Pathways to Justice 2024

LAAC’s Trainer Section is hosting a pre-day on Monday, October 28 from 1-4 for anyone in their organization who trains lawyers and legal staff. Join us to share best practices and work with others to identify the highest areas of training needs and create plans for onboarding your new staff!

MCLE: Yes (1.5, General)

In parts of California and across the country, early defense, also called preventive legal advocacy, programs are being created to address upstream legal issues that, if left unresolved, can lead to unnecessary reports to the child protection hotline. This meaningful and comprehensive legal advocacy can help to address food, income, and housing insecurity; ensure protection from wrongful denial of government entitlements and benefits; advocate for special education eligibility and other educational needs; and secure protection from intimate partner violence. In Los Angeles, dependency court justice providers are partnering with leaders from several civil legal aid agencies to create a collaborative, county-wide approach to preventive legal advocacy. The conference session will include a discussion of innovative program early defense development happening in Los Angeles, California, and nationally; reframe traditional civil legal aid services as family defense; and encourage attendees to imagine how this work might take root in their counties.

MCLE: Pending

Following years of collaboration, the California Pro Bono Portal launched in January 2024 as a community-grown technology platform informed by the perspectives of legal aid organizations, law schools, law firms, and other community partners throughout California. The Portal aims to increase access to free, high-quality legal services for people of limited financial means, diverse client groups, rural communities, and other vulnerable populations by creating tech-enhanced space for legal aid organizations to publish, and volunteers to find, pro bono legal opportunities. Since the launch, 30 legal aid organizations and more than 500 volunteers have registered for the Portal, creating opportunities for volunteers to "match" with legal aid organizations, resulting in expand pro bono legal services, in a wide range of legal issues, throughout California. This Session will provide opportunities for attendees to: (1) learn about the California Pro Bono Portal; (2) gain insights from Portal data, specifically about how the Portal can inform and enhance delivery models for an organization and as part of the broader California legal aid ecosystem; (3) explore the role of the California Pro Bono Portal in supporting local and statewide legal aid and pro bono initiatives, including AB 2505 (pro bono reporting), enhanced community-informed legal services to diverse client groups, and expanded legal services in rural communities; and (4) learn practical best practices from experienced Portal users and ideas for future enhancements.

MCLE: No

One in five Californians has a debt in collections. Many of these cases turn into lawsuits that result in wage garnishments from, and bank levies on, already struggling individuals and families. It is staggering to note that only 9% of people respond to debt collection lawsuits filed against them, which awards debt collectors with default judgments in droves. Unfortunately, there are not enough attorneys to help consumers through this process; while nearly all of those who respond in court are not represented by an attorney, debt collectors almost always are. This is where community justice workers come in. Legal Link’s Debt Justice Program, in partnership with OneJustice, seeks to develop a concise curriculum to train community justice workers on critical, timely, and UPL-safe debt collection interventions. We believe that community justice worker engagement could begin to fill the tremendous need for consumer advocacy and turn the tides of the bleak state of consumer debt collection as it stands today. Our goal is for attendees to consider the powerful impact of community justice workers in bridging the access to justice gap – not only in the consumer debt space but also in other critical places of need.

MCLE: Pending

Employer-sponsored retirement benefits can serve as a critical source of income security in the lives of older adults. Pensions are not solely for higher income workers, many employers and unions offer(ed) these types of employee benefits, but it is not always easy to claim the benefits at retirement age, especially if the employment was from a long time ago or if you are a former or surviving spouse of the employee. Many younger workers do not understand or track their retirement benefits. Similarly, many couples fail to recognize pensions as a valuable piece of community property, and either fail to address it at divorce, or do not finish with getting the necessary orders so that both parties receive their share of the benefit. There are two statewide organizations available for free legal services, training and mentoring with pension and Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) cases, Legal Services of Northern California’s Western States Pension Assistance Project and the Center for Access to QDROs. In this session, the Western States Pension Assistance Project will highlight the most common retirement benefit issues, offer tips on spotting these issues in existing legal aid cases, and share tools for addressing common pension problems for participants as well as former and surviving spouses. The Center for Access to QDROs will share information about their organization’s training and support around QDROs, and highlight their use of cutting edge QDRO technology, used to reach those most in need of valuable QDRO income. They will demonstrate the QDROCounsel platform and generate a QDRO live, illustrating the ease at which advocates can handle these matters to help increase low-income clients’ financial stability.

MCLE: Yes (1.5, General)

Join us for a discussion on advocating for educational equity in partnership with a broadly diverse coalition of clients and stakeholders. This session will focus on Mae M. v. Komrosky, an ongoing lawsuit against the Board of Trustees of the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD), as a case study. In that lawsuit, a coalition of teachers, parents, and students are challenging (1) a ban on discussions on race and gender, couched as a ban on teaching Critical Race Theory, and (2) a forced outing policy that targets LGBTQ students. Participants will examine these policies and their disproportionate harms to marginalized students and teachers, while also learning about legal strategies to challenge these restrictions, particularly in state court. The conversation will also consider the complexities of serving individual and organizational clients that are demographically and ideologically diverse. Through interactive discussions with experienced practitioners, attendees will gain valuable insights and practical tools for advancing racial, economic, and gender justice in educational settings while working with a diverse client coalition.

MCLE: Yes (.5, General)

AI brings both promise and peril across all sectors, and the practice of legal aid is not immune. In this program, we will share lessons learned from LCCRSF’s use of traditional and generative AI tools in our community serving clinics and programs. In particular, we will discuss strategies for developing an ethical AI practice and future roles for AI in reducing the justice gap.

Moreover, the Law Center for Better Housing's Rentervention Program will teach providers how to use AI to increase their homelessness prevention services. Specifically, we will walk providers through how to use AI to increase their capacity to draft letters to landlords and divert capacity towards eviction defense services. Walk away with the knowledge to create your own AI-supported letters for clients.

MCLE: Yes (1, Elimination of Bias)

People with disabilities in the United States have historically been and continue to be denied their right to make their own decisions about core aspects of their lives, including where to live, who to spend time with, what health care to access, and whether and how to form families. In the past, state and local governments institutionalized and forcibly sterilized disabled people, and often banned their presence in the community through “ugly laws.” Today, disabled people still experience pervasive obstacles to self-determination through restrictive guardianships, forced mental health treatment, barriers and bans preventing access to reproductive and other critical healthcare, insurmountable penalties to marriage, and punitive governmental interventions into the lives of disabled parents. When disabled people and their supporters seek legal services to navigate these problems, they may encounter additional access barriers and lack of disability competencies. Using a panel discussion format with three DREDF lawyers, we will identify the common barriers that prevent disabled people from making self-determined decisions about their bodies and futures. We will review the work of DREDF and its partners to dismantle these barriers through advocacy and public policy. We will discuss how legal aid lawyers and their law firm partners can offer readily accessible legal services that support and advance the bodily and decisional rights of indigent disabled people.

MCLE: Yes (1, General)

No corner of California has escaped the effects from the multitude of disasters in recent years. From unexpected winter storms to the now-anticipated major wildfires, these major disasters disproportionately impact the most vulnerable communities, often exacerbating the financial, physical, and emotional wellbeing of those who are already living on the margins. Partners from the statewide Disaster Legal Assistance Collaborative (DLAC) will discuss the most common legal issues that arise during and after disasters. The panel will share experiences and tips for an effective legal response, and highlight how lawyers can respond to disasters in ways that may advance equity and further individual and regional recovery efforts. DLAC comprises statewide legal aid programs, the State Bar, local bar associations, law firms, government agencies, and community organizations, that plan for and provide free disaster legal services to impacted Californians. The panel will discuss how coordination and collaboration can expand the availability and delivery of increasingly essential disaster legal services to those most in need.