Page 103 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

and Justice (New Jersey), to name just a few . At Her Justice, we coordinate a large volume of volunteer legal services to low-income women (over 3,000 clients receive assistance annually), and specialize in some of the hardest to place cases – litigated family and matrimonial cases . Our staff attorneys are expert lawyers in their fields, and due to their work with us, are also expert trainers and mentors .
My examples of the pro bono first model are taken from the practice at Her Justice which is the one I know best, but elements of the approach are probably used at most similarly-situated organizations . When clients call Her Justice, it’s usually because they have exhausted all other options . They are facing a court case without representation because no one was available for them, so they check to see if we can find them a volunteer lawyer . Sometimes, we meet them at a community office of a nonprofit or a Family Justice Center, and they know they have a legal issue, but are not sure what to do next . Our attorneys balance the client’s need and situation with the menu of options we have to offer . That spectrum runs from legal information, through advice and counsel, brief services, limited scope representation to full representation by a volunteer attorney or one of our staff attorneys . By ensuring that the solution matches the needs, the limited legal resources we have go farther . Her Justice serves clients from all five of the New York City boroughs, clients are typically at or below 200 percent of poverty, 71 percent have children, and 85 percent are victims of domestic violence .
A “spectrumed” approach is integral to how we provide pro bono services to low-income litigants . Volunteer lawyers from private law firms are often well intentioned and smart, but are not the right resource for all cases . Rather than conducting intake for our staff attorneys, and then selecting cases to place with big law attorneys, we do intake assuming placement with the private bar . Since we know those resources are limited by elements more nuanced than the type of law being addressed, we open a wide net for intake, and offer advice and counsel or brief services to clients who are not ready for trial, would not benefit from trial, or would do better with immediate advice than waiting for us to match them with a lawyer .8 All other cases are brought in for potential placement, and those that we cannot place, we represent in-house . Doing this kind of triage has made us comfortable talking about some of the issues on the forefront of discussions about Access to Justice, like unbundled legal services and the role of advice and counsel versus full representation .
For traditional direct legal services, full representation by a staff attorney is the goal, and anything short of that is “less than .” These goals come from the traditional lawyer’s belief that only full representation provides adequate client protection, and that only lawyers can provide the services needed by individuals with legal disputes; concerns that anything short of full representation will enable a resources-starved system to short-change low-income clients; and funding designs that mandate a certain number of full representation cases . However, despite the goal of full representation, over half9 of all clients who contact legal services must either be turned away all- together for lack of capacity, or receive one-time advice and counsel since the attorney must move on to identify more clients who might be able to obtain full representation . Our pro bono first model recognizes that clients have a spectrum of legal needs, and that in many cases not only is some information better than none, it may be exactly the right amount of information . Since not all
8 Similarly, at legal services organizations, about 60 percent of intakes close out with brief services. See, e.g., 2014 lsc by The numbers at 16, supra note 7.
9 See The Unmet Need for Legal Aid, legal serVs. corP., http://www.lsc.gov/what-legal-aid/unmet-need-legal-aid (last visited May 15, 2016).
Alternative Models
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