Legal Link
Legal Link’s mission is to remove legal barriers that prolong poverty by adding critically needed capacity to the legal ecosystem. We are creating and supporting a new frontline of community justice workers.
With poverty reduction as our goal, Legal Link strives to make the law transparent and accessible, while empowering communities to know and access legal protections. Using our unique Legal First Aid curriculum and web-based tools, we are working to shift where and how people access legal information.
Families experiencing poverty are inadequately supported by our justice system, which is severely under-resourced and inherently complex. 92% of families do not get the legal help they need and more than 80% of justice issues go unidentified. These unaddressed legal issues act as barriers to housing, health, and economic stability. As a result, many people do not access critical legal protections and trust in the legal system is low.
Legal Link works to change this by training and supporting existing client-facing staff in community nonprofits to act as Community Justice Workers. These trusted partners help their clients to surface unmet legal needs, identify legal issues, and access legal protections. By meeting communities where they are, in places of trust and in times of need, we can intervene early – often addressing and resolving legal issues before they rise to the level of attorney or court intervention. We are expanding the legal ecosystem one justice worker at a time.
Legal Link currently partners with over 70 leading community-based organizations across Northern California that are deeply integrated into, and trusted by, the communities they serve.Legal Link partners with over 70 leading community-based organizations that are deeply integrated into, and trusted by, the communities they serve. Our work furthers the goals of our partner organizations, creates a pipeline of Community Justice Workers with knowledge of the legal system, and fills a critical access to justice gap.
