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Advocates Current Projects

Referral Program & Lawyer Training to Serve Modest-means Clients

This project received an Innovation Grant through the ABA. Read more: Colorado – Serving Modest-means Clients

The Colorado Access to Justice Commission and Colorado Bar Association used an ATJ Innovation Grant to develop a two-part project aimed at providing legal assistance to moderate-income individuals.  The first is providing assistance to low- and middle-income Coloradans, who do not qualify for legal aid, through a referral program.  The second is empowering lawyers to create financially viable practices that include representing clients of moderate income.

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Advocates Ideabook Integration into Community

Pop-Up Legal Services zones

Pop-Up Legal Service Zone
What if we provided coordinated legal-medical-mental health-housing-family-education support all in one big pop-up zone? Like a Food Truck park, with lots of different options to browse around and engage with.

Pop Up Court House

Could we have a traveling courthouse, that offers limited legal services to you in more convenient, and people-friendly places? Like in libraries, in community centers, churches, even festivals?

Some of the services it could help you do:

  • See if you have warrants out against you & deal with them
  • Deal with your traffic tickets
  • Learn about what services are open to you if you have housing, employment, family, or immigration problems

Can’t we get low-touch services out of the courthouse & into the community?

Categories
Advocates Ideabook

Coffee and Law

Legal concept design - coffee and law
Could we welcome people in to have free coffee, free ice cream, even candy, and then get them directed to legal services from there?

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Advocates Ideabook

Empathy Machines

Law - legal concept - empathy machine

What if we had more legal services that provided people in crisis with empathy? It might be in the form of someone to listen to their story and engage them in conversation. It might be a computer algorithm that gives a sense of conversation and attention. It might be with small interventions in the typical court, legal aid, or lawyer processes that make people feel more ‘listened to’ and ‘understood’.

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Advocates Ideabook

Consigliere: every family has their lawyer

Law - legal concept - consigliere your family lawyer

What if every person had a lawyer that was closely related to them, that was responsible for advising them and keeping them legally healthy, and dealing with any problem that arises for them.

Categories
Advocates Ideabook

Strong, coordinated Legal Brands

Legal Design Ideabook - Stronger Legal Brands
Could we build stronger legal public relations, outreach, and onramping to the world of legal services?

One stream of ideas for improving access to justice: can we brand legal services & lawyers, to make them more known, more trustworthy, more purchase-able & engaging for non-lawyers?

Branding for Access to Justice

access to justice ideabook - concept - branding legal services

access to justice ideabook - concept - branding lawyers

Categories
Advocates Ideabook Integration into Community

Legal Care Team

Legal_Design_Concepts - legal care team
Could we create a collaboration platform & network that would provide a holistic service for a person with a legal problem — so they have all the different kinds of support they need?

Categories
Advocates Ideabook

Design Lessons from the 1980s Legal Clinics for the Access to Justice

Consumer Law Design Insights - by Margaret Hagan - from Legal Clinics - dark brown

As more talk grows about Internet & mobile-based technology opening up a new era of Consumer Law, it’s useful to look back a few decades when there was a similar tide of activity around expanding access to civil legal procedures to the middle classes of Americans.

After the Supreme Court ruling of Bates v. State Bar of Arizona opened up the possibility for lawyers to advertise on television, several upstart law firms tried to capture 70% of the population’s routine legal needs through scaled-up, commodity-based law firms located on America’s main streets.  These started off calling themselves Legal Clinics — most prominent among them were Hyatt Legal Services and Jacoby & Meyers.

These Legal Clinics don’t exist today in their original form.  Both firms morphed into other kinds of legal beasts, no longer the consumer-law centered main street law, now Hyatt is mainly in the business of group legal services plans and Jacoby & Meyers is more focused on personal injury litigation.

But thanks to a trove of articles from the 1980s that my colleague Neal Sangal found for his research on legal clinics, I’ve been looking into what the exact strategies and values these legal clinics had in their heyday.

Even if their business model & scaling strategy ultimately didn’t pay off in the 1980s legal environment, the Legal Clinics did enjoy many types of success before they morphed away from the clinic model.  They engaged middle class consumers to tackle their legal problems.  They build tech-based systems to handle routine problems. They radically lowered the prices that people would have to pay for legal solutions.  They built a distinct brand that people trusted, had name recognition, and could be a go-to for finding legal help.

That’s not to say that I would start my own consumer law business in their footsteps — more careful attention needs to be paid to why their expansion model ultimately didn’t pay off.

What I did want to take away especially are the core value propositions & changes that Hyatt Legal Services put forward back in the early 1980s.  This shortlist of 5 things that a law firm, court, or legal aid organization should be doing is crucial, and still relevant thirty years later.

Here are the points that Hyatt put forward in October 1984 of how it would do legal services differently — and that still are breath of fresh air:

Price: “Hyatt offers fees about 30% lower than the average. Fixed fees for standard services were found to be much more important to middle-class clients than low cost.”

Convenience: “Neighborhood centers, evening & Saturday hours, ground level signage, and retail characteristics all contribute to the firm’s accessibility and lower client anxiety about coming to the office.”

Quality: “Internal training programs, experienced lawyers, and expertise in focused areas are measures taken by Hyatt to deliver legal service quality. Checklists, flow charts, and forms help achieve quality control in all branches.”

Speed of Service: ”Document production is computerized to cut down on time spent by lawyers on paperwork.”

Respect: “Lack of respect by lawyers toward their clients is the No. 1 factor in resistance to seeing a lawyer. Hyatt is sensitive to this issue and takes steps to ensure attorney compliance.”

(quotes taken from the article “Hyatt targets legal market with five benefits: Advertising only part of formula,” from Marketing News, October 26 1984 — write me for a copy).

What I take away from these 5 points, that should be applicable in 2014’s tech-based consumer law movement are the following insights:

  1. Fixed fees will draw in users, because of greater transparency and assurance about costs.  Discounts may work, but they still leave a sense of the unknown that consumers will dread.  Give as much upfront reassurance about how much money a person will spend, and they will be more likely to engage in the transaction.
  2. A process-based guide to law, with maps and lists that guide a legal task, will train lawyers better and give consumers more confidence & co-piloting ability.
  3. A consumer law organization needs to build its brand, whether online or in person, so people know that it is available and trusted.  Its brand needs to convey that it’s convenient, transparent & accessible — even if this is not in an actual retail location.
  4. The service professionals need to show respect in their demeanor & their actions to the client.  This means giving more agency to the client with co-piloting tools, clear explainers that make the lawyer’s work more transparent, and other tools & resources that make them feel in control, in the loop, and getting it right.  We need more research into legal users’ experience to find out what these ‘respectful’ tools might be, that get the balance right in the lawyer-client relationship.
Categories
Advocates Current Projects

Pangea Legal Services, lowbono immigration support

Pangea Legal Services is a San Francisco collective of lawyers who are working to support immigrants with legal support — through a low-bono and pro-bono model that provides services on a sliding scale of fees.

Open Law Lab - Pangea Legal Services for immigrants with sliding scale fees

 

It works on asylum cases, deportations, DACA and U-visa applications, among other services. It also does policy work on behalf of immigrants.

Pangea’s ultimate goal is to be larger non-profit that provides legal services for fees that fit potential clients’ budgets — to bring greater access to legal support to immigrants.

Its self-description:

Vision

We envision a world where the fundamental right to move is respected and appreciated by all.  Our view is that all human beings are entitled to respect, documents, and a process through which to move, settle and resettle in the world.

Mission

The mission of Pangea Legal Services is to stand with immigrant communities and to provide services through direct legal representation, especially in the area of deportation defense.  In addition to direct legal services, we are committed to advocating on behalf of our community through policy advocacy, education, and legal empowerment efforts.

Organizationally, we aim to create a non-profit that is scalable through a sliding scale fee structure and can grow in immigrant communities around the United States.

 

Categories
Advocates Current Projects

Immigrant Justice Corps legal incubator

Immigrant Justice Corps is a fellowship program (or legal incubator) to train people to serve as legal assistants for immigrants in the US. Its application is currently open for a new round of fellows — with applications due in just over a week.  Both JDs and non-JDs can apply to serve immigrants through the Corps

Open Law Lab - Immigrant Justice Corps legal incubator

It offers two kinds of fellowships, Justice Fellows and Community Fellows. Justice fellows are placed with legal service groups and work with their host to represent complex cases. Community fellows are placed in organizations in community groups and conduct outreach & represent community members on more basic cases.

It accepts 15 Community Fellows annually, from a pool of non-JDs, including people with just a college degree.  It offers an unset number of Justice Fellows to recent law graduates and law clerks. This year there are 25 Justice Fellows.

Its self-description:

The Immigrant Justice Corps (IJC) is the country’s first fellowship program dedicated to meeting the need for high-quality legal assistance for immigrants seeking citizenship and fighting deportation.

Inspired by Chief Judge Robert Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the IJC brings together the country’s most talented advocates, connects them to New York City’s best legal and community institutions, leverages the latest technologies, and fosters a culture of creative thinking that will produce new strategies to reduce the justice gap for immigrant families, ensuring that immigration status is no longer a barrier to social and economic opportunity.

Extension of the Community Fellowship application deadline:
The IJC is pleased to announce that the deadline for submitting applications for the Community Fellowship has been extended to May 15. Apply today!