2018 NLADA Annual Conference--Resilient Justice

In 2015, as a response to the unrest in Baltimore City after the death of Freddie Gray, Maryland Legal Aid established the Community Lawyering Initiative. In three years, the program has grown dramatically and places attorneys in libraries, workforce development programs, places of worship, and other community centers throughout the state. The program has not only grown geographically, but also in depth. Attorneys work directly in locations where community members already feel safe and where they are often receiving other services, such as drug treatment or housing counseling. As a result, these attorneys are uniquely positioned to identify emerging client needs. In 2018, Maryland Legal Aid began several new programs based on expressed client needs, including: (1) a pilot program with the Office of the Public Defender to refer clients for civil forfeiture, (2) a partnership with a Skadden Fellow to provide consumer debt relief arising out of money bail, (3) a State’s Attorney partnership to assist with identity theft related to expungement, and (4) a connection with an attorney monitoring police complaints under a consent decree. Come to this session to discover that by listening to community needs, community lawyering creates new, innovative, and important client programs.

This workshop will examine language access obligations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as they apply to state courts. Panelists will discuss advocacy efforts and U.S. Department of Justice enforcement examples as they relate to the current state of language access in courts. Participants will learn about court language access obligations under Title VI, local laws and ordinances, and other model standards.

As our profession is grounded in principles of integrity and objectivity, it can be challenging to accept that implicit bias plays a role in legal practice. But humans are hardwired to be biased; it is just part of who we are. Such bias, though, can lead to explicit discrimination and prejudice or microaggression (such as micro-insults, micro-invalidations, and micro-assaults) based on, for example, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, weight, or ability. This interactive session will teach lawyers how to recognize and respond to implicit bias and microagression and implement techniques to mitigate, override, interrupt, and confront bias in their legal practice.

We are seeing an expansion of the civil justice system reform movement that includes: research, legal representation, self-help, technology, communication, research, government support, political engagement, community empowerment, and judicial leadership. Yet most people are still unable to secure civil legal aid. Courts are struggling to preserve basic services. Non-lawyers are barred from helping people. Lives continue to be interrupted by a civil justice system that presumes equal power between parties and that directly and indirectly pushes people into homelessness, poverty, and even into the criminal justice system. To what degree does civil justice system reform prioritize racial justice, profile societal savings, and promise substantive justice in specific areas of law such as evictions, debt, jobs, family, and benefits? Is the movement successfully engaging activists in communities most affected by an unjust system? Is it enlisting the passion of leaders in all sectors of society, including students, social scientists, corporate leaders, government officials, and philanthropic leaders? Criminal justice system reform has a goal, a theory, a financial argument, criminology, books, television shows, films, litigation, and organizing. Join in discussing all of the elements essential to the success of the civil justice system reform movement.

Leverage Geographic Information System (GIS) and mapping techniques in the strategic planning process to create living tools for development, evaluation, and strategic advocacy. We outline a modern approach to strategic planning that incorporates GIS and mapping to develop practical processes for strategic thinking and decision-making. Programmatic goals and strategies are developed and revised using GIS and mapping techniques. We will discuss how to use mapping visualizations of internal and external data sources to bring the clarity needed to gain insight, drive strategic decision-making, and garner support. Use mapping to identify new data worthy of collection to enhance assessments of progress toward strategic goals. Identify patterns of legal issues and unmet service needs to guide ongoing strategic efforts. Overlay demographic data (e.g., poverty, race, English language proficiency, disability, at-risk status, veteran status) with service availability, office locations, and point-in-time snapshots of closed case data to provide powerful visualizations of the alignment between relevant populations and actual service delivery. Visualizations can be segmented in a number of ways – geographically, substantively, economically – to allow consideration of a number of different perspectives and evaluate whether current driving theories or hypotheses are accurate.

As the legal community reflects on increasingly visible racialized violence and injustice, we are called to find tangible ways to show up and respond. In this session, seasoned veterans justice advocates will share one meaningful approach: targeted veterans advocacy. Veterans of color have long faced racial inequality; historically, they were excluded from the veterans’ benefits they rightfully earned, drafted to the frontlines of the Vietnam War at significantly higher rates, and continue to be disproportionately criminalized by the very community they enlisted to protect. Today, 45 percent of homeless veterans are African American or Latino, despite accounting for 10.4 percent and 3.4 percent of the U.S. veteran population, respectively. Presenters will empower advocates to become better attuned to the intersections of race, gender, poverty, and military service, while also providing a toolkit to holistically identify veterans of colors’ needs, develop a service-delivery model to better address their unique challenges, and engage with strategic partners.