In South Dakota, prisoners will be using tablets and LexisNexis instead of having a contract attorney or paralegals help them over the weekend with their legal questions.

The move promises to generate interest nationally, but it is unlikely to create a trend because many other states currently provide prisoners with either a law library and or an online legal service.

South Dakota corrections secretary Denny Kaemingk told Legaltech News that “our inmate telephone provider, Global Tel Link, provided tablets to all of our inmates in recent months. The tablets include LexisNexis, allowing inmates to research case law.”

He explained that LexisNexis “provides a comprehensive collection of case law. The content provided is the most current and valid collection of case law. New cases are more readily accessible in the electronic format than they were with the book format.”

Previously, the contract attorneys provided inmates “with assistance in drafting pleadings in the form of either petitions for writs of habeas corpus and or complaints in a lawsuit designed to test conditions of confinement or denial of parole. The majority of their work involved updating legal forms or assistance with case law research,” Kaemingk explained.

He pointed out that earlier, “the most common complaint we received from inmates was a lack of time to do legal research in the library.”

“The inmates now have access to their tablets to conduct legal research without having to go to the library,” Kaemingk added.

But the new approach will also save money for the state's taxpayers. “In state fiscal year 2017, we paid $127,000 on law books and $148,000 on contract attorneys,” Kaemingk said. “The cost for searchable LexisNexis on the tablets is $54,720 for the first year.”

Also, inmates “will continue to have an independent attorney furnish up-to-date forms for the inmates to file their cases,” Kaemingk said.

When asked about those inmates who may be less proficient in reading, Kaemingk said the Department of Corrections “will take appropriate steps to ensure that inmates with disabilities, and those with other issues, have an equal opportunity to benefit from this service.”

Contract attorneys generally are not in widespread use, which means other states are not able to drop them and opt to use online resources. South Dakota was one of only a couple states that used contract attorneys to provide services to the state's prisoners.

“We surveyed other states, and to the best of our knowledge, only South Dakota and Rhode Island were offering contract attorneys, and Rhode Island uses law students to assist their inmates,” Kaemingk noted.

But when asked to comment on the state's initiative, Courtney Bowie, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, told Legaltech News, “The unfortunate fact is that LexisNexis is useless to many prisoners, so it doesn't necessarily provide 'meaningful access to the courts.'”

There is a “constitutional requirement” that “prisoners must be provided meaningful access to the courts,” she explained.

“Prisoners benefit greatly from the assistance of lawyers, and we urge South Dakota to continue to provide legal aid to them,” Bowie added. “A lawyer provides far better legal help to prisoners, and lawyers can also reduce the burden on prison officials and the courts by filtering out claims that are clearly nonviable, time-barred, barred for failure to exhaust, etc.”

But it unlikely there will be any legal challenge soon in response to the new method in South Dakota “unless we had proof that a majority of prisoners were illiterate and therefore unable to access the court through the use of Lexis,” Bowie said.

Currently, most states provide a legal library or the equivalent like LexisNexis, she confirmed.