-assisted optical character recognition, the system scans a user’s driving record, converts it into structured data, and applies a rules-based analysis to generate a clear action plan.
For many Ohioans, multiple overlapping suspensions make it difficult to understand how to regain driving privileges. With a simple document upload, users will be able to untangle overlapping suspensions and identify achievable steps toward reinstating their license, an essential step toward maintaining employment and financial stability.
Court partnerships also remain central to Ohio Legal Help’s infrastructure. Through Virtual Self-Help Centers, Ohio Legal Help’s guided technology is integrated directly into court processes, helping self-represented litigants complete required forms and navigate filings more successfully.
In 2025, the Lorain County Domestic Relations and Juvenile Court launched a Virtual Self-Help Center in partnership with Ohio Legal Help. These systems guide users through a structured process tailored to the requirements of each court, helping ensure filings are accurate and complete.
For courts, these tools also provide workflow dashboards that allow staff to track, review, and process submissions more efficiently. By improving the quality of filings and streamlining workflows, these systems reduce rejected filings, decrease procedural dismissals, and improve case flow.
Ohio Legal Help continues to expand this infrastructure by partnering with additional courts and exploring regional models for Virtual Self-Help Centers that allow multiple courts to share digital resources. Together, these systems form a coordinated legal information and navigation infrastructure that supports individuals, courts, and legal professionals across Ohio.
As we look ahead, we remain focused on strengthening the systems that help Ohioans navigate the civil justice system. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people turn to Ohio Legal Help when they are facing difficult legal challenges that affect their homes, their families, and their financial stability. Our responsibility is to ensure that when they do, clear and reliable help is there.
Through continued collaboration with courts, legal aid organizations, state agencies, and community partners, we will keep building the tools and infrastructure that make the civil justice system more navigable. By listening to the needs of our users and the partners who serve them, we will continue developing resources that help people understand their options and take meaningful next steps.
The work ahead is rooted in the same mission that guides us today: expanding access to justice for all Ohioans. Together, we will continue building a system that is more understandable, more accessible, and more responsive to the people it serves.
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