Beyond Legal Aid: Legal Empowerment and Community-Based Justice

Around the world legal empowerment organizations are improving justice outcomes by focusing on bottom-up, grassroots justice solutions. This panel discussion shared perspectives from legal empowerment practitioners in the U.S. who are leading a movement that emphasizes building community power and agency by working hand-in-hand with communities to know, use and shape the laws that affect their everyday lives.

Keynote: Vivek Maru, Founder and CEO, Namati

Panelists:

• Lam Ho, Executive Director and Founder, Beyond Legal Aid
• Ariadna Godreau Aubert, Founder and Executive Director, Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, Inc. 
• Sukti Dhital, Executive Director, Robert and Helen Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at NYU

Moderator: Matthew Burnett, Policy Officer, Open Society Justice Initiative

Resources:

Session notes: Beyond Legal Aid: Legal Empowerment and Community-Based Justice

Additional resources:

• Give the People the Law, article by Vivek Maru in Democracy Journal, September 4, 2020
• Namati Global Legal Empowerment and Immigration Project
• Justice Power: Legal Empowerment and Immigration Project
• Additional legal empowerment resources suggested by Vivek Maru:
  • Community Paralegals and the Pursuit of Justice
  • Guide to Organizing and Working with Community-Based Paralegals

Transforming Legal Aid to Achieve People-Centered Justice

Legal aid organizations have long played an important role in advocating for greater access to justice. In this session, discussion focused on the ways in which legal aid organizations can work in community with others to elevate and advance calls for more people-centered (and less lawyer-forward) models of justice.

Keynote: Jim Sandman, Distinguished Lecturer and Senior Consultant to the Future of the Profession Initiative at University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and President Emeritus, Legal Services Corporation

Panelists:

• José Padilla, Executive Director, California Rural Legal Assistance
• Marika Dias, Managing Director of the Safety Net Project, Urban Justice Center
• Viviana Gordon, Deputy Director, Red Hook Community Justice Center

Moderator: Nikole Nelson, Executive Director, Alaska Legal Services Corporation

Resources:

Session notes: Transforming Legal Aid to Achieve People-Centered Justice

Other resources:

• Center for Court Innovation Fact Sheet: Peacemaking Programs
• Jean & Edgar Cahn's "The War on Poverty: A Civilian Perspective"
• The native health partners ensuring justice for people in Alaska - featuring Nikole Nelson, Executive Director at Alaska Legal Services Corporation