management innovation excellence for legal aid …new-to-you: profile of a recently appointed...

1Summer 2017

From the Journal Committee 2

FeaturesManaging Up — The Secret Responsibility We All Share 3

By Eugene King, Legal Aid Consultant, and Douglas Carey, Managing Attorney, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services

Diversity and Inclusion — Making the Puzzle Pieces Fit 8By Gina E. Polley, Deputy Chief Counsel, Maryland Legal Aid, and Brenda L. Marrero, Deputy Director of Operations, Community Legal Services, Philadelphia

Walk a Mile in My Shoes — Can We Teach Attorneys Empathy? 12By Tiela Chalmers

FeaturesCrossword Puzzle: No Fair Tilting 15Fundraising: Confronting Issues of Diversity and Equity in Legal Aid Fundraising 16

By Tanya Pietrkowski, Director of Development, CARPLS Legal Aid, with contributing author Delia Coleman

New-To-You: Profile of a Recently Appointed Executive Director in the Legal Aid Community: Artur G. Davis, Legal Services Alabama 19Book Review: The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World 21

By the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams Reviewed by John Tobin

Worth a Look! 23

Special Feature: Litigation and Advocacy in These TimesThoughts on Practice Priorities for the Trump Era 24

By John Bouman, President, Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law

How Proposed Changes to Medicaid and SNAP Could Affect Legal Services Advocacy, and Lessons from TANF 29

By Liz Schott and Jennifer Wagner, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

Comment Concerning the Effects of President Trump’s Tax Reform and Budget Proposals on Low Income Taxpayers 33

By Mary Ann David, Senior Staff Attorney, and Spencer Golden, former Harry and Irving Cypen Fellow, Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc.

“Local Lawyering”: Strategies for Closing the Justice Gap in Underserved Communities 38

By Kimberly Sanchez, Executive Director, Community Legal Services Mid-Florida; Kirsten Anderson, Litigation Director, Southern Legal Counsel, and Amy Petkovsek, Director of Advocacy for Training and Pro Bono, Maryland Legal Aid

Protecting Health Access against National and State Threats: Parlaying Partnerships into Effective Advocacy at All Levels 41

By Elizabeth Edwards, Senior Attorney, National Health Law Program

Legal Services in Workforce Development Programs: Baltimore’s Experience in Linking Criminal Justice Reform, Job Training, and Delivery of Core Civil Legal Services 44

By Shawn Boehringer, Chief Counsel, Maryland Legal Aid

Women of Color: Essays — “WoC. Steel. Lead.” 48By Aurora Martin

SPECIAL FEATURE:

LITIGATION AND

ADVOCACY IN

THESE TIMES

J O U R N A LVOLUME XXXI NO. 2 • SUMMER 2017MANAGEMENT INNOVATION EXCELLENCE FOR LEGAL AID

2 Management Information Exchange Journal

From the Journal Committee

MISSION: MIE’s mission is to promote excellence in management to ensure high quality advocacy on behalf of

low-income people. MIE advances best practices and innovation in leadership, management, supervision and fundraising by supporting a full and free exchange of ideas and providing training, consulting and a flagship journal for the legal aid community.

“Try Sleeping with a Mosquito”

The Journal Committee is pleased to

share this issue with you and hopes it will be both useful and inspiring, particu-

larly our special feature on “Litigation and Advo-cacy in These Times”, i.e., the time of a new presidential

administration. It is always hard to be a legal aid advocate; every day we hear the stories of people who are hungry, homeless, stressed and sick, many of whom we must turn away because of our limited fund-ing, and some of whom the law cannot help. It is even harder when we see steps being taken to reduce

access to government services for the most needy, increased hostility to some of the vulnerable clients we serve, and a decreased sense of unity among our fellow citizens which makes it harder to move solutions forward.

But the upside is that we are in a position to make a difference. As the articles in this issue demonstrate, there is important advocacy that we can take on and tools we can use. John Bouman provides an overview of issues our clients face in this new environment and urges us to look at and adjust our practice priorities. We have three articles by experts on SNAP, tax policy, and Medicaid which advise us on what to watch for and work on in these areas in a time of likely policy change. Lawyers from three organizations partnered to write about “Local Lawyering,” providing some concrete examples of work to increase assistance in rural and underserved communities, and our Commit-tee’s own Shawn Boehringer describes how his program has moved into a partnership with workforce develop-ment programs to remedy barriers to employment for low income clients. We wrap up the special feature with an inspiring piece by Aurora Martin, who is moving into new justice work after two decades in legal aid.

As always, we also include articles to assist you with fundraising and management. Articles look at “Managing Up;” building diversity in our staff, our advocacy and our fundraising work; and using role playing to better understand poverty. We have recently started including interviews with new executive direc-tors, and you will enjoy getting to know Artur Davis of

Legal Services Alabama in this issue; he brings experi-ence as a U.S. Congressman and television analyst to his new job. Our “Worth a Look” feature gives ideas on new articles, data, websites, organizations and blogs to check out…Please do send us something that has caught your eye…or perhaps your ear: if we include podcasts, can we still just call it “Worth a Look”?

I recommend the book review and the crossword puzzle as ways to help reduce your stress in this time of challenge. I can’t tell you much about the puzzle, because I’m bad at them, but I am a devoted fan of the Dalai Lama, so I am happy that we have a review of a new book by him and Archbishop Tutu on joy and happiness.

Finally, I want to salute our Journal Committee Chair, Jan May who is celebrating 40 years with legal aid and 25 with the Journal. We hope to surprise him with the piece on him in this issue, but that is hard since he is in charge of the whole thing. We are hiding drafts from him. Maybe we will let you know if it works!

Enjoy this issue, provide us with thoughts and feed-back, and keep up your important work on justice. And to quote the Dalai Lama, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

Catherine Carr, MemberMIE Journal Committee and MIE Board

Managing Up — The Secret Responsibility We All Share

By Eugene King, Legal Aid Consultant, and Douglas Carey, Managing Attorney, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services1

As professional managers, we primarily focus on how to direct the work of our staff to provide the most needed assistance in the best possible manner to our clients.

As a result, we spend most of our time manag-ing down to the staff who report to us, because that is where we have clear authority and responsibility.

That is probably the emphasis in your job descrip-tion, but we hope that you will broaden your vision of management to include both managing down and managing up.

Premise for Managing UpIn legal aid, we are all accountable to others for our

work — staff account to managers, managers account to directors, directors account to the board and funders, and everyone accounts to our clients.

It is in everyone’s self interest and professional interest that the individuals or groups to whom we are accountable have the best information and understand-ing needed to make decisions that shape and direct our shared work.

So, based on our unique perspectives, knowledge, positions, experiences and relationships, it is imperative that we all work with, and manage, our colleagues both up and down the organizational chart to implement our shared mission and vision of service to our clients and their communities.

You, and your staff, are the eyes and ears for the

program. You see clients’ issues, substantive law ques-tions, court backlogs and community concerns every-day. You should share that information and help to develop and implement solutions that improve the services that make our clients’ lives better.

What Do We Mean by Managing Up?The idea of Managing Up is pretty simple.Managing Up is first, identifying either information

or issues affecting your clients or your organization and then, presenting it in a thoughtful, organized, persua-sive manner to one or more people above you in your program so that they take actions or create policies based on your recommendations.

Managing Up differs from your routine manage-ment work because it requires you to rely on persuasive facts and analysis, rather than on the positional author-ity you have to direct someone to work on specific tasks.

Managing Up requires everyone in an organization to accept the responsibility and seize initiatives to help decision makers choose the best policies and options to improve services to our clients.

Managing Up is a strategy to shape and improve the work of your office and expand the benefit to clients. It can include a variety of approaches, but it should

So, based on our unique perspectives, knowledge,

positions, experiences and relationships, it is imperative

that we all work with, and manage, our colleagues both

up and down the organizational chart to implement our

shared mission and vision of service to our clients and

their communities.

Eugene King (L); Douglas Carey (R).


Managing Up Continued from page 3

always be focused on providing information and assis-tance to enable your manager to make more informed and focused decisions about how to run the office and provide the best possible services to your clients.

Managing Up is: ■ An intentional approach to working with your

manager toward mutually agreed-upon goals; ■ About how you work and communicate with your

manager to make decisions that benefit both of you as well as the organization;

■ About creating and sustaining your relationship with your supervisor, and your colleagues;

■ A tool to clarify expectations and creating strate-gies to achieve them;

■ Creating and implementing an expectation of shar-ing information in a timely constructive manner;

■ Being as deliberate in your work and relationship with your supervisor as you are with your case-work; and

■ More about the work and less about you.

As we noted above, the idea of Managing Up is pretty simple, but its implementation can become more complicated.

What Managing Up is NotFor many people, the concept of Managing Up

evokes images of conspiratorial scheming behind closed doors to undermine others and magically dupe the boss into doing one’s bidding. That might make good literature or cinema, but it doesn’t make services better for our clients.

Managing Up is not: ■ Manipulating or fooling your boss to do your

bidding; ■ Sucking up; ■ Being a sycophant: ■ Climbing over others in the organization; ■ Duping others into supporting your ideas; ■ Building a fiefdom for yourself; or, ■ A game.

A Few Examples of Managing UpLet’s say that your supervisor wants to apply for a grant that will substantially increase the caseload that your office will experience, but you do not

believe she fully appreciates the stress that the new cases will put on your attorneys and support staff. Managing Up does not anticipate that you “leap frog” your supervisor and bring your complaints immediately to the executive director. It suggests instead setting up a meeting to discuss the param-eters of the grant while also having your supervi-sor understand the impact that it may put on your staff and your ability to continue current work. This may mean assembling the data necessary to bring a full accounting to your boss as to how the grant impacts all areas of your office.

— or —

Your office has funding for summer clerks, but the deputy director who is responsible for recruiting and hiring is in the midst of a complicated case challenging rent calculations by the local housing authority. As a result, she has not posted the posi-tions with the law schools or the program website, so you, and other managers, are concerned that you will miss the prime recruitment window for the summer. You could meet with the deputy director, tell her that you know she is wrapped up with the housing authority case, and offer to help by posting the positions and screening the initial applications. Once you get the recruitment process moving, you can identify other tasks to keep the process on track.

Everyone Is Human — Help Fill In the GapsEveryone in legal aid has too much on his or her

plate. Managers and directors are concerned with service delivery, funding, funders, administration, finance, personnel, facilities, technology, community relations, private bar support, board relations, and politics, local and global. So, it is understandable if your supervisor is not always as tuned in to all of the substantive issues, as you might like.

When that happens, help your supervisor by fill-ing in the gaps and providing the information needed to make decisions and move work forward. If actions are time sensitive, mention that and schedule meet-ings to keep things on track. Don’t assume that your supervisor doesn’t care about an issue just because he hasn’t not gotten back to you with a decision. He may have been distracted by other issues, so you should follow up to make sure that you don’t miss deadlines or opportunities.

To do that you need to understand the demands on

5Summer 2017

supervisors’ time, how they process information and how they make decisions. We all have our own styles, quirks and peculiar needs and we work most effectively with others when we try to accommodate their needs rather than forcing them to adjust to ours.

For example, if your boss has great expertise in one substantive area, housing law, but not in other substantive areas, and your practice area is primarily in the unfamiliar areas, be willing to share your knowledge, experience and perspectives on the areas with which he is unfamiliar. Instead of lamenting your bosss’ substantive gaps, you can demonstrate where the two practice areas intersect and how to connect one to the other for the benefit of the clients.

Basics — Shared Vision and MissionEvery organization needs to have a shared vision

and mission. Let’s assume that your organization has an articulated vision and mission. The first step to Manag-ing Up is to recognize the organization’s shared vision and mission and understand how you and your team fit in the organization’s vision and mission. If your organi-zation does not have a shared vision and mission, you need one, but creating a shared vision is beyond the scope of this article.

Talk regularly with your supervisor about how you are going work together. That conversation should include:1. The mission of your organization and how your

office/unit fits into that mission;2. Your role and your supervisor’s role within it;3. A plan of how you will communicate with one

another; and,4. The development of a workplan that includes both

your management and legal work.

Never assume you know what your boss expects. If your boss does not clearly state expectations (and due to the press of competing demands, many don’t), it remains up to you to figure them out. That can involve

asking again, and again, until it is clear to you. Or, you could put your understanding of the expectations and your questions about the assignment in writing. Just as written documents help to clarify confusion or misun-derstandings in your clients’ cases, so can a written document help clarify and focus expectations for an assignment of a project.

If your boss is not clear about expectations for a project, work together to identify, consider and select from the possible alternatives.

What Do You Add to Your Boss’ Capacity/Decision Making? What Does Your Boss Need From You?

How can you help your boss do a better job so that you can focus more on the issues that you think are important? To do that you need to know what your boss thinks is important. Here are a few things you need to think about to help your boss.

■ What are her goals? Does she want to serve individ-ual clients? Does she want systematic change? What substantive issues does she prioritize?

■ What is her background? Is she a substantive expert? If so, can you help fill gaps in her knowl-edge of other areas? Is her experience in rural issues? If so, can you help her understand our urban communities?

■ What is she being measured on? By the board, funders, peers, the community, herself?

■ What other demands does she have? Can you help to relieve the load so she can focus on keys issues?

■ Does she have a support team? How do you fit into that team?

■ What other factors are important to her?

Communication TipsYour boss can make better decisions that address

your issues and concerns with timely and full informa-tion and when you demonstrate that you are an effec-tive and open partner. Discuss and agree on the best ways and times to communicate with your boss.

“Does it work better for you if I send you weekly email updates about my projects, or would you rather talk about them in our monthly meetings?”

“When I have significant management proposals, do you want to talk about it first, or do you want me to draft a brief memo that you can review before we talk?”

“The Housing Team meets on the first Monday of each month. Would you like to schedule a regular

The first step to Managing Up is to recognize the

organization’s shared vision and mission and

understand how you and your team fit in the

organization’s vision and mission.


meeting on the first Wednesday of the month to discuss the team’s work?”The more you can match your style to your boss’s

style of communications, the more likely she will really hear what you’re saying, so you should figure out how to match her communication style and preferences. Talk with your colleagues to learn what approaches they have found to be effective with your boss.

Here are a few things to think about when planning how to work with your boss.

■ What information does your boss want before making a decision? Remember Goldilocks — not too much information, not too little information, just the right amount of information!

■ How does your boss process information? ■ What is the most effective way for you to provide

that information? ■ If she wants time to think, set a time to follow up. ■ Respect her approach, but be emphatic about

schedules and deadlines.

Remember that communicating sooner is better than later and more specific is better than more general.

“There are so many challenges in the X commu-nity. We need to do something now, so I’d like to send some staff to their community center to decide what we should do.”

“We have been hearing more housing and benefits calls from the X community. It seems like we need to increase our focus on their issues. I’d like to schedule 3-4 listening sessions with community members and the staff of the community center there to identify the key issues and develop a plan of how to address these issues.”

As with so many things, a little planning can help your conversations be more productive, so when you are planning to talk with your boss about a new issue, remember to:

■ Make an agenda for the meeting and share it with everyone who will participate;

■ Organize your presentation into a logical sequence; ■ Highlight the strengths and weaknesses in your

approach or proposal; ■ Role play with a colleague prior to meeting with

your supervisor;

■ Provide a road map for your boss; and, ■ If everyone agrees on the approach, your agenda

and materials can easily be revised into the formal written document or plan for the work.

Know the Limits of Your AuthorityKnow what decisions you can and cannot make.

Few things irk people more, and cause them to become more controlling, than learning that someone else made a decision that the decision maker did not have the authority to make.

Of course, some people subscribe to the policy that, “It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission.”

That can be a dangerous approach in an organi-zation because it can create conflicts, confusion and resentment. It could also make others in your organiza-tion less comfortable trusting your decision-making, so that in the long run, you could have less authority than you have now.

Instead, you can explore and clarify the scope of your authority and seek to expand your authority as you have successes. When you receive new assign-ments, ask what authority you have to make decisions, assign work, delegate to others, and marshal program resources. If your boss has not thought about that, be prepared to suggest what level of authority would help you accomplish the work efficiently — your boss will appreciate the suggestions and may agree.

If You Have Multiple Supervisors…Multiple supervisors create more complicated

communication and decision webs. As a managing attorney, in addition to your regular workload, you may get assignments from the executive director, deputy director and litigation director, so you may often be faced with competing, or conflicting, demands. In these situations, it is important that you make sure that everyone knows what assignments the others have given you, so that you know how to prioritize your work and so that all of the people assigning you work know exactly what you have on your plate.

To manage this you need to: (1) coordinate the various assignments; (2) communicate and share your current work with everyone involved so they under-stand the situation; and (3) when conflicts arise, involve everyone in finding the solution.

You should also remember these tips if you share staff with other managers and you each will be making assignments for the shared staff.

Managing Up Continued from page 5

7Summer 2017

Encourage Others to Manage You UpManaging Up is an important and useful tool for

managers, but it is also an equally important tool for staff at all levels, so you should encourage the staff who report to you to manage you up and be receptive to their suggestions. Just as you are the eyes and ears in the community for the executive director, the staff are your eyes and ears, so you should encourage them to share information and make recommendations about how to improve your work. Pay attention to their input, just as you hope your boss will pay attention to your input to her.

How to Talk about Managing UpTalk about Managing Up openly and transparently

with your bosses and staff. Remind them that it is in everyone’s self and

professional interest that the individuals or groups to whom we are accountable have the best information and understanding needed to make decisions that shape and direct our shared work.

Based on each of our own unique perspectives, knowledge, positions, experiences and relationships, we all need to work with everyone throughout the orga-nization to achieve our shared mission and vision of service to our clients and their communities.

Warning Signs that You Need to Manage UpPay attention to your boss when talking about

planning, decisions and information. If you hear the phrases below, you have a gap in your communication and you should probably either start to Manage Up or expand your efforts in Managing Up.

■ I wish I knew that when we decided to . . . ■ I don’t know much about (substantive area), but we

have to decide . . . ■ Didn’t I tell you about that? ■ Do you have anything going on? ■ I’ve lost track of where we are on that. ■ Tell me again why we are working on this? ■ I didn’t think you were interested in that, so I went

ahead with . . .

Closing ThoughtsManaging Up is a core component and responsibil-

ity of a manager’s job. As with other legal and manage-ment skills and strategies, different people are more or less comfortable doing it and are more or less skilled in its implementation. Regardless of one’s initial comfort level, one’s ability to Manage Up can develop and

improve with practice. We believe that every manager in legal aid should Manage Up because it will improve services to clients and help your organization prioritize the issues that you think are most important.

Managing Up may not always achieve your desired results. There may be other factors or dynamics that prevent the program from pursuing the goals and strat-egies that you have identified. Don’t let that discourage you, but keep looking for new opportunities to better serve clients and keep sharing your ideas and informa-tion with your boss.

1 Eugene R. King (Gene) was the managing attorney of the state support unit of the Ohio State Legal Services Association and the director of the Ohio Poverty Law Center until he retired in 2014. His practice was divided between state policy advocacy and professional development for legal aid staff and managers. Since his retirement, Gene has consulted with Management Information Exchange and other nonprofits on substan-tive and management trainings and executive director recruitment. Gene may be reached at [email protected].

Douglas F. Carey is the Managing Attorney of the Family Law Unit of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services (SLLS) New Orleans Office. Doug has been employed at SLLS for over twenty years and has served as a Staff Attorney, Managing Attorney and Interim Supervising Attorney for the New Orleans Office. He is the co-chair of the firm’s Professional Development Committee and coordinates the firm’s Annual Program-Wide staff meet-ing. He has also served as the chair of the Louisiana Legal Services Statewide Task Force on Family Law. Doug may be reached at [email protected].

The authors would like to thank all of the legal aid managers and trainers who have help build our collec-tive knowledge about Managing Up. We owe a special thanks to Katherine W. Shank, whose work helped develop this article.

Managing Up is a core component and responsibility of

a manager’s job. As with other legal and management

skills and strategies, different people are more or less

comfortable doing it and are more or less skilled in its

implementation.

mailto:[email protected]



Diversity and Inclusion — Making the Puzzle Pieces Fit

By Gina E. Polley, Deputy Chief Counsel, Maryland Legal Aid, and Brenda L. Marrero, Deputy Director of Operations, Community Legal Services, Philadelphia1

“Diversity: the art of thinking independently together” — Malcolm Forbes

Once upon a time, but not so very long ago, legal aid offices opened throughout the country. These legal aid offices were established to provide low-income citi-

zens access to free legal counsel on civil matters. There were big offices and small offices. There were rural offices and urban offices, and offices that handled tribal reservations and even offices that worked with migrant farmworkers. Now while these offices varied in sizes and locations, the internal landscape of each office was very similar — white and male. They were no different than the other law firms throughout the country even though the clients they represented were very differ-ent. After all, legal aid offices were provided to the most vulnerable citizens in addressing their most basic needs for housing, education, income maintenance and family stability.

But the country began to change. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s brought segregation, discrimination and unequal treatment to the forefront. The face of the country became more and more diverse. More women and people of color were graduating from law schools and becoming zealous advocates fighting against unfair and disparate treatment of people. The look of the legal aid offices started to change — but not much.

Fast forward to 2017 — minorities represent a large

and growing population. As of June 2012, people of color made up 36 percent of the labor force. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the workforce will become increasingly diverse over the next 30 years, with minor-ities outnumbering Caucasians by 2042. Women hold 47 percent of all jobs in the labor market.2 By 2020, women’s participation in the labor force is expected to be greater than that of men. Gay and transgender individuals make up 6.48 percent of the labor market, and people with disabilities represent 11 percent. So with all of the diversity in the labor market, why is it that nonprofit organizations do not reflect this in their offices? In nonprofits, 82 percent of the employees are white and only 18 percent are people of color. This is a stark contrast from the labor market available where the available pool of candidates are 64 percent white and 36 percent people of color. But diversity is more than just a black/white issue and racial diversity in and of itself will not solve all of our larger societal issues. Racial diversity should be the building block towards creating legal aid offices that embrace our differences while expanding our commonalities. Different puzzle piece.

Diversity is like a puzzle piece that is designed in a variety of sizes and shapes. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, diversity is defined as any dimen-sion that can be used to differentiate groups and people from one another. It means respect for and appreciation of differences in ethnicity, gender, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, education, religion, and other characteristics.

In addition to the growing racial diversity, there are currently five generations in the workplace — Genera-tion I (those born 2000–present); Millennial Genera-tion (those born between 1980–2000); Generation Xers (those born between 1965–1980); Baby Boomers (those born between 1946–1964) and World War II or Traditionalists (those born before 1946). Declining birth rates, increased lifespan, and young people living with parents long past the age of 18, have resulted in

Gina E. Polley (L); Brenda L. Marrero (R).

9Summer 2017

a larger workforce spanning many generations. While all age groups want challenging and interesting work and to be treated with respect, how they communicate and the work environment in which they excel differ dramatically. For example, employees who are a part of the Baby Boomer generation don’t actually understand the whole “work-life balance” thing. They think it is a quaint idea but not really a possibility. On the other hand, the Millennial generation considers it a non-negotiable part of their work life and don’t understand why they cannot work from home and accomplish the same goal. After all, they are accustomed to a 24-7 access to information through technology. For this generation working Monday through Friday, 9 – 5, is too confining and limits their creativity.

Generation X and the Millennial generation are making the most significant impact in the workplace today. They are advocating for a more fluid use of time in their workday. They think, why not work from morn-ing until noon, take off part of the afternoon and then restart at 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. and continue to midnight? In their minds, and in their always on world, they see this arrangement as perfectly legitimate as long as they get their work done. For Baby Boomers, the impact is that the new generations do not seem fully committed. There is still a perception in the workplace that if the employees are not “seen” they cannot be working. This seems to be especially true in legal aid programs. Yet another puzzle piece.

While many of us are talking about diversity, and feel perfectly confident that we are doing all the politi-cally correct things to make sure our offices are diverse, diversity isn’t an accident and it doesn’t happen by throwing the idea into the universe. In reality, people of color are not being encouraged to apply for certain positions, and sometimes are not even being inter-viewed. People who are from various ethnic groups or who may not wear the traditional clothing of West-ern America are sometimes overlooked because they appear to be different. How many of us have actually sat down and had a conversation about how you were going to achieve racial diversity in your offices? If we are truly being honest with ourselves, the answer is because no one really cares about diversity in the work-place. It sounds like a good idea, but we would like for it to happen “naturally.” Unfortunately it is not going to happen without a deliberate plan to make it happen. But first we need to talk about it.

Diversity is created through understanding, recog-nition, planning and execution of the plan. If U.S. history has taught us anything, it has proven that racial

diversity in the workplace is not a naturally occurring event and is not going to happen with a twitch of the nose. This isn’t to say that we should hire someone based on race, or religious belief or even gender prefer-ence, but we should be hiring based on what the diver-sity should look like in our office to some degree. If the diversity of your office does not reflect the diversity of the community that you serve, it is probably time to think about what diversity means. It is time to think outside of the box, and more importantly to make diversity a priority.

I know you are probably thinking to yourself, “Yeah, I know all of this, but really, what does this have to do with me?” Well, I am glad you asked. Diversity is the single most valuable asset that we have in our offices today. Diversity is like a large jigsaw puzzle and every person in your office is a part of the puzzle. Put them all together and every piece fits and the result is a beautiful masterpiece.

In legal aid offices today, our staff represent those different puzzle pieces that create a giant jigsaw puzzle. Different races, religious beliefs, disabilities, political beliefs, gender, generations, cultures, educational back-grounds, family status, and abilities. The combination of qualities and talent is enormous. But what do you do when some of the puzzle pieces don’t seem to fit?

The Creation of a Diversity and Inclusion Committee at Community Legal Services

One such legal aid program, Community Legal Services, decided it was time to address the issue of diversity head on. In 2015 CLS ushered in a new era with a new executive director, Debby Freedman. One of the many priorities of Debby’s first year as ED involved establishing a Diversity Committee at CLS, aimed at finding a way to structure the dialogue around this very important issue and topic for staff. Brenda Marrero, along with a few members of legal management, was tasked with this initiative. We had to ask ourselves, how do we make all the puzzle pieces fit so that we can create a cohesive committee with shared values, ideas and goals?

Communication and Staff Buy-InThe first step to make the pieces begin to fit was to

communicate the vision to our staff and work towards staff buy-in. CLS wanted to ensure that the commit-ment to diversity, inclusion and racial justice was prop-erly conveyed to staff so that staff would want to get involved and stay involved. One of the first steps was to explore how to best create staff buy-in as we cultivated


the messaging around the creation of this new commit-tee. So we asked ourselves, “How can we foster an envi-ronment of self-reflection around diversity?” This may not be easy, as there could be many layers and many pieces to this conversation. The first step was to make the establishment of this committee a full collaborative process.

The first meeting happened in late 2015 and it was a delicate balance of controlled chaos—staff members were definitely very eager to talk. Staff shared their ideas, their frustrations, their experiences, their needs and desires around how to make CLS a more diverse and inclusive work environment. More importantly, staff wanted to talk about the racial justice movement and were very eager to see CLS join that movement. That meeting showed that staff wanted and needed a structured supportive dialogue, a framework, a space to have thoughtful and engaged discussions around how racial justice should be a more prominent point of dialogue within our legal units.

Crafting the Mission StatementDrafting a mission statement, a statement that

clearly reflected the purpose and goals of this commit-tee, we knew would serve as the blueprint for the work going forward, with the understanding that this work may be new territory for many legal aid programs such as ours. The process was fully collaborative, with some members of the committee taking a first stab at a state-ment, circulating it amongst all, and exchanging ideas. Our executive director as well was involved in this process and helped the mission statement coalesce into a balanced, well thought out statement of our values, ideals, goals and tasks around diversity, inclusion and racial justice. The mission statement should be a prod-uct of true collaboration of ideas, and a testament to the commitment of your legal aid program to walk the talk.

Creating Sub-CommitteesCreating sub-committees was an important step in

moving this group forward. CLS found that the follow-ing sub-committees allowed staff to provide input at various levels. The committees are:

Staff and Support: This work group is tasked with examining what internal support systems we should create so staff feels fully supported if and when they encounter troubling situations, such as racism in court.

This sub-committee also chose to make it a prior-ity to tackle how support staff feels within their work environment and how we can create and maintain structures to better improve their day to day work experience.

Events: This work group focuses on planning and executing events within CLS to promote awareness, education and enjoyment of the many diversity themed months throughout the year. This work group makes is their goal to incorporate and promote cultural compe-tency amongst staff in the hopes of making us all more self-aware and better advocates. This sub-committee has been very successful in putting on amazing events, such as organizing speakers to come to CLS and speak to staff about topics such as racial profiling, the inclu-sion of Asian-American heritage into the fabric of Philadelphia, community lawyering, and street harass-ment. This work group also recognizes and honors the various themed diversity months, such as organizing events focused on African-American history and heri-tage in February, LGBTQ awareness in June, and they are currently planning an event for Hispanic Heritage month in September.

Racial Justice: This work group is tasked with bringing the racial justice movement dialogue to our legal units, by way of engaging all legal units purpose-fully and directly. This work group was methodi-cal about their approach and opted to first make an impactful presentation in a legal management meeting to lay the groundwork for its work and purpose, and it then tasked all managing attorneys to go back to their legal units and discuss what this work group hopes to accomplish and how to help. The result of this was that each legal unit at CLS devoted one of their monthly unit meetings to how racial justice plays out in their legal work—in their intake process, in their case accep-tance priorities, in their case handling, in their case theories and in their litigation decisions. Do we advo-cate and practice with a racial justice lens? That is a piece of this puzzle that continues to be discussed, and this work group devotes a lot of time and energy into ensuring all legal units do not let that dialogue waver.

Hiring, Retention and OutreachThis committee’s purpose is to promote greater

diversity in our hiring process, in our retention of diverse staff, and in how to be purposeful in our communications as they relate to diversity in hiring. Because diversity in hiring is a huge priority for so many legal services programs throughout the country, and because it is one huge piece of this puzzle that

Diversity and Inclusion Continued from page 9

11Summer 2017

continues to find its way as far as where it fits and how to make it fit, this work group has a huge task on its hands.

The first step was to examine what our hiring processes were and where CLS can improve. CLS has various hiring committees so as the person who over-sees all hiring and those committees, I met with the chairs of all hiring committees to start to examine what processes and tools we were using. This process resulted in identifying various areas of needed improvement. For example, the Attorney Hiring Committee (AHC) which is tasked with screening, interviewing and recommending for hire all candidates for Attorney Fellowships and Attorney positions now uses various tools to screen and interview applicants. The AHC also updated the language used in job postings, inviting all applicants to include in their cover letter a statement on how someone’s background and experience may contribute to the cultural vitality, diversity and perspec-tive of CLS’s staff, work and clients. This statement is now used in all job postings at CLS.

As for our other hiring groups, the Paralegal Hiring Committee updated their post-interview assessment tool to incorporate diversity related assessment ques-tions. The Law Student Hiring Committee, which is a year-long group of volunteer staff who recruit for our robust law student summer internship program, simi-larly made very important changes to their processes by incorporating a screening tool, and developing a set of standardized questions. All of these changes — new and tweaked tools, new and improved processes — were developed with one shared goal in mind: how do we attract a more diverse applicant pool, how do we improve our hiring processes so that we promote inclu-sion as well as diversity, how can we attain a work force that best reflects the client population we serve?

Again, so many puzzle pieces that are constantly shifting to find their place. The changes we have made are the tip of the iceberg because only time will tell if these changes result in meeting our hiring goals. But the key is that we have a shared commitment, a very engaged and committed group of staff and a culture that promotes inclusivity of ideas to attain those goals. All legal services programs should examine their hiring processes, should work towards creating thought provoking questions aimed at making us all think about whether we are being inclusive in our hiring approach, whether we are properly weighing someone’s background and experience as it relates to the job at hand, and whether we are having honest discussions about candidates and how their unique background

and experiences enhance the client experience and the important advocacy work we do in poverty law.

Where We Are HeadedCLS continues to make Diversity and Inclusion a

critical and important priority. Recently, I approached our ED about creating CLS’s first ever Diversity and Inclusion Officer. Our ED agreed that it was time to institutionalize this commitment and priority in a very visible and pragmatic way, by housing D & I efforts into a role such as this. Learning from what has worked thus far with the D & I committee, I suggested to the committee members that we create a work group (yes—yet another sub-committee!) to develop the job description. This is a new, first of its kind role at CLS and we felt it was imperative to give staff the opportu-nity to mold this role so it reflects what staff wants. The work group is currently, well, working! We have not yet found an example of this role at any other legal services programs, and we hope that in working together to define what this role should mean at CLS, we capture the honesty, integrity and deeply held commitment to diversity and inclusion that our program has embraced.

It would behoove all of us in legal services to have this honest conversation and reflection. With so many different generations in our work force, diversity is a huge factor in what our staff considers to be impor-tant as we work in a world with newer challenges ahead. When staff feels supported, they in turn will feel inspired to walk the talk with you. When it comes to Diversity and Inclusion, commitment, inspiration and hard work are pieces to this puzzle that cannot be left out.

Bibliography“The State of Diversity in Today’s Workforce,” Center for

American Progress, June 14, 2017.“The Myriad Benefits for Diversity in the Workplace,” Kim

Abreu, December 9, 2014.“About Cultural Diversity in the Workplace,” Eric Feigen-

baum, Smallbusiness.chron.com.“Advantages and Disadvantages of Diversity in Workplace,”

David Ingram.“Racial Diversity in the Workplace: Who Cares?,” Marshall

Cannon, The Blog, May 4, 2015.“The Top 10 Economic Facts of Diversity in the Workplace,”

Sophia Kerby and Crosby Burns, July 12, 2012.

1 Gina E. Polley, Esq is currently the Deputy Chief Coun-sel for Maryland Legal Aid in Baltimore, MD. Prior to coming to Maryland, Gina worked at the Legal Aid

Continued on page 53

http://Smallbusiness.chron.com

Walk a Mile in My Shoes — Can We Teach Attorneys Empathy?

By Tiela Chalmers1

Poverty simulations or poverty role-play work-shops offer a chance for participants to understand at a deeper level some of the dynamics that affect those

living in very low-income communities. When I learned of this approach to cultural competence training (in a National Public Radio piece on the simulation created by the Missouri Community Action Network (MCAN)), I purchased a kit from MCAN and explored

providing this training for pro bono attorneys. This application proved very successful — although I learned an enormous amount about what works and, of course, what does not. I designed a new workshop, constructed on the same principles as MCAN’s excel-lent kit, but including a number of law-related pieces, to make the simulation more directly relatable for attorneys.

I have run the simulation more than 100 times for law firms, law schools, bar associations, conferences, medical-legal projects, and social work agencies. Each time it is different, and each time I learn something new.

How It WorksThe workshop takes place in a large conference

room, often in a hotel or law school — though I did once run it in a bar… Tables line the perimeter of the room, and behind each table is a volunteer who has agreed to play the role of a business, nonprofit or government agency in this community (Every-town). There’s the check cashing company, the bank, the school, the legal aid, etc. Each volunteer is given a packet explaining how to play their role. I spend some time with these volunteers before the partici-pants arrive, talking about what it might be like to run a business in a very low-income neighborhood, and what they might be feeling. What might it be like for a

government caseworker, paid just a little more than the clients he sees, to deal with the overwhelming need?

In the center of the room are clusters of chairs. These are the “houses” in which the residents of Every-town live. The clusters have different numbers of chairs for families of different sizes, and each cluster is labeled with the name of a family. As the participants arrive, each is assigned the role of a different member of one of the families. I like to do this without reference to age or gender (a sixty year old woman might be given the role of a seven year old boy). The goal of this workshop is empathy, and playing the role of someone different than you is a good place to start.

The participants find their “houses,” and chat with the members of their family. Each family has a packet that explains what their circumstances are, and spells out their current revenue and expenses. The Alvarez family, for example, consists of a married couple and their three children. One of the parents was recently laid off, and is living on unemployment, while the other has a part time job making the minimum wage of Oakland, California (one of the highest in the coun-try). In contrast, David Graham and Jeannette Green are boyfriend and girlfriend, living with her baby from a previous relationship. He works full-time at federal minimum wage. Some families have grandparents, some are undocumented.

As the families read over their packets, I explain the overall structure of the workshop. The workshop goes on for four fifteen-minute “weeks,” after which we will debrief. When I blow the whistle, Week 1 starts. For the first half of the week, those who have jobs must report to work, and kids are supposed to go to school. When school and work are out, the adults usually rush around trying to pay bills, buy food, etc. — while kids either go home and do homework, or choose to hang out with their friends. At the end of fifteen minutes, I blow the whistle again, and people return to their houses — but then I blow the whistle to start Week 2, and it begins again.

13Summer 2017

As the workshop goes on, the participants begin to show signs of stress. Some develop and adapt ways to stay ahead; others seem to get increasingly frantic or overwhelmed. Crime typically breaks out, and the police presence in the community is felt (though the volunteer playing the police officer gets to choose what sort of police officer they will play). I give out (somewhat randomly) some “potluck” fortunes to participants — some experience domestic violence, and must choose how and whether to respond; others face health challenges, or develop substance abuse issues. (In one of my favorite innovations, the role of the drugs and alcohol is played by chocolate.) Some people are evicted, and end up at a homeless shelter or in the park; occasionally, people move in with others in the community.

At the end of the “month,” participants go back to their original houses, and we do a debrief. I like to play Phil Donahue (I realize I’m betraying my age — perhaps I’m playing Rikki Lake?) and move around the room with a microphone, eliciting from people what happened. What was striking? What were they surprised by? Why did they make the choices that they did? What obstacles did they face?

There are many issues ripe for discussion with pro bono attorneys: Why do victims of domestic violence stay with their abusers? Why can’t people make ends meet, when on paper revenue exceeds expenses? What kinds of pressures and tensions do our pro bono clients bring to our meetings with them? Why does it seem like those clients have a million problems all at once? Why are clients so often late for meetings, or miss them altogether?

But this training is not just intended for pro bono attorneys, and others with little experience of clients living in poverty. I have run this role-play many times for fellow legal services colleagues, as well as for social workers with years of experience with such clients. Some of them do tell me beforehand that they already know what their clients face. I once led the workshop for attorneys at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (LAF). LAF made the workshop mandatory for their attorneys, and one of them gave me quite the attitude as she was checking in. “This is ridiculous. I have worked with low-income clients for more than twenty years. I do not need this training, and I could be doing so many more productive things with these three hours. I can’t believe…” etc., etc.

After the workshop, she was kind enough to publicly apologize, saying that she found the experience remarkably helpful, and she learned a lot about what

the organization and she personally might do differ-ently to make their work more accessible to clients.

With legal services providers, I spend more time talking about issues like the ways that we direct clients to go here and there without considering the significant barrier that transportation poses; how some of the ways that we have structured our services to operate as effi-ciently as possible actually makes those services much harder for our clients to access; the ways in which our priorities for our clients are not always in line with our clients’ own priorities; why so many clients don’t have the paperwork that would make our work so much easier; and the impact of the stress and tension many clients experience on our interactions with those clients. We do some problem-solving, but mostly I try to set it up for further discussion internally — how might we change our services in response to what we experienced here?

You might be wondering about people who grew up in poverty — what could that possibly be like for them, to go through a workshop meant to imitate their own reality? It is true that some people express concern that the workshop makes the experiences of people who have gone through poverty funny, or diminishes it by making it into a game. Interestingly, in my experience, the people who express that concern are those who grew up in affluence. Those with poor backgrounds have come to me afterwards to thank me for the simulation. They find it very validating to watch their colleagues understand at a much deeper level what they went through. I still worry that I will offend someone — but on balance, it seems to me that the potential to bring significant cultural competence and empathy, carefully, outweighs this chance.

The workshop, of course, has its limitations. It is great at showing economic reality, but can’t duplicate some of the emotional realities (the intangible ties that


bind a domestic violence survivor to her batterer, for example.) Even with chocolate standing in for drugs and alcohol, we are missing some of the complex factors that drive people to addiction. It can also be critical to set the right tone — to avoid people not taking it seriously, or just playing a stereotype.

In spite of that, overall it works remarkably well, and for a number of reasons. First, I think we now understand more about the importance of experien-tial learning. It’s one thing to read a book, or listen to a speaker, and take in information. It’s a very different thing to learn from your own experience. It works for audio, visual and kinetic learners. In addition, it’s fun. While it’s important to keep the workshop serious, it’s more like play, and so people have fun — which makes them more open to learning. This is something that we’ve learned more about lately as a society — that “gamification,” far from being a minimizing and silly phenomenon, is actually an incredibly powerful teach-ing method, and a tool to prompt significant behavior change.

Disaster SimulationA few years ago, Tony Barash of the ABA’s Commit-

tee on Disaster Response and Preparedness asked me to develop a version of the workshop that addresses the aftermath of a disaster. I worked with him to do so, and have led that workshop across the country, as well. The simulation (while more chaotic) has proved to be a good starting point to discuss how legal services agen-cies can prepare for disaster situations.

How Do You Bring a Poverty Role-Play Workshop to Your Community?

So, perhaps you’ve read this and you’re thinking, “Hmmm. That might be good to do in my community — but how?” Well, you have a number of options. In addition to the materials prepared by MCAN, there are a variety of other poverty simulation training packages and programs produced by anti-poverty and educa-tional nonprofits. A quick Google search will reveal some of these sources, as well as more information about MCAN’s widely-used materials.

You may decide to buy an MCAN kit for yourself. They are currently priced at $2,150, and you will need to spend perhaps another couple of hundred dollars on supplies. The advantage of this approach is that with one investment, you will be able to run the simulation

multiple times. The disadvantages are three-fold. First, it takes a considerable amount of time to figure out how to run the simulation, and to get the kit put back together after you use it. When I started, we calculated that it took at least thirty person-hours to reassemble the kit. Because I have run it so often, it now takes me much less time, but still, it’s definitely an investment — and it can be difficult to build up experience if you only run it once a year. On a related note, it takes skill to interpret the workshop and run the debrief. Again, repeated experience helps with this, as does a love of teaching. Finally, the kit currently for sale does not include legal elements. MCAN is discussing adding some such elements, so perhaps in a year or so that situation may change. (To change the kit yourself, you need to obtain MCAN’s permission for each change.)

The alternative is to find someone who leads the workshop to come and do it for you. You may be able to find others in your area — there are social service agencies that have bought the MCAN kit and will run it for your group. MCAN itself runs the simulation only in Missouri, so if you are in Missouri, try reaching out to them. I work with a colleague, Alicia Aiken (formerly of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, and now of Confidentiality Institute) to run the workshop (with the legal elements) in various places throughout the country. Our fee is $2,000 plus travel expenses for nonprofits.

One thing to keep in mind when thinking about running such a poverty workshop is that it does take space and numbers. We need a large conference room, about 1000 square feet, depending on the number of participants. At a minimum, the workshop requires twelve volunteers and thirty-five participants — and it is much better with eighteen volunteers and sixty or seventy participants. It really does take at least two hours: I’ve tried to cram it into a ninety-minute confer-ence session, and while it is possible, it’s suboptimal. For those with less time, there are some other good alternatives. Alicia runs a different training called Tight Budgets, Tough Choices, in which all the partici-pants play the same person. And you can find on-line video trainings for legal services providers on cultural competence around poverty issues at https://wpbc.wiki-spaces.com/BPBEJ.

Whatever choices you make, I hope you have a chance to explore cultural competence training for your staff and pro bono volunteers. Particularly in the current political climate, empathy is a crucial tool of justice work.

Walk a Mile in My Shoes Continued from page 13


https://wpbc.wikispaces.com/BPBEJ

https://wpbc.wikispaces.com/BPBEJ

15Summer 2017

No Fair Tilting! — A Puzzle

Thanks to Pat McIntyre, whose puzzles also appear in the New York Times, for this crossword. The solution appears on MIE’s website, www.mielegalaid.org, in the Library with this issue of the Journal.

ACROSS1 Draconian6 Have the nerve (to)10 Bozos14 Upper echelon15 Greek H’s16 A kind of teen center17 Put up, as a bet18 ABC crime and legal drama, or

a 1946 Hitchcock classic with Bergman and Grant

20 Something one can hear in an ultra-quiet room

22 The next to last syllable in a word (LP TUNE)

23 Away from the bow25 Range Rover, e.g.: Abbr.26 Third degree?27 “Didn’t I tell you?”28 Thick-soled shoe30 Scratch32 München mister33 Skin problem (ATE IN anagram)35 Scalawag37 Classic tune from “The Who”’s rock

opera “Tommy”...or one who finds this an easy puzzle? (2 wds.) (7,6)

42 Event that might have barrels full of clowns

43 Perfect45 Aesop’s over-confident lepus, with

“the”48 Sells51 It’s abominable52 Of a certain ____53 Needle holder54 Acting like56 Word after “budget” or “baseball”57 What get reported in the L column59 “Papa, don’t ____!”61 Exclude completely (2 wds.) (6,3)63 Film dubbing and aerobatic

technique66 Party animal?67 Catch at a 42-Across, say68 Sharp mountain ridge69 Midterm, e.g.70 Fish usually caught in the winter71 Four-door

DOWN1 Chop down2 Carte start3 Tubular pasta4 Substitute (for)5 Range rovers6 From the beginning (Lat.) (2 wds.)

(2,4)7 Sitting on8 Double-crosser9 Human gullets (Lat. pl. ending)10 Valhalla chief11 Fire up12 More unpleasant, as an odor13 Elderly unmarried woman19 Bloodshot21 Coke’s partner23 Be in a cast?24 Acrobatic maneuver26 Bulldoze29 Romance or mystery, e.g.31 Acrylic fiber32 Exciting34 Blood-typing letters36 Israeli weapon38 Kitchen cabinet composition?

39 Goatish glance40 Bounced back again in a cave, say41 Facts and figures44 Guff45 Short person or small child,

affectionately46 Ancient meeting places (Gr. pl.

ending)47 Turns back, as a clock or odometer49 Flitted50 Backbone53 Casbah headgear55 Big dos58 Backside59 Cocoon’s contents60 Reactor part62 “___ la la!”64 One of a historic trio65 Lee, e.g.: Abbr.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68

69 70 71

F U N D R A I S I N G

Confronting Issues of Diversity and Equity in Legal Aid Fundraising

By Tanya Pietrkowski, Director of Development, CARPLS Legal Aid, with contributing author Delia Coleman1

At the MIE 2016 National Fundraising Conference in Chicago, I led a panel that discussed the fact that more foundations are expecting the nonprofit commu-

nity to figure out how to increase equity on their boards, staff leadership, and in their programming. The discussion opened a space for participants to talk about the various ways our organizations are not inclu-sive or equitable. From gender to race, a picture of our industry arose that contradicted the vision of a differ-ent world upheld by our organizational missions.

For some of us in legal aid, there is the belief that we already serve a diverse clientele, so we are already preaching to the choir. Yet, when you consider that most of our boards are composed of lawyers (often white and male), we may be missing the boat. In many cases, we also lack inclusion in terms of race, gender, economics and sexual orientation. By omitting people outside of the standard profile of the legal commu-nity, we are closing off opportunities for new pools of donors and for increasing the governance, effectiveness, and mission capacity of our organizations.

Perhaps this is why building support outside of the legal community is so difficult. However, if legal aid is going to thrive in this uncertain climate, at a time where more people are representing themselves in court and are at the mercy of a system biased towards

those who resemble our lawyers, we have to shift our thinking.

While clear answers are hard to come by, I hope we can begin to examine our field and begin to have meaningful conversations within our organizations and among our boards. The thinking and approach behind addressing implicit bias and equity issues — that we all have space to improve on — is a grave matter of justice and equity.

Fundamentally, justice is an outcome. It is the Golden Rule applied rigorously and impartially, to everyone. The way the world works for people of vari-ous levels of social privilege is the way the world should work for those differently situated, regardless of race, gender, class, or other identities. For example, the way the various parts of the legal system work for the typi-cal upper-middle class teenager from a well-to-do suburb is the way the legal system should work for a teenager from the south side of Chicago or anyone else. One way to see Equity is to look at it like it is a path-

way to achieve justice. Equity, particularly through a racial lens, is situational fairness resulting in the inability to predict advan-tage or disadvantage by race, improving social and institutional outcomes overall, while closing racial gaps within those outcomes. It requires addressing areas where structural racism exists. It also requires applying differential resources to unequal needs; removing barriers for

dissimilarly situated individuals, families, and commu-nities; and treating similarly situated individuals, fami-lies, and communities equally.

As we enter a period where basic protections for low income and dissimilarly situated communities are likely to be rolled back, both at the state and federal level, grounding our work and our organizations in justice and equity is even more imperative. Our current political and social reality makes our approach towards addressing the issues of implicit bias and racial equity

In many cases, we also

lack inclusion in terms of

race, gender, economics

and sexual orientation.

Tanya Pietrkowski (L); Delia Coleman (R).

17Summer 2017

important and fragile. As fundraisers within organi-zations with critical missions designed to make our justice system fair and accessible to those communi-ties most affected by structural inequities, we can carry special influence in helping our organizations broaden their perspectives and scope. What follows are a few suggestions for how we can begin to have these conver-sations inside our organizations.

First, consider your own life experience to begin to open a line of questioning that asks you to put yourself in your client’s shoes.

In my example, I grew up in a rural town in Southeast Georgia in the 1970s as the only Jewish child in my class. I have fond memories of my childhood and still love my hometown. But, there were moments where I was very uncomfortable as an outsider. Religion was one of the most important institutions and building blocks of our community and schools. Every morning our teachers would read a prayer devotional, often with a Christian emphasis. My parents protested and noted the 1963 Supreme Court decision on the separation of church and state in schools (according to my parents’ interpretation) and as a first or second-grader I was sent out of the room into the hallway during the devotionals. As I sat outside, teachers would ask why I was being punished and then I would uncomfortably explain my parents’ position.

There were many occasions where I would talk one-on-one with people regarding my religion and no matter the questions, I was ready to address them openly. However, I knew that I was different and it gave me a sense of being an outsider that helped bring perspective to minority populations. It also gave me a perspective that I didn’t necessarily understand what another person was facing or experiencing.

Second, find a way to identify and confront your own biases. Most recently, I took the Harvard Univer-sity’s online implicit bias test called Project Implicit. I was surprised to learn that I have a bias favoring men. It gave me an opportunity to take a step back and think about my approach with donors. Am I reaching out to enough women? My agency serves primarily women, do I need to think about changing the language in how I talk about who we serve? Do I need to spend more time cultivating women donors? The recognition of

the bias has helped me be more reflective on how to change my approach in thinking about women and women’s issues. These unacknowledged biases have a way of invisibly affecting every interaction we have in our organizations (e.g., from hiring, board recruitment, and fundraising and community relations). They also create an assumption of “common sense” when it comes

to our decision-making; in reality, these decisions made are the product of biased social conditioning.

Third, engage your funder in this conversation. Philanthropy is beginning to ask questions of its own grantmaking strategies; is it contrib-uting to racial justice, equity, or social change? Organizations like the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, ABFE, the D5 Coalition, the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers, and others have been convening over the past few years to ask these questions and to

press for change. Rather than have equity and justice outcomes imposed by a funder, it is more valuable to engage program officers now on how to partner with them in order to build internal capacity to make these changes — which helps the foundation meet its own goals. Foundations have access to facilitators, research, and other resources that can help you navigate this path forward.

Lastly, consider how a more explicit and visible justice and equity framework can set you apart from the crowd. With nearly forty legal aid organizations in Chicagoland, my agency has a challenge in differ-entiating itself and educating community leaders on the breadth of services needed for criminal and civil legal matters. Likewise, community leaders have diffi-culty knowing what we do and how we are different from others. How could our missions be stronger if there was a stronger understanding of our work, and how can we get there without including representa-tives from those communities in which we work? One legal aid organization in the city deliberately began to build a small group of clients to engage directly with the organization and the issues they fought for; slowly, over time, this group of community advocates has grown significantly, helped pass legislation, communi-cated with legislators, and now exists as the visible face of the organization’s mission in the community, thus

These unacknowledged biases

have a way of invisibly affecting

every interaction we have in

our organizations (e.g., from

hiring, board recruitment, and

fundraising and community

relations).


Articles published in the Management Information Exchange Journal represent the views of their authors and are not the views or policies of the MIE Journal Committee or the MIE Board of Directors. Readers are welcome to comment on articles appearing in the Journal and may do so by writing to the MIE Journal Committee. The Committee strives to present in the pages of the Journal diverse perspectives on the management and related issues in legal services.

MIE invites readers to submit articles for publication. Please note that the MIE Journal contains 56 pages and is published four times each year. Articles accepted for publication may not appear immediately but may appear in later issues consistent with the themes of the issue and the decisions and editorial policies of the MIE Journal Committee.

Management Information Exchange105 Chauncy St., Floor 6, Suite 3Boston, MA 02111-1766T: 617-556-0288www.mielegalaid.org | Patricia Pap, Executive Director ([email protected])

M I EJ O U R N A L

increasing its profile. As those community members tell their stories, support for the organiza-tion has increased. The biases prevent-ing us from seeing our community members as critical partners in our work prevent us from strategically expanding the reach of our services.

I wrote this piece on the day we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s life and legacy. It is fitting we challenge ourselves, our organizations, to live his principles of radical fairness and justice. But in order to fully realize his vision, we also need to look beyond our programs and exam-ine what structural changes we are willing to make after we identify and work to eliminate our biases. Good intentions are nice but changing intention to action, and making them a permanent part of organizational practice is how we match our outsides to our insides.

So, while it seems we need to advocate for issues that we thought were settled long ago, I also believe that we will continue to make change for the better and put Dr. King’s words into practice. As a fundraiser, I will lead the conversation wherever I can and learn in the process.

1 Tanya Pietrkowski is Director of Development at CARPLS Legal Aid in Chicago. She has more than

twenty years of fundraising experience at a variety of organizations with the last twelve years spent in the legal arena. Tanya may be reached at [email protected].

Delia Coleman is the Vice President of Strategy and Policy at Forefront. Forefront is building a vibrant social impact sector for all the people in Illinois. Forefront provides education, advocacy, thought-leadership, and project management, working closely with its members and collaborating with government, business, social enterprises, and other allies. Delia guides and directs the Strategic Initiatives at Forefront, as well as educates policymakers at all levels of government on key issues impacting grant makers and social impact organiza-

tions. She joined Forefront in 2010 as Manager, Public Policy Communications and Outreach, received several promotions, and assumed her current role in Febru-ary 2016. Previously, Delia was Government Rela-tions Officer at YWCA Metropolitan Chicago. She has been a Board Member of Chicago Lights and an Advocacy Council member of Women Employed. She is currently Board Co-Chair of the Chicago Abortion Fund. Before entering the nonprofit sector, she worked for several years in the corporate world, including at Gagen MacDonald (formerly Matha MacDonald), Star-point Solutions, and Deloitte Consulting. Delia may be reached at [email protected].

Philanthropy is beginning

to ask questions of its own

grantmaking strategies; is it

contributing to racial justice,

equity, or social change?

Confronting Issues of Diversity and Equity Continued from page 17

www.mielegalaid.org





N E W - T O - Y O U

New-To-You: Profile of a Recently Appointed Executive Director in the Legal Aid Community: Artur G. Davis, Legal Services Alabama

MIE Journal: Why did you decide to make the commitment to become ED of Legal Services Alabama?

Artur G. Davis (AGD): Running a statewide legal aid program is an incredibly rewarding challenge. What I value most about this job is the range of skills that

you get to deploy on a constant basis: motivating and lead-ing staffers; strategizing about how to use the law to challenge poverty; managing resources to maximize outcomes; build-ing an organizational vision for growth and excellence; and acting as a public voice for the

aspirations of low income people.

MIE: Describe your legal aid background and other background. What inspired you to make these choices regarding your career?

AGD: My path to be a legal aid ED has been the long, scenic route: a four year stint as a federal prosecu-tor in my twenties; three years as a seven days a week, fifteen hours a day solo practitioner, specializing in criminal and employment law; eight years as a United States Congressman; one very forgettable year at a large corporate D.C. law firm; two years as a floating televi-sion analyst and writer of a political blog; one failed political comeback effort. The most fulfilling times in my career have been spent serving the public and trying to find ways to improve the conditions of people who have been left behind.

MIE: What are the three main challenges you faced on day one as the new ED for Legal Services Alabama?

AGD: (1) Stabilizing and restoring morale in a program that had stagnated and had a troubled recent history, including a protracted, contentious search for an ED; internal strife over management styles; and a

simmering controversy over layoffs the year before. (2) Restructuring the leadership staff to create a more effi-cient and harmonious team environment. (3) Planning for progress in a time of uncertainty over the future of legal aid funding.

MIE: Did you implement or initiate any major changes in your program after becoming ED? How did you overcome any obstacles in doing so?

AGD: My first major initiative was to set up a High Impact Litigation unit, to pursue cases that can impact systemic legal barriers to our clients. There was no “resistance” per se, but we continue to wrestle with the obstacles that come with change: how to filter out cases that need to go to this unit; reminding lawyers who are accustomed to defensive work in state court that federal court and affirmative litigation are still a thing; reassur-ing supervising lawyers that this unit does not detract from our core services.

We are also on the verge of implementing a compensation plan that will make our pay structure more competitive and that will introduce merit based bonuses for high performers. It has taken an ardu-ous and focused effort to win over skeptics on our

What I value most about this job is the range of skills

that you get to deploy on a constant basis: motivating

and leading staffers; strategizing about how to use

the law to challenge poverty; managing resources to

maximize outcomes; building an organizational vision

for growth and excellence; and acting as a public voice

for the aspirations of low income people.


board: it has meant learning the organization’s finances intimately and building a coalition with key board members who understand the value of compensating lawyers fairly.

MIE: You attended the MIE New Executive director Training. Was there any one thing at the training that you can point to as a useful nugget that has helped you in your position? Have you been able to apply lessons you learned there?

AGD: The most valuable aspect of the training sessions, without a doubt: the opportunity to interact with like-minded people who are dealing with their versions of the same struggles. That is an encouraging counter to the daily frustrations that can arise behind the ED’s desk.

MIE: Now that you have several months under your belt, what advice do you have to emerging legal aid leaders who are considering becoming an ED of a legal aid organization?

AGD: The first piece of advice: take the time to plot out a timeline of what you want to do and what steps need be taken to make the goal happen. Second: challenge your program to do something bold, that is outside the normal routine casework. You will invari-ably find that your best lawyers are ready to embrace new challenges. Third: take the time to get to know the place and the people: your organization has a preexist-ing culture that is going to slow you down. Find a core group of people internally and on the board who can interpret your program’s culture to you: you will find that these little pieces of the past offer a lot of lessons to you. Fourth: don’t squander the momentum from being new through inactivity and hyper-caution. More of your team than you know have pent up desires for progress, and they are quietly grading you on the change v. more of the same, or talk v. results scale.

MIE: Similar question: What would you tell a law student considering a career in legal aid?

AGD: This work is meant for people who like to solve problems and who don’t mind plunging into details. The best legal aid lawyers often spent at least a second of their career musing about what it would be like to be a detective. It is also hard to be fulfilled by legal aid advocacy without a sense of passion about justice for low-income people: a good measure of

New-to-You: Artur G. Davis Continued from page 19

whether this is right for you is whether you are viscer-ally bothered by the inherent systemic injustices that your clients embody on a small scale.

MIE: Tell us a little about your program: what does it do and what is unique about it compared to similarly situated programs?

We have the unique characteristic of serving urban and rural populations across the entire state: 67 coun-ties, four larger cities, some of the deepest pockets of poverty in America. We are very proficient at turning crises into solutions and most of our lawyers still have a sense of spark about our work.

MIE: Anything else you would like to share?AGD: I regularly challenge my staff to appreciate

that during a political climate when so many of our peers wish they could make a difference, all we have to do to matter is to come to work, and do our work diligently. Those of us in the legal aid world are actually very fortunate people.

1 Artur Davis was named the Executive Director of Legal Services Alabama in December 2016. He is a native of Montgomery, Alabama and a proud product of Montgomery Public Schools. Artur is a 1990 gradu-ate of Harvard University, magna cum laude, and a 1993 graduate of Harvard Law School cum laude. He was selected Best Oral Advocate in the 1992 HLS Moot Court Competition.

Artur is a former law clerk to U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, and served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Middle District of Alabama from 1994-98. He operated a solo practice focused on federal employment law and federal criminal defense law until his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002.

During his four terms in the House, he was a member of the committees on Ways and Means, Judi-ciary, Financial Services, Budget, and House Administra-tion, and a member of the Speaker’s Policy and Steering Committee. In 2008, Esquire magazine named him one of the 10 Best Members of Congress.

Artur is a member of the Alabama and District of Columbia Bars. He may be reached at [email protected].

Challenge your program to do something bold, that is

outside the normal routine casework…


B O O K R E V I E W

The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

Notwithstanding its title, this is not a book about how to live in a bubble of good cheer while disregard-ing the suffering and sorrow

that find their way into every human life. Instead, it is an inspiring and very accessible dialogue, leavened with many jokes and much teasing, between two old, wise, mischievous, profoundly generous and compas-sionate friends who in their long lives have personally endured physical danger, isolation, and exile. They have also struggled to be leaders for their nations through decades of sweeping and relentless brutality and oppression. Their gentle and generous wisdom is hard-won, and it is both practical and profound. They explain how they fortify themselves with a daily commitment to quiet contemplation and prayer and how this helps give them the inner strength and self-mastery to exercise leadership on the most troubling issues in the world with kindness, humility, and clarity.

The book abounds with insights and observations, many of which are based on science — not religion — that educate, encourage, and gently challenge us in the legal services community to keep working for justice, keep learning about ourselves and the world, and keep opening our hearts. It is a wonderful course on many of the most important dimensions of being an astute, modest, and inspiring leader, a compassionate and loyal colleague, and a respectful and kind advocate. While the book’s ideas are inspiring and eye-opening, the language is simple, direct, and informal, making it very easy to read.

The conversations that are the heart of the book took place over five days in the Dalai Lama’s residence-in-exile in the Himalayan Mountains of northern India in April 2015, on the occasion of the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday. Archbishop Tutu had invited the Dalai Lama to come to South Africa four years earlier for the Archbishop’s 80th birthday, but, bowing to economic pressure from China, the South African government

refused to give the Dalai Lama a visa. At age 84 and in frail health, the Archbishop traveled to India to engage in a five-day conversation, facilitated by co-author Douglas Abrams, about how to “share the wellsprings of joy” and help others to find and sustain joy, hope, and a commitment to compassion in the face of life’s inevi-table suffering and loss. While well aware of the “heavy footsteps of mortality” nearby in their lives, they saw this book as a “three-layer birthday cake for the world.”

The first layer is the teachings of these two spiritual leaders. They agreed to talk about how they faced life’s deepest challenges: Is it really possible to be joyful in the face of daily frustrations, fears, and anger? How do we accept the reality of our lives but transcend the pain and suffering that is inescapable.

The second and most surprising layer of the cake is a collection of the latest scientific research and ideas, spread throughout the book, about the characteristics and indicators of joy and enduring happiness. It turns out that the Dalai Lama is a serious student of modern science’s efforts to gain insight on health and happiness. The Dalai Lama’s remarks and Abrams’ background narrative are full of references to biology, neurology, psychology, and social science. The Dalai Lama repeat-edly reaches out to those who are non-religious, and to buttress his beliefs and observations, he often uses the results of scientific research, logic, and critical thinking — instead of or in addition to Buddhist precepts.

In the introduction written by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu, they make it clear that they don’t want anyone to blindly accept their ideas: “You don’t need to believe us. Indeed, nothing we say should be taken as an article of faith. We are sharing what two friends, from very different worlds, have witnessed and learned in our long lives. We hope that you will discover whether what is included here is true by apply-ing it in your own life.”

The third layer of the cake, which binds the book together and makes it so compelling, is the collection of stories that the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu tell

By the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams(Avery/Penguin Random House LLC, 2016, $16)

Reviewed by John Tobin


Book Review Continued from page 21

about their own lives, which include their own sorrows and regrets, and brief portraits of the many “ordinary” people who have inspired them through acts of cour-age, generosity, and love.

The five days of dialogue were organized in a logical and easy-to-follow sequence. On the first day, Abrams pressed the two leaders to explain “the true nature of joy.” Over the next two days, they confronted the understandable skepticism about the possibility of enduring happiness by talking about a daunting list of obstacles to joy: fear, stress, and anxiety; frustra-tion and anger; sadness and grief; despair; loneliness; envy; suffering and adversity; and illness and fear of death. On the last two days, they turned to the “pillars of joy.” These are the components of thought, emotion, and attitude that make deep joy possible: perspective, humility, humor, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion and generosity.

Both the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu believe to their core that the deepest and most lasting joy during our lives on this planet comes from caring for others — showing compassion and acting generously. In their view, overcoming one’s own suffering and help-ing others to do so is the central purpose of life. But they support this belief with repeated references to neurological and psychological studies that show that generous, positive, and compassionate people are physi-cally healthier, live longer, and report a higher level of well-being than people who self-absorbed, bitter, or suspicious. Thus, building up one’s capacity for and practice of compassion and generosity is both altruistic and personally beneficial.

The power of one’s core attitudes to shape our life is also a focus of much discussion. The ability to find a perspective on a given situation that will allow us to reframe it more positively is a key factor in enabling a person to take action to address suffering. Finding a new perspective doesn’t mean refusing to accept reality, but the ability to step back and see things less person-ally and bleakly gives one the tools and the energy to improve their situation or challenge an injustice. Related to this is the powerful transforming effect of gratitude. Acknowledging the Buddhist teaching that impermanence — constant change — is the core attribute of the universe, the Dalai Lama’s sense of gratitude enables him to say to himself when he wakes up every morning: “I am fortunate to be alive. I have a

precious human life. I am not going to waste it.” While he describes the 56-year separation from his homeland and people as a continuing deep sorrow, he also says that he is very grateful for all of the people he has met and everything he has learned as an exile, experiences he would not have had if he had been able to stay in Tibet. This is quite a vivid and moving illustration of the value of acceptance and gratitude in building joy out of suffering. I have heard many clients express simi-lar thoughts in the aftermath of painful and tumultuous events in their lives.

Neither the Dalai Lama nor Archbishop Tutu pays much deference to religious or social hierarchy. But they repeatedly urge us to try to find compassion and understanding for our adversaries. This is not an easy lesson to understand or absorb, when I think about the individuals and institutions who treat our clients unfairly and even cruelly. It is not easy to “hate the injustice but not the human being” who inflicts it. But they make a compelling case that generosity and compassion are “contagious,” and so every effort should be made to enlarge their impact.

In explaining the key pillars of lasting joy, they make clear that these are all positive and active approaches. They explain, for instance, that acceptance is not resignation; humility is not timidity; and forgive-ness is not forgetting. Thus, adopting some of their approaches is not inconsistent with vigorous advocacy against injustice. Instead, as is obvious from their public lives, they are impassioned and forceful justice leaders. Their model of advocacy is powerful and fearless. It is not so gentle or tentative as to be ineffective, but its enduring strength is based on deep compassion and it is marked by kindness and generosity. Since the incep-tion of legal service programs, many advocates have embodied these values and acted on these insights in their advocacy for their clients and in their relation-ships with colleagues. But there is much for all of us to learn from this book that can make us both happier and more generous people — and stronger and more deeply grounded peaceful justice warriors.

They explain, for instance, that acceptance is

not resignation; humility is not timidity; and

forgiveness is not forgetting.

23Summer 2017

Worth A Look!

Thanks to Joann Lee, Managing Attorney, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, and Member, MIE Journal Committee, for this Worth a Look!

What has caught your eye lately? Tell MIE how to locate the website, magazine, book or other resource, along with four or five sentences describing what you like about it, and we will share the information with your colleagues. Email us at [email protected].

Opportunity AgendaThe Opportunity Agenda (https://opportu-

nityagenda.org/) is a communication lab, sup-porting social justice leaders to tell compelling and evocative stories to bring about policy and culture change. Through innovation, creativ-ity, and collaboration, the Opportunity Agenda shapes compelling narratives and messages; builds the communication capacity of social justice leaders through training and resources; and engages with artists, creatives, and culture makers as powerful storytellers to shift the pub-lic discourse.

With the recent changing political climate, the Opportunity Agenda is offering free resourc-es to assist the community:

■ Tools and resources (https://opportunitya-genda.org/resources), such as guidance on communications strategy, perfecting messages, public opinion research, and ideas for media outreach;

■ Communications trainings, webinars, and interactive workshops (https://opportuni-tyagenda.org/events), offering professional development and skill-building for social justice leaders;

■ Monthly e-newsletters with partner news, actions, and voices from the field;

■ Action alerts and rapid response tools for framing the debate on breaking issues and pushing back against harmful narratives in real time;

■ Connection to a broad and diverse commu-nity of leaders with different skills and perspectives.

Legal Services Corporation Grantee DataThe Legal Services Corporation (LSC) has de-

veloped a new resource for their website (http://www.lsc.gov/grants-grantee-resources/grantee-

data), which includes graphics and data to improve public access LSC grantee

information. Although this data has been posted in other forms before, the new re-

organization allows viewers to filter to a specific state or find the data of an individual program. The new presentation formats were rolled out in January 2017 and includes categories such as: funding, expenditures, client demographics, case types, staffing, and service area characteristics.

Know Your Rights & Community ResourcesNumerous organizations have created and

compiled resources in various languages for im-migrants who may experience encounters with law enforcement and other related issues. Top-ics include immigration raids and enforcement, caregiver information, participating in demon-strations, searches at the airport, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), and other related issues. Some compilations of resources are listed below:

■ https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights ■ https://advancingjustice-la.org/

know-your-rights-resources ■ https://www.nilc.org/get-involved/

community-education-resources/know-your-rights/

■ https://www.ilrc.org/community-resources


https://opportunityagenda.org/

https://opportunityagenda.org/

https://opportunityagenda.org/resources

https://opportunityagenda.org/resources

https://opportunityagenda.org/events

https://opportunityagenda.org/events

http://www.lsc.gov/grants-grantee-resources/grantee-data



https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights

https://advancingjustice-la.org/know-your-rights-resources

https://advancingjustice-la.org/know-your-rights-resources

https://www.nilc.org/get-involved/community-education-resources/know-your-rights/



https://www.ilrc.org/community-resources

M I E SPECIAL FEATUREJOUR

NAL

SPECIAL FEATURE: LITIGATION AND ADVOCACY IN THESE TIMES

Thoughts on Practice Priorities for the Trump Era

By John Bouman, President1 Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law

The Trump Administration is changing the playing field for the clients and communities served by legal aid organizations. It is a moment to re-consider prac-

tice priorities. Since the Obama Administration was very active in some areas of law and policy, legal aid organizations may have assigned those areas a lower priority that, in light of Trump-era developments, may need to be re-thought.

Priorities for practice should, of course, be driven by experience on the ground and by the residents and leaders in the communities being served. This article is not meant to interfere with that kind of process but to offer hopefully useful thoughts as organizations arrange their resources to meet the emerging challenges of the Trump era. The article lists eleven key areas of work, provides some context on the changes underway currently, and offers thoughts on why each area might be apt for a practice priority in some localities and how local practice priorities might be tailored to advance solutions within that area.

1. Civil Rights and Racial JusticeTo ensure that everyone has a meaningful oppor-

tunity to move out of poverty, there must be strong enforcement of our civil rights laws. For example, robust enforcement of the Fair Housing Act requires the pursuit of claims involving intentional discrimina-tion as well as disparate impact, in light of the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold the disparate impact theory. Other federal enforcement priorities include Title VI (discrimination by recipients of federal funds), Title VII (employment discrimination), and Title IX

(gender discrimination in education).The Obama Justice Department conducted care-

ful investigations of civil rights violations by police — unjustified shootings and killings, illegal stops and searches, abuses while in custody — and required reforms where warranted. Many such investigations are still pending and should continue.

There should be no rollback of the gains made thus far. The U.S. Department of Education has released a number of “Dear Colleague” letters advising school administrators on important civil rights issues, such as sexual harassment and violence, bullying and harassment of LGBTQ youth, and equitable access to educational resources. The Justice Department issued a similar letter, calling upon courts to reassess their fines-and-fees systems so they do not unfairly burden low-income people with arrest warrants and incar-ceration because of their inability to pay. Similarly, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued guidance on the fair housing implica-tions of criminal-records screening, crime-free and nuisance ordinances, and policies affecting people with limited proficiencies in English.

Thoughts on a practice priority for this area:This list of Obama-era activity reads like a litany of

exactly what the Trump Administration is not doing or is actively opposing. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has signaled that the Department of Justice is not interested in pushing for police reform and may well support the undoing of consent decree processes involving local police departments. The new heads of federal agen-cies are not focused at all on issues of equity in the programs under their jurisdictions.

As the federal executive branch retreats from

25Summer 2017


vigorous enforcement of the civil rights laws, and perhaps even actively engages in undermining them, the importance of private enforcement of those laws becomes paramount. To make a priority of these issues of civil rights and equity, an organization could adopt a race or equity lens for virtually all of its legal and policy work.

There is a staggering disparity, based on race and ethnicity, not only in the incidence of poverty itself but also in household income in general and across a comprehensive range of outcomes related to poverty (e.g., education, employment, health, life expectancy, criminal justice involvement). To address a mission aimed at “poverty” or at “equal justice for the poor” demands attention to these facts that together are the most salient feature of poverty in America.

Applying a race lens is essential to understand-ing issues fully and therefore to understanding and appropriately focusing on the possible solutions. It does not necessarily mean that issues must always be advocated as civil rights issues, nor does it mean ignor-ing or warring with the interests of others in poverty. Understanding and documenting the racial aspects of problems can add legal claims, policy arguments, and political angles to the advocacy strategy toolbox, to the advantage of everyone who would benefit from a solu-tion to the problem.

Useful outcomes from applying a race or equity lens to virtually all of the work could result in a deeper understanding of disparities in, for example, distribu-tion of high-quality child care sites, eviction court judgments, debt collections, SNAP fraud procedures, storage or prevalence of toxic or dangerous materi-als, siting of highways or bus lines, patterns of police conduct, location of parks and libraries and swimming pools, decisions in the healthcare system, school disci-pline, language access and many more issues, many of which are daily fare in most civil legal aid programs.

2. Quality, Affordable Health Care for AllQuality affordable healthcare is an essential

component of quality of life, whether or not a person in poverty is able to be upwardly mobile in the workforce, and it is an essential component of upward mobility for those pursuing opportunity because it enhances school performance, employability and productivity. It also is a major factor in sustainable family economic bottom lines, because healthcare is otherwise a major source of debt and related stress. Congress should not repeal the Affordable Care Act or any part of it without a timely and effective replacement. Any such replacement

should foster the goal of quality, affordable health care for all. And the Medicaid program, as expanded by the Affordable Care Act, should continue in its present structure as a federal-state matching grant.

Thoughts on a practice priority in this area:It is now clear that the Trump Administration

is determined to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a set of ideas that would produce a loss of coverage for 24 million Americans, around half of whom would lose coverage because of disastrous changes to Medicaid that would shrink eligibility and take massive amounts of federal money out of the program (through a block grant or per capita cap). This is not only a massive cost-shift to the states but also a direct threat to virtually all other spending on poverty programs in state budgets—to the extent states step up spending to continue efforts on health care in the face of dwindling federal support, there will be correspond-ing pressure to reduce spending of state funds on other priorities (unless states are willing to raise taxes).

There is certainly work to do at the state and local level to engage in advocacy in congressional districts to prevent passage in Congress of a bad health care bill. Groups that are able to engage in that kind of work might assign this a very high priority during the rest of the congressional process.

In any event, states interested in experimenting with Medicaid through waivers, especially along the lines of current conservative thinking involving work requirements, co-pays, and eligibility documentation requirements, will encounter friendly treatment from the federal authorities. These efforts can be countered on the front end with policy advocacy, and they can be ameliorated during implementation phases with advo-cacy on policy and procedures. But ultimately, program changes like these will require case-by-case handling to flesh out due process arguments and the practical definitions of new program rules. A legal aid program could adopt as a priority the handling of individual cases involving Medicaid program changes, with the intent of creating favorable stare decisis and containing the harmful impact.

3. Solidify the Safety Net for People Unable to Work

The radical restructuring of public benefits programs, as some officials in Washington have proposed, would weaken and undermine the programs’ capacity to meet need and accomplish their purposes. Moreover, the procedures for accessing crucial public


benefits must not unnecessarily burden applicants and recipients or otherwise violate their rights to due process of law.

Thoughts on a practice priority in this area:The Trump Administration’s budget outline

contains deeply troubling proposals that would deplete funding for all of the federal safety net programs. That budget outline is far from being adopted, but it signals the direction of the administration, and opposition to it could be a high priority for groups able to engage in policy advocacy.

As noted above with respect to Medicaid, all of the safety net programs are likely to be the subject of administrative changes initiated or permitted by the federal bureaucracy. For example, there are proposals to tighten the eligibility rules for children to prove eligibil-ity for SSI. Implementation of such substantive changes or procedural changes (e.g., work requirements, time limits, verification rules) would be an appropriate target of focused direct service attention to protect due process and other rights. This work has historically been in the legal services wheelhouse, and the need now is as high as it has ever been.

4. Invest in the Public Good Through Fair Budget and Tax Policies

Public budgets need revenue to carry out the important functions of the government: to ensure equal opportunity, a fair chance for upward mobil-ity, and a decent safety net. National budget cuts for vital programs, whether through substantive program changes (like those proposed for Medicaid) or through outright cuts in spending lines (e.g., for the TANF or child care block grants), amount to a cost-shift to the states. Since the states cannot, or are highly unlikely to raise revenues to meet these new costs, there will simply be higher unmet need. On the state level, where most budgets must be balanced, officials and the public need to understand the devastating impact that would flow from federal funding cuts, and states need to look to their own revenue streams to ensure adequate support for key programs.

Thoughts on a practice priority in this area:The federal budget debate would be appropriate as

a high priority for the law and policy organizations. But the work much closer to the ground on state budgets

is more immediate for most programs. Programs can engage in many ways to help show the wisdom of certain programs, the damage of particular cuts, the need for new revenue, and how to raise it fairly. There may be ways for direct service programs to engage in parts of this work consistent with rules governing their funding.

5. Advance Fair Housing, Healthy Housing, and Housing for Survivors

Against the background of a general crisis in the availability of affordable housing, especially in commu-nities of opportunity, there is a particularly important housing rule in play, and it is especially relevant to the racial and ethnic aspects of access to housing. HUD set forth the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” rule, which is grounded in HUD’s obligation under the Fair Housing Act to administer its programs in a way that not only prevents discrimination but also affirmatively furthers fair housing. The rule’s requirement that state and local government entities assess the impediments to fair housing in their jurisdiction as a condition of receiving federal funds moves this country toward creating the kind of inclusive communities of which so many people are currently deprived. This process will help communities assess the housing barriers faced by many people, including survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Implementation of the rule will give communities the opportunity to start to free themselves from dangers such as lead poisoning or violence.

Thoughts on a practice priority in this area:This is an excellent area for engagement on both

the policy and the individual and group representa-tion aspects of the issue. It is one of the main ways that applying an equity lens to housing issues (themselves a high priority anyway, given the crisis in affordable housing) can produce claims (e.g., under the Fair Hous-ing Act) that would not otherwise be in the mix to solve a problem. If the administration undertakes to ignore or change the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” rule, there would be need and opportunities to test that change of policy in court.

6. Reform the Criminal Justice SystemThere are two features of this area of activity that

are important to people in poverty. One is the need to reduce the life-long and racially disparate impact of over-charging, over-prosecuting, and over-incarcerat-ing people in poverty and people of color. The other is the essential role of public safety as an indispensable

Thoughts on Practice Priorities ontinued from page 25

27Summer 2017

element of a fair opportunity for upward mobility, an element that requires the elimination of bad police practices as well as the promotion of good policing. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Depart-ment has supplied both leadership and funding for states and local communities to improve their criminal justice policies and practices. Reports such as the Presi-dent’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing and grants administered by the Justice Department offer interested local law enforcement both guidance and funds for smart-on-crime improvements. There were also efforts in the areas of prevention, diversion, rehabilitation, and reentry.

Thoughts on a practice priority in this area:Most of the action in this area is at the state and

local level, and this is likely to be even more true with Attorney General Sessions in charge at the U.S. Depart-ment of Justice and advocating for a return to the aggressive charging and sentencing of the heyday of the “war on drugs.” There are many areas for policy reform in the states at the back end to reduce the collateral consequences of criminal records (e.g., expungement, sealing, certificates, ban the box, disqualifications from careers) and at the front end to avoid criminal involve-ment or reduce charging and sentencing. Most of these strategies are not self-executing, so there is a need for direct service so that people involved in the system can take advantage of remedies or programs. Work remains to be done in the areas of employment, housing, and public benefits to ensure that criminal records are not a cover for racial or ethnic discrimination. Depend-ing on conditions in local areas, another priority could involve group representation on issues of public safety and policing.

7. Protect Access to the American Dream for Immigrants and Refugees

Maintaining Deferred Action for Childhood Arriv-als would give undocumented youth the opportunity to stay and continue making their important contri-butions to this country. It is inconsistent with quality of life and upward mobility in communities served by many legal aid agencies for there to be an erosion of civil and constitutional rights as part of a dragnet approach to deportations, especially including the creation of lists of disfavored people based on religion or national origin.

President Trump’s Executive Order banning travel by Muslims is in the courts. His focus on deportations is being implemented in communities but resisted by

many “sanctuary” cities. His intent to build a wall on the border with Mexico is largely stalled as the Presi-dent seeks funds but, among its other drawbacks, is emerging as a threat to funding for other priorities.

Thoughts on a practice priority for this area:Organizations that are able to do so may wish to

engage in representation on deportation and other status proceedings. Another circle of issues beyond these could be of help to communities: public benefits eligibility, privacy issues, rights of community insti-tutions as against federal immigration enforcement demands for information or access to property, emer-gency guardianships for children of detainees, rights of “sanctuary” cities, towns and organizations, and “know your rights” community education. Organizations may wish to engage in the protection of constitutional rights for religious, racial and ethnic minorities.

8. Ensure Opportunity and Safety for Women and Girls

With respect to policies to support women and girls in the workforce, it is necessary to raise wages, strengthen and enforce protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and advance equal pay for equal work, fair and predictable schedules, employ-ment protections for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and reasonable accommodations for preg-nant workers. Low-income women are often tasked with caretaking responsibilities in their homes, and the workplace must reflect this reality by ensuring that workers have guaranteed access to paid family and medical leave as well as earned paid sick days. Women continue to be threatened and blocked by violence and sexual harassment in every setting, and the policies and responses of officials and programs are often inad-equate or harmful.

Thoughts on a practice priority for this area:This is another area where most of the action is at

the state and local level. There are important workplace fights that matter to all low wage workers, but women are a disproportionate majority of that workforce (especially domestic workers). And, once changes are won on issues such as minimum wage, fair schedules, paid sick leave, or workplace conditions, they need to be enforced. Many localities that adopt these policies do not have the funding or infrastructure to enforce them. Private enforcement is essential. There also remain important policy and enforcement issues regarding the rights and safety of survivors of domestic and sexual


violence. And, of course, women continue to need help enforcing their civil rights, such as to equal pay for equal work.

9. Achieve Justice from the StartPolicymakers inside the Beltway and beyond

increasingly recognize that investments in children early in life pay dividends for the children and for society over the course of their lives. Quality health services as well as excellent childcare and pre-kinder-garten programs also enable parents to balance work and family and address economic security. This is important for children because “growing up poor,” with its attendant risks and stresses, is one of the main predictors of favorable or unfavorable outcomes later in life.

Thoughts on a practice priority in this area:This is one of the areas where the evidence

of return on investment is the clearest and least contested, and it is also one of the few areas where bipartisan support has been possible. That justifies consideration of a focus on infants and toddlers and pre-schoolers as a practice priority. This can involve enrollment in health coverage, improvement of well-child care and developmental screens, early interven-tion programs, quality child care and other proven strategies. And it can involve simply applying an early childhood screen to all of the issues an organization handles.

10. Guarantee a Quality Education for AllA public education is the single most important

“opportunity” program available to every child in the country regardless of status. It should not be squan-dered; its value should be as enhanced as possible. There are gaps based on race and economic status in both resources for education and achievement of students. There should be increased resources for public schools and equitable policies that help all students, including low-income students and students of color. Students also have civil rights requiring protection from the impact of policies such as zero-tolerance discipline. The Obama Administration was making strides in expanding the collection of data at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Unfortunately, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has made it clear that she has other priorities.

Thoughts on a practice priority in this area:As the federal department retreats from a focus on

education equity, private enforcement and advocacy becomes more important. Equity issues could involve discipline, language access, inappropriate assignment to special education, lack of funding and resources, achievement gaps in general, and segregation.

11. Protect ConsumersThe protection of credit, of household income, and

of household wealth (already afflicted with a massive racial wealth gap) are of paramount importance. Fraud and predatory practices are deep and constant threats. The protection of consumers should include a strong, independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The Bureau has secured over $11 billion in relief for over 25 million consumers through enforce-ment actions against financial institutions that caused them harm. The Bureau has handled over one million consumer complaints and has studied and proposed important rule changes in industries across the finan-cial sector, including rules pertaining to payday lenders, mortgage companies, and debt collectors.

Thoughts on a practice priority for this area:Once again, the Trump Administration does not

appear to have this issue, or the CFPB, as a priority. And the numbers reflected in the CFPB activity indicate that this is indeed a serious and widespread problem with an increasing need for private enforcement of the consumer protection laws. Many state attorneys general place a high priority on consumer matters, which suggests the possibility of productive alliances that legal aid programs could explore (along the lines of alli-ances with some state attorneys general that are already in play on Affordable Care Act issues and the Trump Executive Orders on immigration).

High Stakes in the StatesThe policies and budget decisions that flow from

the Trump Administration and Congress mostly will come down to the states as a wide array of choices on policy, enforcement, timing, implementation methods, funding, and public engagement. These will be added to all of the issues generated by state and local condi-tions and officials that are mostly out of the control of and could exacerbate or ameliorate what is coming from Washington. The choices made and the courses of conduct at the state and local level will substan-tially determine quality of life, opportunity for upward




How Proposed Changes to Medicaid and SNAP Could Affect Legal Services Advocacy, and Lessons from TANF

By Liz Schott and Jennifer Wagner1

Congress is considering substantial changes to the structure of core safety net programs including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance

Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps). Some propos-als would shift from a guarantee of federal funding for everyone eligible to a fixed block grant or per capita cap that would significantly reduce federal funding over time. As the experience of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant over the last 20 years demonstrates, this would have a profoundly negative effect on the programs and low-income fami-lies. While the final outcome of these delib-erations is far from certain, it is useful to consider how legal advocates may have to alter their strategies as they work to protect the most vulnerable.

Block Grants and Per Capita Caps Would Lead to Devastating Cuts and Program Changes

The most immediate threat is Congres-sional proposals that dramatically change the current federal-state partnership in Medicaid where the federal government pays a percentage of all allowable costs to

a block grant or per capita cap. The goal of both block grants and per capita caps is to significantly reduce federal expenditures, with states left holding the bag for costs above the caps. Under a block grant, the federal government provides a fixed sum of money to each state, regardless of actual enrollment or health care costs. A per capita cap would cap federal Medicaid funding per beneficiary. In other words, the federal government would pay its share of a state’s Medicaid costs only up to a fixed amount per beneficiary. The state would be responsible for all costs above that per-beneficiary cap.

The shortfall in federal funding for both block grants and per capita caps worsens over time because federal funding increases each year at a rate below the expected growth in health care costs, leading to a continuous decrease in the percentage of expenses the federal government covers. While funding under a per capita cap would change as enrollment increases or decreases, neither form of funding adjusts if health care spending grows more quickly than anticipated

Liz Schott (L); Jennifer Wagner (R).

Figure 1: A Medicaid per capita cap would shift costs to states.


or if unexpected expenses, such as an epidemic or a breakthrough treatment, significantly increase costs. (See Figure 1.) The massive cuts are evident in last year’s House Republican budget plan that cut Medicaid spending by $1 trillion over ten years (a reduction in funding of 33 percent by the 10th year) by converting Medicaid to a block grant or per capita cap.

Some Republican leaders have also proposed converting SNAP into a block grant or capping its funding. This would end the guarantee of food assis-tance to those who qualify and lead to deep cuts. A SNAP block grant would also remove the program’s ability to respond to increased need from an economic downturn or natural disaster.

These fixed funding proposals for Medicaid and SNAP could also remove many of the existing mini-mum requirements for how states must operate their programs. Supporters allege that this flexibility would allow states to innovate and find better, less costly ways of running the programs. However, when coupled with the substantial reduction in federal funding, states would have to use this “flexibility” primarily for cutting the program, not innovating. The flexibility is a pretext — by reducing federal funding, Congress would force states to make the tough choices on how to cut spending. States could dedicate additional state funding to the programs, but few, if any, states would be able to commit adequate sums to make up for the loss of federal funds. Further, requiring additional state funding pits these programs against other vital state expenses, such as funding for education.

In order to cut costs, states may begin by making changes to reduce enrollment such as increasing administrative barriers to accessing benefits. In Medic-aid, states may require burdensome premiums or co-pays, impose time limits and work requirements, or lock out families for a period after failing to complete a renewal.

However, with funding cuts of the magnitude that have been proposed, states would soon have to go further. In Medicaid, states would likely eliminate categories of eligibility, such as the expansion popula-tion, and significantly reduce eligibility levels for other categories. States might also reduce covered benefits and provider reimbursements, making it more difficult for participants to access needed care. In SNAP, states would likely have to end benefits for large groups of participants, greatly reduce benefit levels, or both.

Lessons from TANF on Converting Safety Net Entitlement Programs into Block Grants

The experience of the last 20 years under the TANF block grant provides important lessons on what happens when a core federal safety net program is converted into a block grant to states. It is not a pretty picture. Block grants mean both reduced funding and loss of federal eligibility policies and protections.

Under TANF, states have engaged in a race to the bottom as they serve fewer and fewer poor families, and spend less and less on cash aid or work-related activities or supports. Cash assistance caseloads have plummeted, often even during times when need has increased. With no federal policy floor, states have adopted ever more restrictive eligibility policies includ-ing shorter time limits, harsh sanctions, and all manner of ideologically based behavioral requirements.

TANF provides cash aid to far fewer poor families than its predecessor Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) did and it reaches a smaller share of poor families each year. In 2015, for every 100 poor families with children, just 23 families received TANF cash assistance. This is down from 68 families that received cash assistance for every 100 in poverty in 1996, when TANF was created. In a growing number of states, the poorest families have almost no access to a cash safety net. In 2015, in 14 states, ten or fewer of every 100 poor families with children received cash assistance.

When Congress and President Clinton replaced AFDC with the TANF block grant in 1996, it ended the federal entitlement and changed the federal-state funding relationship. Under AFDC’s entitlement struc-ture, the federal government matched half or more of every dollar a state provided in benefits. In contrast, the TANF block grant gave states a fixed amount of federal dollars each year. The annual block grant amount that each state receives has not increased in the past 20 years; in fact, it has declined by more than one-third in value after taking inflation into account. Nor has it adjusted to reflect changes in demographics or popula-tion across states.

By their design, entitlement programs for low-income households respond to fluctuations in need, with federal funding automatically expanding during economic downturns and contracting as the economy improves. But under a block grant with fixed fund-ing that doesn’t rise and fall with need, states bear the financial burden of responding when the economy slows, at the same time that their budgets are hit hard by the weakened economy. Many states did not

Proposed Changes to Medicaid and SNAP Continued from page 29

31Summer 2017

Figure 2: Unlike TANF, SNAP regained ground lost after 1996 changes and grew further.

A key feature of block grants is replacing federal policies and procedures with state flexibility. Under AFDC, federal law and rules set basic eligibility requirements for cash aid and gave states a number of choices, most notably setting benefit and eligibility levels. TANF has no similar federal eligibility policies.

shoulder that burden for their TANF programs during the Great Recession when caseloads rose only modestly and far short of need; in some states, they actually fell as the state made policy changes reducing access to assistance. (The only reason that overall TANF casel-oads increased even modestly was that the 2009 Recov-ery Act included additional one-time TANF funding to help reimburse states whose caseloads rose because the block grant structure was inadequate to the task.)

The performance of SNAP over the last 20 years shows the difference that an entitlement program can make in contrast to a fixed block grant. Many of the cost savings in the 1996 welfare law arose from cuts to the food stamp program; TANF funding was not reduced at the outset but has declined in value over time and states have spent more of the reduced funding to meet other state budget needs. Initially both TANF and food stamp caseloads declined due to program changes — including both eligibility changes within the food stamp program and the impact of TANF changes carrying over into food stamps — as well as the strong economy. But for SNAP, program improvements in the early 2000s combined with retention of the essen-tial entitlement structure allowed a counter-cyclical response as need increased during the recession. By the end of the recession, SNAP caseloads had regained lost ground and then more, doubling from 1996 levels, while TANF caseloads remained below half of their 1996 levels. (See Figure 2.)

We often get inquiries from legal services advocates wondering where the federal rules on TANF eligibility can be found, but there are virtually none. We are asked whether mean and crazy state legislative proposals are permissible under TANF federal law, but federal law offers few if any limitations and advocates must look to state law and policy or the Constitution. While the block grant includes some conditions and prohibitions for states, there is no federal eligibility floor and no requirement that states even provide a cash safety net for needy families with children.

The result has been harsh state policies that cut families off or keep them from obtaining TANF in the first place. As money got tighter in the Great Recession and aftermath, TANF program cuts got harsher and were disproportionately made in cash assistance even as it represented only a quarter of state and federal TANF spending.

In TANF, restrictive eligibility policies are not only fiscally driven. While the federal TANF law sets a five-year time limit on federal TANF assistance, Arizona recently adopted a 12-month lifetime limit and many other states use a lifetime limit of 24 months. States also have adopted quick and deeply punitive sanctions that eliminate benefits for the entire family and impose mandatory lock-out periods so participating in work activities and coming into compliance is nearly impos-sible; some states even impose permanent, lifetime sanctions on the entire family. Many states have also imposed application barriers that limit families’ abil-

ity to start receiving benefits, even when a family may be in crisis.

Impact on Legal Services AdvocacyA shift to a block grant or per capita cap in

Medicaid and SNAP is far from certain. Advo-cates strongly oppose the devastating cuts that would result, and there is significant division in Congress over how to structure funding changes. Even without major restructuring of funding, we could see new state options or mandates, broadened scope of waivers granted to states, or other fundamental changes to Medicaid and

SNAP eligibility or coverage. This changing landscape will require legal services advocacy efforts to be multi-faceted in a new environment where states are likely to have greater policymaking authority and legal services clients have fewer protections and may face greater restrictions.

During the last twenty years, TANF advocacy has declined in many states and legal services programs.

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In part, this reflects the fact that caseloads have plum-meted and fewer families receive TANF. Many legal services programs report that they are not seeing clients present TANF issues. The decline in TANF advocacy also may be shaped by the fact that legal handles are more limited. In some states, there seems to be a ceding of ground by both advocates and recipients, based on a sense that there is little that can be done to challenge policies overall in actions in individual cases. To the contrary, in a block grant environment, legal services advocacy efforts, while challenging, are essential. In many states, legal services staff have engaged in stellar and fully permissible advocacy in legislatures, courts and administrative agency proceedings.

Medicaid and SNAP each are much larger programs than AFDC or TANF and the stakes are even higher, at the outset and as the reduced federal funding becomes increasingly inadequate. State budgets increas-ingly would be strained by reduced federal funds, lead-ing to cuts to benefits and restrictions on eligibility as well as pressure on other parts of the state budget affecting a range of programs and services upon which legal services clients rely.

If we are in a block grant environment, legal services advocates may lack one of their most potent tools — enforcing federal statutory and regulatory requirements governing eligibility, benefits, and proce-dural protections. However, there are many areas where legal services advocates, acting in full compliance with all lawfully-imposed constraints, can provide critical protections to clients as these programs change:1. Legislative advocacy: Particularly in a block grant

world, with so much left to state discretion, legal services advocates will need to have an even greater role in development of state statutory and budget choices. At the outset of a block grant, state policy choices will set the main policy and legal frame-work for program eligibility, procedural protec-tions, and added requirements. Legal services advocates know best what provisions are already in state law and rules and how to retain key eligibility and procedural protections, including what should (or should not) be added or modified. And, even without a block grant, state legislatures may engage in key choices around implementing new options or mandates or shaping and directing waivers.

2. Administrative advocacy: While states will

establish broad policy goals at the legislative level, many of the implementation details will be estab-lished through rules and policies. As always, legal services advocates play a key role in rulemak-ing and policy implementation. For example, the impact of harsh policies such as work requirements can be partially mitigated by ensuring there are exemptions and good cause for non-compliance. State and local agency administrators can be key allies and, where possible, legal services advocates can be more effective if they can establish or main-tain relationships with administrative officials within the health and human services departments. This could also be important as states develop waiver proposals that have a major impact on program participants.

Administrative advocacy is also critical at the local level where clients are directly interacting with workers making eligibility decisions. Clients may have difficulty getting correct information, submitting documents, or obtaining accurate eligi-bility determinations. Collaborating with local administrators will allow legal aid advocates to provide feedback about how things are working on the ground and work toward improved adminis-tration. Also, particularly during the transition to new policies, legal aid will need to quickly become well versed in the new guidelines and able to assert clients’ rights to state and local officials who may not have been adequately trained on the changes to the program.

3. Community education: There is often confusion during a shift in policy, and legal aid advocates will play a critical role in educating clients about how these new policies affect them. As policies change, misinformation and lack of information will cause fear and confusion among low-income families. With limited funding, states will have little incen-tive to do outreach and education and may make it more difficult for low-income families to obtain supports through misinformation at local offices and misapplication of policies. Advocates will need to educate clients about their eligibility for benefits and right to apply. Legal aid will be essential in educating clients, advocates, and service providers about the details and impact of the changes. Provid-ing accurate information and dispelling myths through “Know Your Rights” and other communi-cation mechanisms will be especially necessary for groups like immigrants and the disabled.




Comment Concerning the Effects of President Trump’s Tax Reform and Budget Proposals on Low Income Taxpayers

By Mary Ann David, Senior Staff Attorney, and Spencer Golden, former Harry and Irving Cypen Fellow, Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc.1

During the 2016 presidential campaign, presiden-tial nominee Donald J. Trump identified tax reform as one of his core governing objectives necessary to

“Make America Great Again.” He campaigned on a platform of across-the-board reductions in personal income and corporate tax rates. See Tax Reform that will Make America Great Again, at References, p. 37, infra.

On April 26, 2017, the White House released a one-page outline of tax reform propos-als headed “2017 Tax Reform

for Economic Growth and American Jobs” (the “Tax Reform Outline”) which are similar to Donald Trump’s campaign proposals but include fewer details. See 2017 Tax Reform for Economic Growth and American Jobs, at References, p. 37, infra.

This article looks briefly at several features of Presi-dent Trump’s tax reform proposals and how they might affect lower income taxpayers (including proposals from the campaign that are believed to remain part of the Administration’s tax reform agenda): increasing the standard deduction amounts; repealing personal exemptions; collapsing the current seven tax brackets into three brackets; eliminating the head of household filing status; expanding child care deductions and cred-its; and implementing a border adjustment tax.

The Trump administration states that the Presi-dent’s tax plan focuses on middle income tax cuts and the proposed changes seem to support such a state-ment. However, some researchers contend that lower-income households with children may in fact face more burdensome tax obligations under the proposed

changes than under the current tax system, while the wealthiest Americans may be the biggest winners — especially if final tax reform legislation includes repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax and the estate and gift taxes.

Increase in Standard DeductionDuring his campaign, President Trump stated that

his proposed tax reforms would eliminate the income tax for over 73 million households. In theory, this is accomplished primarily by “doubling” the standard deduction for individuals from its current $6,300 amount to $12,600 and by increasing the standard deduction for married couples filing jointly from its current $12,600 amount to about $24,000.

If those changes in the standard deduction amounts come into effect, the majority of individu-als and families still subject to tax will no longer need to itemize their deductions (which may be limited to home ownership and charitable giving in any event),

This article looks briefly at several features of President

Trump’s tax reform proposals… increasing the standard

deduction amounts; repealing personal exemptions;

collapsing the current seven tax brackets into three

brackets; eliminating the head of household filing

status; expanding child care deductions and credits; and

implementing a border adjustment tax.

Mary Ann David.


thereby greatly simplifying the process of preparing and filing a tax return and making it easier for taxpay-ers to file their own returns without need for outside assistance. This would reduce the time and expense taxpayers face when filing a return and also greatly reduce the opportunity for unscrupulous tax return preparers to prey on less educated taxpayers who rely on outside assistance to prepare their returns each year.

Repeal of Personal ExemptionsDuring his presidential campaign, President Trump

called for repeal of all personal exemptions, which for tax year 2016 was $4,050 per individual, spouse and qualified dependent. The Tax Reform Outline does not mention repeal of the personal exemptions, but for most taxpayers, such repeal would offset some or all of the tax reduction they might realize from the proposed increases in the standard deduction amounts.

Reduced Number of Tax BracketsThe Tax Reform Outline collapses the current

seven tax brackets into just three tax brackets — taxing ordinary income at the rate of 10%, 25% and 35%, respectively. As previously noted, the proposed increase in standard deduction amounts would mean that individuals making up to $12,600 a year and families making up to $24,000 a year would be subject to zero income tax.

Repeal of Head of Household Filing StatusDuring his campaign, President Trump proposed

eliminating the head of household filing status that is available under the current tax system - which provides unmarried taxpayers with dependents a stan-dard deduction amount and tax rates that are between those available to taxpayers filing as single and taxpay-ers filing as married filing jointly. This proposal to eliminate the head of household filing status is not mentioned in the Tax Reform Outline.

Child Care ProposalsThe Tax Reform Outline states that tax reform will

provide “tax relief for families with child and dependent care expenses” but provides no detail as to how exist-ing tax deductions and credits for child and dependent care expenses might be revised. During the campaign, President Trump indicated that his tax plan would

allow taxpayers to deduct from their adjusted gross income all cost of child care for up to four children age thirteen and under, capped at the average in-state cost for child care. The child care deduction would be available to families that use stay-at-home parents or grandparents as well as those who use a paid caregiver. (Taxpayers using stay-at-home care givers could claim a deduction per child equal to the average in-state cost for child care). The deduction would phase out for higher income taxpayers and be eliminated altogether for single taxpayers earning $250,000 or more per year and joint filers earning in excess of $500,000 per year. Because this child care deduction would be available based only on the fact of having a child, and not require actual child care expenditure, it has been criticized as a deduction for having children rather than a deduction for child care.

President Trump’s more detailed tax propos-als additionally provide for lower-income families to receive (through the existing earned income tax credit or EITC) “spending rebates” for child care expenses incurred for children under age 13. The rebate credit amount would be equal to 7.65% of the family’s eligible child care expenses in excess of the amount of child care expenses deducted, but not more than a maxi-mum credit equal to the lesser of (i) $1,200 per eligible family, or (ii) one-half of the payroll taxes paid by the taxpayer (or paid by the lowest-earning parent in a two earner household). Moreover, the credit would be available only to unmarried filers with income not exceeding $31,200 and married filers with income not exceeding $62,400.

President Trump has further proposed to allow all taxpayers to establish Dependent Care Savings Accounts (DCSAs) for the benefit of specific indi-viduals, namely children or elderly parents, including unborn children, and contribute up to $2,000 per year to such accounts without obligation to pay income taxes on contributed amounts. The pre-tax dollars contributed to a DCSA are then available to reimburse the account holder as actual dependent care expenses are incurred. To encourage lower-income families to establish DCSAs for their children, President Trump proposes that the government match yearly contribu-tions at a rate of 50 percent, up to the first $1,000 of contributions (a maximum $500 match). In an effort to simplify and help facilitate the use of DCSAs, Mr. Trump suggests including a “check-the-box” option on the tax return that would allow parents to deposit any portion of their EITC directly into their DCSA. Employers would also be allowed to make tax free

Comment Concerning the Effects Continued from page 33

35Summer 2017

deposits directly into their employees’ DCSAs. The unused balances in a DCSA would roll over from year to year and appreciate tax-free.

Lastly, the budget plan that was released by the White House on May 23, 2017, headed “A New Foun-dation for American Greatness” (the “Trump Budget Proposal”) includes a new eligibility requirement for an individual to claim the Child Tax Credit (CTC) — which currently provides a credit of up to $1,000 per qualify-ing child under the age of 17. Under the Trump Budget Proposal, only individuals with a valid Social Security number would be eligible to claim the CTC (bringing it in line with existing law that requires a valid Social Secu-rity number to claim the EITC). At this point, it is not clear if the Social Security number requirement applies to the parent claiming the CTC or to the qualifying child (many qualifying children were born in the U.S. and are U.S. Citizens). This change in the eligibility for the CTC did not appear in President Trump’s campaign tax reform proposals or in the Tax Reform Outline.

Border Adjustment TaxDuring the campaign, President Trump proposed

a Border Adjustment Tax (BAT) that would impose a tariff ranging from 10% to 45% on products manufac-tured outside the U.S. and imported into the country. Because imports constitute a substantial portion of products sold within the U.S., if implemented, the BAT would increase the average price of food, clothing, furniture, gas and other staples of daily life as that tariff is either passed on to consumers or, as intended, causes consumers to switch to higher priced domestically produced goods. Although the Tax Reform Outline does not mention a BAT, President Trump has not offi-cially revoked the proposal and some members of the Republican party continue to give strong support for a BAT. Other Congressional leaders have declared it very unlikely that any tax reform legislation will include a BAT.

Comments:While President Trump’s tax reform proposals are

promoted as providing relief for most Americans, it seems apparent that many lower income Americans, in particular those who rely on personal exemptions and head-of-household filing status, might not realize much overall benefit from the proposed tax revisions.

A study published by Lily L. Batchelder, a profes-sor at NYU School of Law, via the Tax Policy Center, compared the effects of the Trump tax plan (as outlined during the presidential campaign) versus current tax

law. This study found that a married couple with two children making $50,000 a year with $8,000 in child care expenses would receive a tax cut of just $92. If that same family were to have a third child, the result would be a net tax increase of $450. The study concluded that the net effect of raising the standard deduction and the repeal of personal exemptions would be a tax increase for most single parents with one or more dependents and for most married households with at least three dependents.

Another study finds that the elimination of the head of household filing status is likely to increase the tax burden on many unmarried taxpayers with at least one dependent. By way of example, under President Trump’s campaign proposals, a single parent with $50,000 in yearly earnings with three school-aged children and no child care costs, would face a tax increase of roughly $1,188. Notably, the Batch-elder study concluded that a family with $50,000 in yearly earnings and $6,000 of child care costs, would experience an increased tax burden under the Trump tax plan because the child care tax benefit under the current system offers a greater benefit than those under the Trump tax plan. The Batchelder study further concluded that a married couple with $50,000 in yearly earnings, four school-aged children and no child care costs, would face a net tax increase in the amount of $1,090 under the Trump tax plan because in this scenario the loss of the current personal exemptions outweighs the increased standard deduction amount provided under the Trump tax plan.

President Trump’s proposal to allow child care expenses and stay-at-home child care to be deducted may provide some tax benefit to most taxpayers, but that benefit will be much less for lower-income families because lower-income families both spend less on child care and pay lower tax rates. And, the proposed child care deduction will be of no value to the lowest income parents whose taxable income is already zero.

President Trump’s proposed spending rebates for child care expenses are limited to lower-income fami-lies, but the value of those rebates is much less than the value of the deductions for child care expenses proposed to be given to taxpayers earning as much as $500,000 per year. This is because lower-income fami-lies spend less on child care and the value of the rebate is much less per dollar of child care than the value of the deduction.

In any event, both the proposal to allow child care expenses to be deducted and the proposal to provide spending rebates for child care fail to address the


primary problem that low income parents face with respect to child care — not having the money available on a week-to-week basis to pay for child care. In this regard, programs that provide direct spending for child care assist lower-income families in a manner that is not attainable through the tax system.

The proposed DCSA accounts might be a useful tool to help most parents save for the costs of child care and school tuition. The 50% match feature could provide as much as $500 per year to assist with the costs of child care as it comes due. But, the proposed DCSA accounts, like the proposed deductions for child care expenses, would provide more benefit to higher earning families that spend more on dependent care and face higher tax rates.

If parents attempting to claim the CTC are required to have valid Social Security numbers, that change is expected to save more than $40 billion over the next 10 years and would be shouldered exclusively by low income undocumented immigrants.

Perhaps the BAT tax is the most looming issue for lower-income Americans. Because lower-income families and individuals on average must spend a higher proportion of their income on goods that will be affected by the BAT, this tax will disproportionately affect lower income Americans. A study conducted by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) has suggested that the poorest 10 to 20 percent of households in the U.S. currently pay about $95 in tariffs per year under the current tax system. For the group of people in the bottom 10 percent of earners, this equates to more than one and a half percent of their current house-hold income, a rate which will surely increase if all imported goods become subject to a BAT. The CEA study concludes that if tariffs were to grow by just 10 percent, the bottom 20 percent of American earners would on average pay an additional $300 per year for standard household purchases. Lower-income families caring for very young children would be hit hardest by the increase in cost of necessary child care items such as diapers and baby formula.

Supplementary Comments on Anticipated Federal Budget Cuts:

During his campaign, President Trump proposed cutting funding for non-defense programs by one percent per year. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) projected that, in order to achieve a

one percent reduction in overall non-defense spend-ing, non-defense discretionary funding would need to be reduced by roughly 29 percent by 2026, adjusted for inflation. Non-defense discretionary spending covers such programs as veterans’ medical care, education, child care, environmental protection, public health and most notably low-income assistance. The CBPP notes that in 2015, 21% of non-defense discretionary spend-ing was allocated to low-income programs.

In line with President Trump’s campaign proposals, the Trump Budget Proposal calls for large reductions in various entitlement and public service programs that benefit low-income families, including (i) a $190 billion reduction in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, (ii) a $1.85 trillion reduction in Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Medicaid spending, (iii) a $72 billion reduction in funding for disability programs, (iv) elimination of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and (v) a 12% cut to the Education Department. Other non-defense discretion-ary programs affected by the proposed budget reduc-tions include “Head Start” that currently helps about one million disadvantaged children prepare for early schooling, the Pell Grant program which provides lower income individuals with grant funding to attend college, and job training programs and economic security programs such as rental assistance for lower income households.

According to the CBPP, the Trump Budget Proposal “slashes non-defense discretionary (NDD) programs by $54 billion below the already-austere sequestration level for 2018 and by a remarkable $1.6 trillion over the next decade—taking NDD spend-ing in 2018 to its lowest level in six decades.” And, the Trump Budget Proposal seeks to cut NDD funding by 2027 to an amount that is 41% ($218 billion) less than the current 2017 NDD funding amount. Undoubtedly, these severe reductions in NDD funding will have a detrimental effect on the many lower income Ameri-cans who currently rely on the assistance provided by the NDD spending programs.

1 Mary Ann David is a Senior Staff Attorney at Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc. and the Director of its Low Income Taxpayer Clinic. Mary Ann may be reached at [email protected].

Spencer Golden received his LL.M. in Taxation from the University of Miami School of Law and is a former Harry and Irving Cypen Fellow at Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc.

Michael Chou, a Class of 2019 J.D. Candidate at



37Summer 2017

Cornell Law School and Summer Law Clerk at Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc., provided updates to this article.

ReferencesBatchelder, Lily L. 2016. “Families Facing a Tax Increase

Under Trump’s Tax Plan.” Washington, DC: Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publi-cation-pdfs/2000983-Families-Facing-Tax-Increases-Under-Trumps-Plan.pdf.

Browning, Lynnley and John Voskuhl. (2017, February 28). “Trump’s Scant Specifics Leave Question on His Border-Tax Plan.” Bloomberg Politics. https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-01/trump-s-scant-specif-ics-leave-questions-on-his-border-tax-plans.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. 2016. “Policy Basics: Non-Defense Discretionary Programs.” Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-non-defense-discre-tionary-programs.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. May 22, 2017. “Greenstein: Trump Budget Proposes Path to a New Gilded Age.” Washington DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. http://www.cbpp.org/press/statements/greenstein-trump-budget-proposes-path-to-a-new-gilded-age.

Cole, Alan. 2016. “Details and Analysis of the Donald Trump Tax Reform Plan.” Fiscal Fact 528: 1-13. Washington, DC: Tax Foundation. https://taxfoundation.org/details-analysis-donald-trump-tax-plan-2016.

Curry, Jonathan. (2017, May 23). “Trump Budget to Include EITC, CTC Limitations.” Tax Notes. http://www.taxnotes.com/tax-notes-today/budgets/trump-budget-include-eitc-ctc-limitations/2017/05/23/18bk5.

Donald J. Trump Campaign. 2016. “Tax Reform that will Make America Great Again.” https://assets.donald-jtrump.com/trump-tax-reform.pdf.

Furman, Jason, Katheryn Russ and Jay Shambaugh. 2017. “US tariffs are an Arbitrary and Regressive Tax.” Vox, January 12. http://voxeu.org/article/us-tariffs-are-arbitrary-and-regressive-tax.

Gattoni-Celli, Luca. (2017, June 5). “Border Tax Proponents Must Address Trade Deficit Uncertainty.” Tax Notes. http://www.taxnotes.com/tax-notes/tax-reform/border-tax-proponents-must-address-trade-deficit-uncertain-ty/2017/06/05/1fbkr?highlight=border%20adjustment.

Glover, Asha. (2017, June 5). “Senator Says Border-Adjustable Tax is Dead.” Tax Notes. http://www.taxnotes.com/tax-notes/legislation-and-lawmaking/senator-says-border-adjustable-tax-

dead/2017/06/05/1fbkf?highlight=border%20adjustment.

Greenstein, Robert. (2017, May 22). “Greenstein: Trump Budget Proposes Path to a New Gilded Age.” Washing-ton, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. http://www.cbpp.org/press/statements/greenstein-trump-budget-proposes-path-to-a-new-gilded-age.

Greenstein, Robert, Chye-Ching Huang and Issac Shapiro. 2016. “Revised Trump Tax Plan Heavily Tilted Toward Wealthiest, Tax Policy Center Analysis Shows.” Washing-ton, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/revised-trump-tax-plan-heavily-tilted-toward-wealthiest-tax-policy-center.

Long, Heather. (2017, February 28). “Trump’s child care plan is gift to the rich, report says.” CNN Money. http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/28/news/economy/donald-trump-child-care/.

Maag, Elaine. (2017, May 24). “Understanding Child Care Subsidies in the Tax System.” Washington, DC: Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/understanding-child-care-subsidies-tax-system.

Morrell, Alex and Andy Kiersz. (2017, February 26). “Here’s who would lose money under Trump’s proposed tax plan.” Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/who-will-lose-money-trump-tax-plan-2017-2.

Nunns, Jim, Len Burman, Ben Page, Jeff Rohaly and Joe Rosenberg. 2016. “An Analysis of Donald Trump’s Revised Tax Plan.” Washington, DC: Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publi-cations/analysis-donald-trumps-revised-tax-plan/full.

Office of Mgmt. & Budget, Exec. Office of the President, A New Foundation for America’s Greatness — President’s Budget FY 2018 (2017). https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/budget/fy2018/budget.pdf.

Swanson, Ana. 2017. “Why Trump’s Trade Plan could be a Tax on the Poor.” Washington Post, January 13. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/13/trumps-trade-plan-could-be-a-tax-on-the-poor-study-shows.

Tax Policy Center Staff. (2017, June 1). “What is Known About Trump’s Tax Plan.” Washington, DC: Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/what-known-about-donald-trumps-tax-plan/full.

Trump, Donald. “Trump’s Speech to Congress 2017.” The New York Times, 1 Mar. 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/us/politics/trump-congress-video-transcript.html.


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https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/trump-tax-reform.pdf

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“Local Lawyering”: Strategies for Closing the Justice Gap in Underserved Communities

By Kimberly Sanchez, Executive Director, Community Legal Services Mid-Florida; Kirsten Anderson, Litigation Director, Southern Legal Counsel and Amy Petkovsek, Director of Advocacy for Training and Pro Bono, Maryland Legal Aid

The recent presidential election in this nation highlighted, among many things, the needs of our rural and underserved communities. Working in rural and

underserved communities can be challenging because typically, social services are limited, transportation services are scarce, and small communities may be distrustful of lawyers who do not have a strong pres-ence in the community. However, many opportunities exist for legal aid organizations to work within smaller, rural or difficult to reach communities and populations that may be underserved. Engagement at the local level is critical to these partnerships and sustainability of these programs. Termed “local lawyering,” the authors of this article provide examples of programs or rela-tionships they have created to bring services to these vulnerable populations.

We profile four projects by civil legal aid organiza-tions in Florida and Maryland to illustrate different strategies to closing the justice gap experienced by persons who are homeless, transgender or gender non-conforming people, elders, and low-income communi-ties of color.

Ask A Lawyer: Collaborating to Provide Holistic Services to Homeless Individuals in Rural Areas

People at risk or experiencing homelessness often

do not recognize that they have legal needs creating barriers to employment, jobs, and housing. Homeless persons require legal assistance to remove both individ-

ual and systemic barriers to accessing permanent housing and supportive services. Even if they are able to identify their needs as legal in nature, they often do not seek legal assistance. Lack of knowledge, transportation, phone, and internet create insurmountable barriers to requesting legal assistance through traditional channels. To bridge this justice gap, legal services must be accessible, comprehensive, and integrated with community efforts to end homelessness.

Lawyers in Alachua County, Florida faced this challenge by developing a broad system of acces-sible and integrated legal services, forming partnerships that included the Eighth Judicial Circuit Bar Associa-tion (a local voluntary bar association), Three Rivers Legal Services (a Legal Services Corporation-funded civil legal aid program), Southern Legal Counsel (a non-profit public interest law firm), the public defend-er’s office, and law students from the University of Florida Levin College of Law. This civil-criminal legal partnership allows the Ask A Lawyer project to provide comprehensive legal services in all areas of law. Anyone who is homeless qualifies for services. Because of the dynamic partnerships, no one is screened out and all forms of legal issues are assessed and the individual receives a full range of legal assistance.

The project model is simple: monthly clinics are held at trusted institutions in the community such as shelters, day centers, and libraries. The locations are selected intentionally to ensure that all parts of the homeless community have access to services (e.g., persons living at shelters, on the streets, in camps, families with children, domestic violence victims, and veterans). The events are publicized through the local

Kimberly Sanchez (R); Kirsten Anderson (Ctr); Amy Petkovsek (R).

39Summer 2017

continuum of care, case managers, and through direct street outreach to assist people in identifying their needs as legal ones and cultivating trust to encour-age them to access services through the project. Law students assist with client intake, event coordination, and assist attorneys during client interviews. Volunteer lawyers staff the clinics and represent a variety of legal specialties such as family, criminal, public benefits, employment, torts, probate and civil rights. The clinic provides a complete range of legal services from advice and counsel to full representation, depending on the needs of the client.

The project launched in January 2015. Since that time, 25 lawyers (donating 235 hours of legal service) and 79 law students provided legal assistance to 224 clients at 21 community events. As an official pro bono project of the local bar association, it enjoys institu-tional stability and ongoing support that allows it to be sustainable. Ask A Lawyer is currently working on expanding its geographic scope to surrounding rural counties by forging new partnerships in these commu-nities to address the high rates of homelessness that are often less visible than in urban areas, and therefore traditionally more difficult to serve. This model can be replicated in both urban and rural communities for all lawyers working to end homelessness.

Transgender Name and Gender Marker Change Clinics : Working with Trusted Non-Legal Institutions to Provide Legal Services to the Community

Imagine that every time you had to produce iden-tification you faced harassment, discrimination and potentially violence. This is a reality for the nearly 70% of transgender individuals who have not yet changed their legal identification to match their gender identity. They are forced to “out” themselves every time they produce identification with a name, gender marker, or outdated picture that do not match their expressed gender. Nearly one-third of transgender individuals in the United States are living in poverty, the rate of unemployment amongst transgender individuals is three times the national rate, and nearly one-third have experienced homelessness.

Florida, in particular, has alarming rates of discrim-ination and harassment against transgender individu-als. To address this pressing legal need for a vulnerable and underserved community, Florida civil legal aid organizations are collaborating in a statewide project to provide community education and legal assistance for transgender individuals who seek to petition the court

for a legal name change and to change their gender markers on identification documents.

This project is multi-faceted and will be rolled out in stages across the state. Southern Legal Counsel piloted the project in Gainesville in January 2017, part-nering with legal, medical, and community providers to provide community education and legal services for a population with an urgent need for assistance. The event, hosted by the local Pride Community Center and sponsored by mental health provider ITM Group, included a presentation by a lawyer on how to obtain a legal name change and how to change gender mark-ers on key identification documents. The local clerk of court also spoke to attendees to encourage and assure them that the courthouse was an inclusive and welcom-ing place. Following the presentation, individuals were provided assistance with filling out the forms for peti-tion of name change and petitions for civil indigency status. Finally, pro bono lawyers provided legal counsel-ing and answered questions. Approximately 50 indi-viduals attended this initial event.

Southern Legal Counsel is currently partner-ing with more than ten civil legal aid organizations in Florida to replicate these community education events statewide. The partnerships with local legal aid programs will allow the clinics to develop the commu-nity-based collaborations pivotal to the pilot’s success: (1) venue for event located at a trusted institution in the trans community; (2) outreach and collaborations with medical providers, LGBT advocacy groups, and pro bono lawyer volunteers; and (3) judicial and court education and outreach. In addition, the Florida Justice Technology Center is collaborating to develop online tools and resources including an automated forms preparation application for name change petitions.

This project addresses a pressing legal need, espe-cially due to the uncertainty of whether current federal policies for changing gender markers on social security cards and on U.S. passports will be revised under the new administration. The transgender community in Florida can now count among its allies civil legal aid providers working in their communities to ensure access to the legal name and gender that matches their identity.

Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida’s Integration in Elder Care Delivery System: Using Existing Partnerships to Integrate Legal Services in the Social Services Delivery System

Approximately 10,000 citizens turn 65 every day in the United States. Florida in particular, is well known as a retirement state, and the senior population increases



annually at dramatic rates. Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida (CLSMF) has identified the elderly client community as one that needs holistic services in one location. Many elderly clients visit sites for meals, healthcare, daycare services, and other social services. In addition, transportation for services may be avail-able from the state or other agencies, and limited. Also, alarming is the rate of homelessness among persons aged 50-64. As, a result, CLSMF approached the local Council on Aging, funded partially by the Department of Elder Affairs, to discuss any assistance that could be provided to deliver legal services directly to seniors where they are.

CLSMF determined that the best way to serve this client population was to insert a lawyer and advocate with the community partner. Working internally with the agency, modeling this relationship on the medical-legal partnership programs, this program provides partnership services with other elder programs already in existence so their clients have direct and immediate access to legal assistance. The partnership has become so integral to the operations of the Council on Aging that they have taken the lead to leverage their commu-nity influence to ask for increased funding of legal services. The partnership makes legal services to this population sustainable, with fewer resources required by CLSMF. By virtue of the partnership, awareness of CLSMF and civil legal aid has increased dramatically, in the local community, which has increased credibility of sustainability for future funding requests.

Maryland Lawyer in the Library: Being Agile and Getting Mobile in Response to Community Need

In late spring of 2015, Maryland Legal Aid responded to the unrest that was playing out on the streets of Baltimore City after the death of Freddie Gray. City residents needed, among other things, imme-diate solutions in their communities. While the unrest was unfolding on television, it became apparent that in the Sandtown/Winchester neighborhood of West Balti-more, the Enoch Pratt Free Library made a decision to stay open among other closed businesses. The library became a safe haven for youth, families, and residents looking for an oasis in the chaos of protests, police and curfews. Watching this, Maryland Legal Aid execu-tives decided to bring civil legal services directly to the library. Through a fortunate connection with an Enoch Pratt Free Library board member, an introductory

meeting was quickly established, and “Lawyer in the Library” was created. What started in the summer of 2015 as brief “Know Your Rights” sessions in family, housing and consumer law has grown into a weekly legal clinic, staffed by Maryland Legal Aid attorneys, pro bono volunteers and law students.

The Enoch Pratt Free Library has been a tremen-dous community partner, and Maryland Legal Aid has learned much from working with their staff. Each library branch has its own has their own unique community that they serve — thus, Lawyer in the Library operates for different hours, focusing on differ-ent legal needs, based on the distinct needs of each community.

In 2016, the program grew beyond the initial library branch, and as of March 2017, is active in seven other libraries across the Baltimore region. Libraries are already locations that community members inher-ently trust. By placing mobile legal offices in the library, lawyers can assist clients without the barriers of office walls, complicated transportation, childcare, or long waiting lines. The community recognizes Lawyer in the Library as a respected, trusted source to seek legal information, to remove barriers to employment, and to find solutions to child custody, divorce and domestic violence struggles. By promoting the legal wellness of every client encountered at the library programs, staff and pro bono attorneys are able to make civil legal services real for communities who are truly in need.

When the weekly clinics began in 2015, they aver-aged about seven clients a week in attendance. Now, at each location, every clinic averages 30-40 individu-als in a two hour time frame. When asked where they heard about the program, clients routinely say “from a neighbor, a friend, a family member.” The clients now recognize the program as an additional social service program in their community

Maryland Legal Aid has six staff members working full time on this project, and has submitted many appli-cations for increased and sustained funding from local and national foundations, corporations and govern-ment entities. Additionally, much of the staff comes from a volunteer panel of pro bono attorneys and law students, allowing many more individuals to be served with fewer staff resources. Clients are so thankful to have this resource in their neighborhood, and show this appreciation frequently, making it easy for attorneys to enjoy the program.

ConclusionBridging the justice gap requires a continual

Local Lawyering Continued from page 39


Protecting Health Access Against National and State Threats: Parlaying Partnerships into Effective Advocacy at All Levels

By Elizabeth Edwards, Senior Attorney1

National Health Law Program

Access to affordable health care may be fundamen-tally impacted by activities taking place on multiple fronts. While Congress works to alter health care

affordability through efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), states are work-ing to transform Medicaid — the nation’s health care safety net — from the inside through waivers of Medicaid Act requirements.2 All of these activities could serve to restrict

who has access to care, limit the scope of services they may receive if they can access care, and increase the cost, both financial and otherwise, they may face from accessing care. It is well documented—limiting access affects not only an individual’s health, but also their finances, employment, housing, and family life.

Along with all of these new threats to access to health care are many “oldie but goodie” state techniques that have been used in the past to limit an individual’s access to the health care they need. States continue to enact policies that restrict Medicaid services, including more strict criteria for services in terms of eligibility and scope of service. At the same time, more and more states are turning to contractors, including managed care companies, to try to save Medicaid programs money. States have also implemented new technology for Medicaid and other public benefits applications with sometimes disastrous results for individuals seek-ing the benefits. These actions sometimes violate the Medicaid Act, due process, § 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, and/or the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Are these problems numerous? Yes, but

organizations, including national advocacy organiza-tions like the National Health Law Program (NHeLP), can effectively use their resources to directly assist advocacy organizations to help individuals well within the legal services restrictions. NHeLP has a nearly fifty-year tradition of working with legal services organiza-tions at all levels of advocacy. NHeLP staff stands ready to provide technical assistance on individual cases, answer questions concerning the effects of new state or federal policy or changes to the Medicaid program, offer advice on advocacy strategies, help with drafting public comments on Medicaid changes, review plead-ings and discuss litigation strategy, or co-counsel litiga-tion. Although our degree of assistance may depend on our resources and current work, we do our best to help.

In return, we at NHeLP benefit from our interac-tions with state and local advocates. This interaction increases our understanding of the current problems happening at the state level, provides us with informa-tion and stories we then use to explain to the public and policy makers how policies are working, and gives us information to help identify problems and learn how to correct them. We also use our expertise in address-ing systemic issues to work with advocates in identi-fying and determining whether the individual cases they are seeing may reflect a systemic issue that could be addressed more broadly. We then use all of this information to develop new materials and activities to help state-based client-advocates and keep the circle of advocacy going.

Recent examples of effective advocacy in partner-ship with legal services organizations include:

■ Application delays for public benefits from new computer systems. With the ACA and the related


MAGI-based Medicaid eligibility changes came additional funding for states to update what were, in most cases, archaic computer systems for eligi-bility and renewal determinations. In some states, these new systems have come with a host of prob-lems, largely resulting in systemic delays for benefi-ciaries of, and applicants for, Medicaid and other public benefit programs. These delays and other issues, often involving notices or people being told at pharmacies or at their doctor’s office that they no longer had coverage, began showing up with great frequency through the intake process. Communica-tion among offices and programs was key to identi-fying the types of issues, whether it was application delays broadly or certain groups being terminated from services. Given our history with such cases, NHeLP quickly began working with state-based advocacy organizations, including client-advocacy legal services programs, as soon as the problems affected individuals. NHeLP, along with other organiza-tions, sued both California and Tennessee for these problems. While these are class-action cases, client-advocate legal services organizations were able to employ legal theories set forth in the pleadings and decisions to negotiate system improvements and work arounds that would protect applicants and beneficiaries. For example, Legal Aid of Arkansas used these NHeLP resources to bring an applica-tion delay case, Walker v. Selig, which helped focus the state’s attention on the backlog of applications. Other organizations used our technical assistance to suggest solutions to their state Medicaid agencies through letters detailing the issues and meetings with the state. Sometimes the state needed infor-mation from advocates to identify who was being affected, which then led to creating workarounds, such as running reports, while more long-term solutions were put into place. State agencies are also not always aware of the solutions other states have found effective in similar scenarios, which legal services advocates were able to share based on information from NHeLP.

■ Section 1115 demonstration waiver comments.3 Although Medicaid § 1115 demonstration waivers have been around for quite some time, applications for these waivers has increased in recent years as

states look to use them to move to comprehensive managed care for Medicaid, or to allow a state to expand Medicaid with certain limitations or requirements. More recently, states are looking to use § 1115 waivers to impose additional require-ments on Medicaid applicants and beneficiaries, such as work requirements, drug testing, cost-shar-ing, and other barriers to care. New § 1115 waivers offer two rounds of public comment opportuni-ties for clients and their advocates, one each at the state and federal levels. These comment periods are important, and NHeLP works with state and local advocates in developing comments. The stories and examples of how the proposed changes to the Medicaid program would affect individuals and their access to care, well-being, and families is particularly important in these comments. We also have litigated approval of these waivers. Some of the current proposals in these waivers could seriously undermine the core principles of the Medicaid program and thus advocacy is needed to prevent or at least minimize the potential for harm.

■ Services for children.4 Children should have good access to the Medicaid services they need due to early and periodic screening, diagnostic, and treat-ment (EPSDT) requirements. However, states often forget that they cannot simply treat children as little adults in their policies and utilization review guidelines. Whether it is ABA services for a child on the autism spectrum or a specialized wheelchair for a child that will increase her development and independence, children may be denied the services to which they are entitled by states and contrac-tors. NHeLP has worked with hundreds of legal aid client-advocates, helping them contest EPSDT denials and advocate for their clients at adminis-trative hearings. Over the years, NHeLP has also turned to the requirements of EPSDT to enforce children’s rights to access needed services. For example, in O.B. v. Norwood, NHeLP worked with Illinois client-advocates to enforce children’s rights to access in-home nursing services when those services were difficult to find.

■ Decoding the mystery of HCBS allocations. More and more states are turning to standardized assess-ment tools, such as InterRAI and SIS, and related budget and service algorithms to manage costs in Medicaid home and community-based programs (HCBS). Medicaid HCBS refers to the services,

Protecting Health Access Continued from page 41

43Summer 2017


such as those provided under 1915(c) waivers (e.g., for developmental disabilities or physical disabili-ties) or those state plan services (e.g., personal care services) that help a person stay in the community rather than move to an institutional setting, such as a nursing home. In general, such tools assess a person’s needs through a series of questions, and the answers place the individual into a resource utilization group. This group is usually assigned a certain set of services or budget range, which may or may not accurately reflect the individual’s needs. Many times advocates notice a trend in the number of requests for help with appeals to service cuts as these assessment tools are implemented. Although states often say the tools are used to ensure people get the right amount of services, they often result in service reductions and usually result in confusion on behalf of the individuals and families affected. States may also announce the use of assessment tools through provider bulletins or other commu-nications mechanisms, which can serve as a flag for legal services providers to be on the lookout for service cuts in the affected programs, bad notices, or other issues likely to generate new issues that clients will be presenting. NHeLP has seen, and written issue briefs about, numerous problems with the use of these tools.5 Due process is one of the most common issues as individuals are often not provided with informa-tion about how they scored in the assessment, what changes in their needs led to a change in services, or other information that would be necessary to appeal the determination based on the assessment tool. NHeLP has co-counseled cases that success-fully litigated these issues, such as in L.S. v. Delia, and provided assistance to legal services organiza-tions in their advocacy around these tools, includ-ing helping advocates understand the tools, the potential legal claims, and reviewing pleadings and advocacy strategies.

■ Managing Medicaid Managed Care. NHeLP has been involved in advocacy regarding Medicaid managed care for decades, and this expertise has been useful as states move more and more popula-tions into Medicaid managed care.6 As with any systems transformation, the move to managed care often comes with problems. Whether they are issues with due process, network adequacy, improper limitations on services, or lack of state oversight, we have experience with these issues

in the states, understand the relevant Medicaid requirements, and know advocacy strategies that may be effective. This is true not only for states transitioning to managed care, but also for those who have long had managed care but are experi-encing new and different problems.

These examples are just a few of the issue areas NHeLP has worked with local legal services programs to address in the past few years and each of these issue areas is a broad umbrella under which more specific problems fall. The issues of a few clients at one legal services office may be part of a larger problem that could be resolved more broadly with systemic advo-cacy. Whether it is advocating for a policy change, using an individual case to try to create change though the hearing process, sharing legal theories among offices to address particularly harmful and recurring issues through multiple individual cases, or filing a state or federal case, there are various avenues through which a legal services organization, including Legal Services Corporation-funded programs, may properly and lawfully try to address some of the systemic issues discussed above. Such approaches need not require significant shifts in how an organization operates, but can often be achieved simply through increased communication about the types of issues and cases coming through the different legal services offices, increased communications with health care and other state coalitions, and other activities.t

1 Elizabeth Edwards is a Senior Attorney at the National Health Law Program, NHeLP. Elizabeth works on a vari-ety of Medicaid and other health care issues, with partic-ular expertise in Medicaid waiver programs, services for people with disabilities and children, Olmstead, and application processing issues. Before coming to NHeLP, Elizabeth worked at Disability Rights North Carolina. She can be reached at [email protected].

2 For materials regarding the threats to Medicaid, see NHeLP’s publications related to defending Medicaid at, http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/defending-medicaid and our blog at, http://www.healthlaw.org/blog.

3 For more background information on the Section 1115 comment requirements, see Jane Perkins, Mara Youdel-man & Catherine McKee, Quick Review: Transparency, Opportunity for Comment (April 2017), http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/waivers/quick-review-sec-1115-transparency-comment; Jane Perkins &


http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/defending-medicaid

http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/defending-medicaid

http://www.healthlaw.org/blog

http://www.healthlaw.org/blog

http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/waivers/quick-review-sec-1115-transparency-comment




Legal Services in Workforce Development Programs: Baltimore’s Experience in Linking Criminal Justice Reform, Job Training, and Delivery of Core Civil Legal Services

By Shawn Boehringer, Chief Counsel, Maryland Legal Aid1

The aftermath of the uprising that followed the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore led to a comprehen-sive investigation of the Baltimore City Police Depart-ment (BPD) by the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. The investigation led to a report (DOJ

Report) that reads in large part as a Criminal Procedure text book. It found that the BPD engaged in a pattern or practice of making unconstitutional stops, searches, seizures, and arrests; used enforcement strat-egies that produced severe and unjustified disparities in the

rates of stops, searches, and seizures of African-Ameri-cans; used excessive force; and retaliated against people engaging in constitutionally protected expression.

With regard to arrests, for example, the report cited efforts in the late 1990s to establish a “zero tolerance” street enforcement policy in Baltimore that empha-sized mass arrests with limited oversight, accountability and assurance that constitutional standards would be upheld. Arrests of individuals standing lawfully on public sidewalks for loitering and trespassing, for example, were made to clear streets in inner-city neigh-borhoods without providing adequate notice to the individuals arrested of the nature of their purported unlawful activity.

While the DOJ report focused on the administra-tion of criminal justice, several other collateral effects and consequences followed the flawed policing noted in the report. Faulty arrests led to dubious prosecu-tions, creating voluminous criminal records which still hound Baltimore residents, disproportionately African-Americans. A tactic in use by prosecutors included the

stacking of various related charges to a main charge in order to create leverage in the plea bargaining process. While many of the criminal charges were not pros-ecuted (a disposition of “nolle prosequi” in Maryland) or did not result in guilty verdicts, the charges were left on the public records, most notably on the Maryland Judiciary Case Search, an easily accessible internet-based depository. Criminal “records” — even those that resulted in no finding or admission of guilt — prevent the accused from obtaining meaningful employment, housing, and even affect custody disputes, serving as a sentence of punishment when none had been officially imposed.

Baltimore’s entrenched poverty, however, hovering around one quarter of the city’s population, could not be remedied by criminal justice reform alone. The long process of addressing problems in Baltimore neigh-borhoods such as the one in West Baltimore in which Freddie Gray lived — Sandtown/Winchester— would involve much more effort, community engagement, and access to opportunity and jobs which were meaningful in today’s economy. The process of job training in inner cities necessarily carries with it the need for remedial education and training, social services and supports, and removal of barriers to obtaining and maintaining worthwhile employment. Civil unrest is undoubtedly a sign of the despair of a community that feels irrepa-rably disrespected and believes that alternatives do not exist. In the effort towards opportunity creation, legal services programs can play a pivotal role.

One Baltimore For Jobs — 1B4JIn this environment of post-Freddie Gray Balti-

more, with the recognition of the need for opportu-nity development, the Baltimore Mayor’s Office of

45Summer 2017

Employment Development (MOED) was awarded a $5 million demonstration grant from the U.S. Depart-ment of Labor via the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation (DLLR).

Prior to the start of the grant, city officials conducted a series of community conversations. Resi-dents expressed feeling disconnected from employment services, but also that workforce services were discon-nected from one another.

With this in mind, MOED designed a program, One Baltimore For Jobs (1B4J), targeting young black males from distressed neighborhoods. It sought to demonstrate that a workforce system could be built that fused together occupational skills training with key support services. Previously, grants for training and support services were made separately and the “part-nerships” were more of a hope than a reality. 1B4J fully integrates support services with occupational training by integrating the grants themselves and facilitating “warm handoffs.” Highly trained service professionals — lawyers, educators, and child support administrators — come onto the training site and meet with program participants to resolve barriers upfront so they can move more quickly through training and into a career that offers a family supporting wage.

MOED issued a series of connected Requests for Proposals. Thirteen grantees provide occupational skills training in key industry sectors (manufacturing, healthcare, construction, and transportation/logistics) that were shown to be growing and offered a career pathway. Two other grantees provide adult education so that residents have the reading and math skills to enter training and succeed on the job. Four grantees were brought on board as “community connectors” focused on conducting more intensive outreach to the most disconnected in Baltimore. In addition to the direct grants, MOED formed a partnership with the Baltimore City child support agency that enabled each 1B4J participant to have their order “right-sized” and for their driver’s license to be automatically restored if it had been lost for failure to pay child support. In total, MOED funded 19 organizations directly and more than 50 community-based organizations through sub-grants.

The result has been a local workforce system that for perhaps the first time is actually functioning like an integrated network. With 8 months left in the two-year grant, 1B4J has already exceeded every performance goal laid out for it by the U.S. Department of Labor. Over 900 residents have enrolled in training (700 was the goal), more than 750 have completed training (500 was the goal) and more than 500 (455 was the goal)

have already entered the growing industries noted above. By the end of the grant, Baltimore may double many of the outcomes desired by its funders.

But the truth is, 1B4J was never about hitting numbers.

It was about developing a better way to serve Balti-more residents that would extend beyond the bound-aries of a grant. It is too early to know the true impact of 1B4J on Baltimore’s workforce system, but there is strong reason for optimism:

■ Child support administrators have already announced that they will continue to partner with the occupational skills providers after the grant concludes.

■ A Practice Advisory has been formed that allows frontline staff across the system to share infor-mation and cross-refer for the most appropriate service.

■ Legal service organizations have formed relation-ships with training providers that have already resulted in non-1B4J participants receiving services and partnerships on other opportunities.

■ A national foundation initiated a new grant oppor-tunity noting that key elements were based on 1B4J and a second initiative is poised to be released utilizing the best practices formed by 1B4J.

The Legal Services AngleThe original design of 1B4J did not include the

provision of civil legal services. The Maryland Legal Services Corporation (MLSC), however, which admin-isters Maryland’s IOLTA program as well other state funding for civil legal services, had the vision to see the benefit that legal services could provide to the 1B4J project and seized the opportunity to support the Department of Labor funds going to MOED through use of national bank settlement funds designated for community redevelopment purposes by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Through these funds, MLSC funded three legal

MOED designed a program, One Baltimore For Jobs

(1B4J), targeting young black males from distressed

neighborhoods. It sought to demonstrate that a

workforce system could be built that fused together

occupational skills training with key support services.


services providers — the Homeless Persons Represen-tation Project, Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Services, and Maryland Legal Aid — to provide a variety of legal services to support MOED’s job training efforts. Initially, each provider was assigned four nonprofit job training sites.

Maryland Legal Aid’s share of the MLSC funds supported a full-time attorney for a period of 18 months. Much of the work performed by the attor-ney involves criminal record expungements, a rapidly expanding area of practice and one which addresses and remedies in a meaningful way the negative find-ings of the DOJ report. Other areas include child support cases, including the “right sizing” of obliga-tions discussed above and the attendant restoration of driver’s license privileges which were lost due to arrearages. Maryland Legal Aid provided legal “well-ness” checks and “know your rights” presentations to training cohorts as well as assistance with family law, housing and bankruptcy matters. Maryland Legal Aid’s partnership with the University of Maryland School of Social Work was utilized to provide holistic case management and social services to clients who needed them. As part of this partnership, Maryland Legal Aid employs a social worker who supervises four graduate social work students each semester. The students work collaboratively with Maryland Legal Aid attorneys to assess client needs and connect them with resources to address those needs.

Maryland Legal Aid’s four partners in the endeavor provided diverse training opportunities in occupa-tions that are either central to the city’s economy or in trades with significant growth potential. Civic Works, for example, is an organization that trains for occupa-tions in weatherization, construction, and healthcare. Embodying principles of green energy and construc-tion, they have addressed Baltimore’s aging and deterio-rating housing stock by making energy improvements to 6,000 households and rehabbed, repaired, or weath-erized over 700 homes. Maryland Legal Aid also part-ners with Civic Works on a program called “Project Household” which is funded by the Stulman Founda-tion and assists older adults in the city with preserving their homes when threatened with foreclosure, code violations, and tax sales for unpaid property taxes or water bills.

Another job training partner, Maryland New Directions, provides maritime transportation

distribution and logistics training. Baltimore is home to the 16th largest port in the U.S. by total trade. On the east coast, only the Port of New York/New Jersey in Newark and Hampton Roads, Virginia are larger.

The partnership with a trainer of port workers has enabled Maryland Legal Aid to address unique legal issues. All port workers, for example, must qualify for a Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) card issued by the Transportation Security Administration. One trainee was not able to qualify for a TWIC because the name on her birth certificate did not match her Social Security card due to an issue over paternity. Maryland Legal Aid was able to assist the client with a name change to remedy the issue and the client received her credentials. Another client was denied a TWIC because of a criminal charge that was erroneously included on his record. Maryland Legal Aid assisted the client with an internal grievance process to explain and correct the error, and the client obtained his TWIC, opening the door for employment. In each of these cases, job training alone would have not provided its intended benefit, but the combination of job training with civil legal advocacy allowed for job placement and financial success.

Bon Secours is a large health care provider with a national presence. In West Baltimore, Bon Secours provides community programs for youth and young adults to find summer employment, promote computer literacy, and discuss career planning. Maryland Legal Aid gave “know your rights” presentations to individu-als enrolled in geriatric and certified nursing programs at Bon Secours.

The final partner, City Life Community Builders, focuses on single family home construction and related trades, including electrical work and plumbing. Mary-land Legal Aid’s 1B4J staff attorney met weekly with clients inside the construction training site, complet-ing record expungements, and advising on family and consumer issues. The attorney was invited as a special guest at the graduation of the City Life class, as they completed job training and were placed in construction jobs across the city.

The success of the 1B4J program has led MLSC to provide a further commitment to workforce develop-ment initiatives in Baltimore and throughout Mary-land. The initial funding provided by MLSC to support the Department of Labor funds allocated to MOED ran for 18 months from January of 2016 to July of 2017. Maryland Legal Aid was recently notified by MLSC that it will continue to fund and indeed expand the scope of the program.

Legal Services in Workforce Development Continued from page 45

47Summer 2017

Pursuant to the “1M4J” (One Maryland For Jobs) program, MLSC will fund two Maryland Legal Aid lawyers for a one-year project. One attorney will be placed in Cumberland in Allegany County in the western panhandle, which has a struggling economy in Maryland’s Appalachian region, and a second in Prince George’s County, one of the D.C. “metro” coun-ties, which was hit hard by the foreclosure crisis. In both jurisdictions, Maryland Legal Aid attorneys will be embedded in American Job Centers, a program administered by the Maryland DLLR. The Centers are part of Maryland Jobs Now (MJN), which consists of a network of workforce organizations linking job seekers, employers and training opportunities.

Back in Baltimore, 1B4J will be expanded to include two attorneys and six additional partners. One partner includes a community-based nonprofit organi-zation called BUILD (Baltimore United for Leadership Development), which hosts Turnaround Tuesdays at locations on Baltimore’s east and west sides. Turn-around Tuesdays consist of an 8-week lecture series on different topics pertinent to securing stable employ-ment. Maryland Legal Aid’s 1B4J staff participate in the weekly lectures and meet one-on-one with participants to address legal issues. BUILD assists participants to obtain work as custodians, community health workers, geriatric and certified nursing assistants, and peer-to-peer addiction counsellors, and places participants at some of the largest employers in the city—including the medical centers at Johns Hopkins and the Univer-sity of Maryland. BUILD has fostered a relationship with Sagamore Development Corporation which seeks to match participants with jobs in connection with a massive multi-billion dollar urban redevelopment proj-ect underway that will eventually be the home of the Under Armour campus in South Baltimore.

Clients who attend Baltimore’s job training programs face a myriad of obstacles in their daily lives. The cycle of poverty, food deserts, under-resourced schools, lead paint exposure, a rising crime rate, and mistrust of law enforcement all present barriers to job training completion and employment. During the initial 1B4J grant period, a Maryland Legal Aid client who was seeking an expungement as a final step to job placement was killed by street violence. The challenges are great, and thus, the partnerships and resources must be even stronger. Combining local child support officials, educators, job training specialists, the Mayor’s office, and civil legal services provides a powerful coali-tion to address the daily challenges faced by city resi-dents. Expanding this model of service delivery may

be a key to success in Baltimore and other areas facing entrenched poverty.

ConclusionMaryland Legal Aid’s 1B4J experience can serve

as an example to other legal services programs around the country of an innovative approach to delivery of services. The lessons focus around partnerships — connecting legal services with local, state, and federal programs designed to remove barriers to employment in areas that have experienced years of economic decline and loss of opportunity. Understanding the workforce development landscape in localities and states is essential in developing a meaningful role for a legal services program in this arena. Supporting work-force development efforts by leveraging existing public funding with attorney general or DOJ settlement funds can further the community development goals of the settlement funds. The programs connect legal aid staff with their communities in a meaningful way and foster new cooperation and positive working relationships with partners whose missions are consistent with those of legal aid programs. These factors have positive affects on morale, recruitment, and retention. Finally, remov-ing barriers to employment through partnerships can generate job opportunities for communities where they are most needed, and allow those communities to share in the success of major sectors of growth and prosperity in local economies. Well-designed and inte-grated workforce development programs can be a key step in diffusing the powder keg created by entrenched poverty.

1 Shawn Boehringer has been Chief Counsel at Mary-land Legal Aid since 2009. He previously was Director of Advocacy at Legal Aid Service of Broward County in Florida and also worked as a staff attorney for Legal Services of Greater Miami and the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky. Shawn may be reached at [email protected].

A special thank you and credit to Jason Perkins- Cohen, Director of the Baltimore Mayor’s Office for Employment Development, for supplying the content for the section of the article describing the 1B4J program.

Well-designed and integrated workforce development

programs can be a key step in diffusing the powder keg

created by entrenched poverty.



Women of Color: Essays — “WoC. Steel. Lead.”

By Aurora Martin1

“On Leadership, Still in Love with Justice”This week marks a last dash to the finish line after

a marathon run of working for justice, from intern to executive director of a place I have called home. The

chance to serve and demand more of myself in service of others has been a gift. I have tried to #ImagineJustice beyond the courtrooms and halls of politi-cal power, believing that justice must also be an experience in our American democracy. And along the way, I realize my journey

of leadership as a young woman of color has been a constant reconciling of power and love. Of confidence and temperance. Instinct and expectations.

I was never the norm. I was young. Too ambivalent. Too inexperienced. Too odd. Too idealistic. Within the context of a legal profession governed by tradition, pomp and circumstance, I existed within a subculture of rebellious lawyers who believe in justice for all. And how do we make that notion of justice for all align both heart and mind, I asked?

I look back at 18 years to know that I wrestled with the hardness of the rule of law and the compassion of heart, and what it means to walk, steel, and lead. “Who do you think you are?” To navigate the power of inter-nal and external doubt from all fronts through humil-ity and humor, requires you steel yourself. “Your ideas are too out there.” You steel yourself because you are mission driven and focused. You steel yourself in the face of adversity and uncertainty because of a resilient imagination, indefatigable hope, and an unbreakable spirit. “Does she know what she’s doing?” In the face of adversity and chaos, you just lead like you did when you were that only person working the drive-in as an underage peanut serving up burgers, fries, and milk-shakes, working cashier/cook/cleaner to the onslaught of hungry construction workers. In the midst of a

world recession from which you inherited a fiscal crisis, starved staff morale, and a new menu of work for which you don’t quite have enough inventory and revenue, you keep walking, steeling, and leading because survival is the only option you have zeroed in on. You always lead with hope, reassure with humor, plan for what’s possible and prepare for contingencies. “Our work for justice speaks for itself.” No, it doesn’t. One of the things I have grown comfortable with is telling stories. Evangelizing the good news of justice was the first step I took in building multiple platforms to amplify our impact, rebrand and thus transform our “look and feel” — our feel of justice — imagine that: a movement towards the infinite loop of love and justice. The second step was opportunistic risk taking investment (and a lot of unwasted luck) in the building back up of the budget that goes along with telling your story with confidence. And the third step was going outside of the commu-nity, not just to expand our circle of friends, but most importantly to expand upon our ideas of how to do more and do better in our job to serve justice to people. This was a journey of social innovation in a sector that is slow to move, and within a subculture of skepticism about tradition and modernization.

I finished cleaning my office today. Had my last board meeting yesterday. Reviewed and reduced boxes whose contents document a history in #LegalAid of holding the line of justice for those who are made to feel the least among us. I tag the containers as a ritual of memory and for archiving so that the next generation may never lose perspective. Still in love with justice, I am set for the next adventure with #PopUpJustice. Coming soon.

“A Few Last Words on a Career with Lawyers for Justice: Keep the Movement Moving”

In this piece I share my formal remarks for the Washington Alliance for Equal Justice. A career in legal aid has made me brave, and now moves me to

49Summer 2017

adventure into the possibilities of a social enterprise for good. Thus, popupjustice.

I have a story of why I have traveled to find justice. Why, today on my last day and after 18 years of service in legal aid, my closing statement is that I still remain in love with justice. And why, my story, and the story of how I make sense of us as a commu-nity, is about imagining, inventing, and surviving.

The story of civil legal aid is about a movement then, now, and into the future — a movement of advocates who will not stand down in the face of oppression; advocates who are relentless about seeking opportu-nity to expand a sense of a beloved community.

We have a collective history, an identity, and a trajectory to do good. Be different. Be hopeful, in the face of unleashed hate and the unraveling of our country.

Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz, famed community organizer who grew up in Bakersfield, CA and worked as an organizer with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, called this iterative, nonlinear process: Telling the story of SELF, US, and NOW.

Self, Us. And Now… Stories that connect each of us to each other, to a collective sense of urgency to act, become the “public story” around issues that matter, those that express our core values as a shared and “lived experience.”

And the importance of this process that yields a public story stems from the need for people to connect. And when we can connect, whether it is through counseling a client, an opening statement, legislative testimony, a report, a press conference, a film, an essay, a news feature, or a book, the moral of the story can bring profound and deep understanding and a sense of community between people.

And for the people we serve and in the communi-ties we live in, our work for justice — that profound understanding advanced in the law — can be a lasting victory that transcends the courtroom and legislative bodies we work in, and begins to “rule” the hearts and minds — of decision makers, communities, and the people we aim to serve.

Where I Come FromAt the twilight of my legal aid days, and the dawn

of a new and uncertain adventure for me, my story of

justice is seen through the lens of imagination, inven-tion, and survival.

Whether it was my grandfather who tried anything and everything to survive — from sewing, farming, raising chickens, pawning, street-vending, and then literally inventing his way out of poverty. The WWII

army tires my grandpa saw strewn on the street, were not just refuse and reminders of war but in his mind and through his hands, they were recycled and became shoes, mats, and household items. He set to recycle those unclaimed tires, and when I would hear his story as a child and when I reflect on it today, I imagine grandpa was a self-driven industrial seamstress. Ripping, drawing, cutting, selling to send his 11 children to school.

Or, my grandmother who buried her grief and walked the streets of wartorn Manila, while bombing and

looting were going on. With nothing but the clothes on her back, a newborn in her arms and the clutch hand of my mother, walking and knocking for shelter as a new widowed single mother without the slightest clue of a future beyond the next few hours. Grandmother walked and knocked until one day she got here to the U.S., dove into the dumpster and found a typewriter that she imagined would lead her to become a secretary.

And so their legacy of survival is in my blood. I imagine that my grandparents stories of hustling and buried grief and resiliency is not so different from many of the people we serve as lawyers for justice. Imagination, sustained by hope, wrought grit and fueled survival.

The Civil Legal Aid LegacyAs I pass the baton of leadership, I have lead with

this personal filter of imagination, invention, and survival.

It has been well over 50 years since this country declared a “War on Poverty.” And our shared legacy about serving the greater good, serving justice to people together, is one we must embrace in unity.

Today, there is so much at stake and at risk, for the communities we serve, for the livelihoods we have committed to, and the ideals of American democracy and justice. Because of this war on “otherness” — on immigrants, black and brown people, women, children, LGBTQ, people in poverty — and because of the reig-niting of a culture of disequilibrium, we cannot afford

We have a collective history, an

identity, and a trajectory to do

good. Be different. Be hopeful,

in the face of unleashed hate

and the unraveling of our

country.


to lose hope; we cannot afford to lose our stealth imagi-nation, to persist in the invention of solutions is ever more important; we cannot afford to be divided for survival is at stake.

We are called to serve at a time when we are fatigued and in fear. And friends, we must not be afraid to fail. I am not afraid to fail. We must be brave and commit to moving forward as a powerfully allied and impactful community that serves justice with hope and dignity.

We are unable to do that effectively if we ourselves are misaligned. If we are in fear and divided, then the justice we serve is only defensive. When we move together, we have the potential to move justice towards a trajectory that moves forward, broadly and with audacious love.

You have a window of opportunity to come together and love justice, and show to the world that in our small corner of the nation, our small community of warriors for justice, has a big heart and big mind who are as audacious in our advocacy as we are undeterred in our hope.

Our imagination of equal justice for all, our inven-tion of the Alliance for Equal Justice, and our shared legacy of surviving to work for justice are rooted in our nation’s history, connecting us to a time when the political and economic context was ripe for a new kind of movement:

1. I imagine that our work for justice is what legal services attorney and visionary, Edward Sparer,

described as having the potential to be a “transfor-mative kind of advocacy” when performed at the highest level.

Edward Sparer even imagined a Constitutional Right to Survive, and fashioned a bill of rights for the poor, which included guaranteed rights to adequate income, privacy, due process, choice of residence, and freedom from moralistic conditions upon the receipt of benefits.

2. I imagine that our work for justice must always be inventive, and passionately driven to redirect the trajectory which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described as a history that inextricably linked race and poverty, and one that should stir the deepest part of our very souls.

On reflection, if I were to choose one message to pass on as my last few words in our community as a lawyer and leader who grew up in legal aid, I would leave you with this:

On reflection, I am reminded of Dr. King’s take on the delicate balance power and love: We’ve got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and love at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality that constitutes the major crisis of our time. — Last Presidential Address, Southern Christian Leadership Conference 1967

3. How we imagine the kind of world we hope to live in and pass on, that imagined community with each other, is what should stir us into action and we must essentially be ready to engage and evangelize.

Our work must be marked by “Aggressive Advo-cacy” as national housing advocate and professor, Florence Roisman urges.

Why? Because our history, our identity is that…. We are not ordinary lawyers. We are part of the mission to end poverty. Our work is to attack and eliminate the struc-tures that keep people poor. The structures that bar them from what they need to not BE poor. The structures that prevent them from giving their children: » Good education. » Good jobs.

Women of Color: A Series Continued from page 49

Because of this war on “otherness” — on immigrants,

black and brown people, women, children, LGBTQ,

people in poverty — and because of the reigniting of

a culture of disequilibrium, we cannot afford to lose

hope; we cannot afford to lose our stealth imagination,

to persist in the invention of solutions is ever more

important; we cannot afford to be divided for survival is

at stake.

51Summer 2017

» Good housing. » Good healthcare. » Good recreational facilities. » Respect from government and private suppliers

of services. » Fair rules.

And a fair shot at the good things in life.

Origin of Our StoryImagine justice. That is what legal

services in Washington State did. We came together against all odds, and imagined a path forward and invented our solution to survival — to recon-figure ourselves programmatically, culturally, and as a community of legal aid providers with shared values and a common purpose to extend equal justice for all. That was and remains our reason for being. And today, it is ever more so — to marry civil legal needs with civil rights. To align our hearts and minds, wise and compassionate to the propensity of oppositional views of power and love.

Justice ChallengedThrough the years, as the Alliance for Equal Justice

has evolved, we have had to defend the essence of our work for justice — preserving all the tools we use and ensuring that no one population of people gets written off.

Today, our work has sharpened and aimed at extending, transforming the reach of equal justice across the state. But we are faced with the challenge of sharpening our tools further, holding fast as a commu-nity and steeling yourselves as soldiers/warriors for justice. Now more than ever, we must be willing to imagine justice, invent solutions, and stand together to survive.

We must stand and serve together when refugees and immigrants are denied their humanity at the airports and ports of entry; we stand together when inmates are shackled and in solitary confinement, only to lose dignity and their lives; we must stand together when the families who harvest and serve our nation’s

food are forced to work under the remnants of Jim Crow and vestiges of slavery; we must stand together to shine a light on the continued colonization and depravation of indigenous communities; we must stand together at every front in the face of a determined regression to racialized incarceration. We must stand undaunted because the survival of more than our movement depends on it, the survival of a vision for how we imagine a better world is at stake.

It seems so long ago, when Dr. King delivered his last speech in the sweltering spring of 1968. He spoke of the need for continued struggle, the need to march ahead — that no dogs, no fire hose, no injunction would keep the nation from moving forward.

Well, among the least of all people, I have not yet been to that mountain-top, and this is certainly not my last speech. But trust that I will keep climb-ing with all of you ….

To Imagine justice. Invent solutions. Stay deter-mined to Survive.

Love justice.

1 Aurora Martin is a social innovator, developing partner-ships to re-imagine justice and invent a virtuous cycle of public good. As an inaugural 2017 American Bar Association Innovation Fellow, Aurora will be launch-ing her social justice startup and developing, among other projects, a new virtual platform for a more efficient meeting of the minds matching scholars and advocacy organizations to advance research and policy. She aims to collaborate with a diversity of thought partners and creatives to convene cross-sector experts, produce proj-ects, and incubate innovative ideas in the public interest. She has served in Washington’s legal aid community for nearly twenty years, having grown up from intern to Executive Director at Columbia Legal Services, a social justice program whose mission is to engage in systemic advocacy on behalf of people living in poverty through impact litigation, policy reform, and multime-dia communications. Aurora may be reached at [email protected].

Our work is to attack and

eliminate the structures

that keep people poor. The

structures that bar them from

what they need to not BE poor.


Jan Allen May, the Chair of MIE Journal Committee and member of the MIE Board of Directors, celebrates his 40th year in legal services. He has served on the MIE Journal Committee for more than 25 years and has authored 40 articles for the Journal. In all, he has written over 125 published articles on legal services. He has conducted national training in legal services for 40 years from the Virgin Islands to Ontario, from Guam to Alaska and most everywhere in between.

Jan is the Executive Director of Legal Coun-sel for the Elderly (LCE), an affiliate of AARP. He joined the organization in 1977 as the only staff attorney in the program and served as managing attorney for many years. Jan has been LCE’s Exec-utive Director since 2002. He has played a key role in growing the organization to become a medium-sized public interest law firm with 25 attorneys, serving 6,000 clients a year. Jan oversees a long-term care ombudsman program, a legal hotline (the first of its kind in the nation), a robust pro bono program emphasizing both individual cases and systemic reform, a consumer unit, a housing unit, a public benefits unit, self-help offices and specialized services for homebound clients.

Jan recently stated, “MIE has provided an indispensable resource for me and others around the country in trying to grow successful legal

services programs in ways that maxi-mize successful outcomes for clients while ensuring that our organizations are great places to work.”

Jan’s colleagues on the MIE Jour-nal Committee have this to say about him: “Jan has served as an unwavering MIE supporter and participant, bring-ing his intellect and good humor to lead the difficult process of visioning

new MIE Journal content and features, solicit-ing articles, and editing and writing them. He has trained a large portion of the new executive directors in our community at MIE New Execu-tive Director Training, bringing experience, exper-tise and critical thinking to those gatherings. He thinks deeply about how organizations work and should run, bringing serious consideration to the challenges of achieving excellence, and appropri-ate humor to the difficulties that repeatedly stand in the way of good management. He is calm in moments of crisis, generous with his time, and quick with a smile. This organization owes him deeply.”

Our MIE Journal Committee Chair Celebrates 40 Years of Service

Catherine CarrPhiladelphia

Amy JohnsonArkansas Access to Justice Commission

Yvonne MariajimenezNeighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

Ed MarksNew Mexico Legal Aid

Jan MayAARP/Legal Counsel for the Elderly

Michele StormsACLU-WA

Betty Balli TorresTexas Access to Justice Foundation

Board of Directors

César Torres, ChairNorthwest Justice Project

Eric Mittelstadt, Vice ChairUtah Legal Services

Adrienne Worthy, SecretaryLegal Aid of West Virginia

Steven Pelletier, TreasurerNorthwest Justice Project

Mary AsburyLegal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati

Jennifer BentleyMichigan State Bar Foundation

Jacquelynne BowmanGreater Boston Legal Services

Journal Committee

Joann LeeLegal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles

Patrick McIntyreWashington State Alliance for Equal Justice

Margaret MooresLegal Services of Greater Miami

Kimberly SanchezCommunity Legal Services of Mid-Florida

John TobinNew Hampshire

Jan May, ChairAARP/Legal Counsel for the Elderly

Shawn BoehringerMaryland Legal Aid

Lauren BreenNeighborhood Legal Services, Inc., Buffalo

Catherine CarrPhiladelphia

M. Victor GeminianiHawai’i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice

Jon LaramoreIndiana Legal Services

53Summer 2017

mobility, and the presence or absence of access to justice for people living in poverty.

The stakes are high. Whatever you decide to do, it is at least as important now as it ever has been. But also know this: because we are good at the work, it will make a decisive difference for the people we serve. All the best to you and your colleagues in these challenging times.

1 John Bouman has been president of the Shriver Center since 2007, having been the leader of its advocacy program since 1996. He was a leader in the design and implementation of positive aspects of Illinois’ new welfare law in 1997, and he spearheaded the statewide


efforts in Illinois to create both the FamilyCare program, which provides health care insurance for up to up to 400,000 working poor parents of minor children, and All Kids, the first state plan to extend health cover-age to every child. He has consulted and co-counseled with advocates in many states; helped draft numerous pieces of legislation; given hundreds of presentations; published extensively; and served as counsel in numer-ous federal and state cases, including Memisovski v. Maram, which established substantial reforms in chil-dren’s health care in Illinois. He currently is working on state-based implementation of federal health care reform and leads the Responsible Budget Coalition, an effort bringing together more than 200 diverse organiza-tions to advocate for state revenue and budget reform in Illinois. John may be reached at [email protected].

Diversity and Inclusion Continued from page 11

& Defender Association in Detroit, MI as the Deputy Chief Counsel for Broad Based Advocacy where she was able to both manage one of the law groups — the Private Attorney Involvement Unit — and also work with various community groups to further the goals of the program. Gina received her Juris Doctorate from Southwestern University School of Law and her Masters degree in Human Resource Management from Villanova University. Gina may be reached at [email protected].

Brenda L. Marrero, Esq. is currently Deputy Direc-tor of Operations at Community Legal Services, Inc. in Philadelphia. Prior to this role, Brenda was a Supervising Attorney in the SSI and Aging and Disabilities Units at CLS, devoting her practice to representing adults and kids in SSI disability appeals, and representing low-income seniors in accessing long term care benefits, nursing home care and Medicare/Medicaid. Brenda received her J.D. from Temple University Beasley School of Law. She is a co-chair of CLS’s Diversity and Inclu-sion Committee and an active member of various sub-committees. Brenda is currently working with a group of staff to develop and create CLS’s first ever Diversity and Inclusion Officer. Brenda may be reached at [email protected].

1 Tiela Chalmers is the Chief Executive Officer of the Alameda County Bar Association (ACBA) and its Volunteer Legal Services Corporation (VLSC). She has been a leader in the fields of legal services and pro bono for 20 years. Tiela began her career doing business litigation (and pro bono) at the firm of Farella, Braun + Martel in San Francisco. She then moved Volunteer Legal Services Program of the Bar Association of San Francisco (VLSP), where she went from housing work to becoming the Executive Director, and had the privi-lege of working closely with Tanya Neiman before her untimely death. She worked for three years as a consul-tant for legal aid programs, law firms, other nonprofits, and national organizations focusing on legal services for low-income communities. One of her larger projects involved building and coordinating the Shriver Housing Project in Los Angeles, the largest of the “civil Gideon” pilot projects in California. She also brings the Poverty Simulation (a 3-hour experiential training for pro bono attorneys and others, giving the participants a visceral understanding of our clients) to law firms, legal aid offices, law schools, and other venues. In 2014, she was named as the Chief Executive Officer of the ACBA and VLSC, where she is working on several projects, includ-ing building a Legal Incubator to address the needs of modest means clients, and creating a joint pilot media-tion project in unlawful detainer cases with the Alameda County Superior Court. Tiela has served as the chair of the State Bar of California Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services, and the Chair of the state-wide Pro Bono Coordinating Committee. She currently

Walk a Mile in My Shoes Continued from page 14

serves on the board of Pro Bono Net. She is a frequent speaker at local, statewide and national conferences, and has published on legal aid issues. Tiela is a graduate of Swarthmore College and UC Hastings College of the Law. Tiela may be reached at [email protected].








White House, 2017 Tax Reform for Economic Growth and American Jobs (2017). http://pdfs.taxnotes.com/2017/2017-51550_TNTDocs_Trump-Tax-Reform-Plan.pdf.


4. Litigation: If we are in a block grant world, with-out a federal floor for eligibility and permissible program rules, it will be more difficult to challenge the policies themselves. But many state law provi-sions may remain in effect. And state or federal constitutional protections — including right to adequate notice and opportunity for a hearing — will continue to be an available and a crucial tool. A number of successful pieces of litigation have been brought under TANF during the last two decades. Some litigation strategies will only emerge as local legal services advocates understand how the poli-cies or procedures are playing out on the ground, and may require documentation of pattern and practice to establish violations of laws, for example, whether certain Medicaid policies violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

5. Individual client representation and advice: It will be essential for legal aid to continue to represent families as they obtain and retain benefits, demon-strate compliance with various program rules, and seek exemptions if they are available. For example, more clients may be required to pay premiums under Medicaid and legal aid advocates may need to help them understand their obligations, comply with the requirements, and prove compliance. Direct communication with individuals interacting with the system is essential for advocates to learn what is happening in real-world implementation and for clients to understand how they can receive benefits and what they can or must do to qualify.

1 Liz Schott has worked on TANF issues at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities from 1997–2000 and since rejoining the Center in 2006. She worked at legal services programs in Washington State from 1978–1997, serving as statewide coordinator for public benefits for 10 of those years. Liz may be reached at [email protected].

Jennifer Wagner focuses on Medicaid eligibility and integration among safety net programs at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. She was an Associ-ate Director with the Illinois Department of Human Services from 2010–2015. Prior to that, she worked for the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. Jennifer may be reached at [email protected].


Protecting Health Access Continued from page 43

Catherine McKee, Sec. 1115 Waiver Requests: Transpar-ency & Opportunity for Public Comment (April 2017), http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/waivers/sec-1115-waiver-requests-transparency-opportunity-public-comment; and NHeLP Publications on Waivers generally, at http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/waivers.

4 For more information on children’s health, see NHeLP’s publications regarding children at, http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/child-and-adolescent-health.

5 For more information on assessment tools, see e.g., Jane Perkins, Q&A: Using Assessment Tools to Decide Medic-aid Coverage: Case Developments (May 2016), http://www.healthlaw.org/publications/search-publications/QA-using-assessment-tools (including two companion papers listed); David Machledt, Evaluating Functional Assessments for Older Adults: Resource Allocation (June 2017); see also MACPAC, Functional Assessments for Long-Term Services and Supports, https://www.macpac.gov/publication/functional-assessments-for-long-term-services-and-supports/ (summarizing the tools used in various states and including an Excel© chart).

6 See NHeLP publications on Medicaid Managed Care, in particular the rule changes announced in 2016.

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http://pdfs.taxnotes.com/2017/2017-51550_TNTDocs_Trump-Tax-Reform-Plan.pdf





http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/waivers/sec-1115-waiver-requests-transparency-opportunity-public-comment



http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/waivers

http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/medicaid/waivers

http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/child-and-adolescent-health

http://www.healthlaw.org/issues/child-and-adolescent-health

http://www.healthlaw.org/publications/search-publications/QA-using-assessment-tools



https://www.macpac.gov/publication/functional-assessments-for-long-term-services-and-supports/



55Summer 2017

reassessment of who we are not serving and why. As this article surmises, some of the most marginal-ized communities will not find their way to a legal aid office due to a variety of barriers. These barriers can be addressed by innovative models incorporating “local lawyering” that connect lawyers more directly to communities that are underserved and change how legal services are delivered. The credibility and trust that these programs create, opens up a dialogue with the community that encourages collaboration, opportu-nities for funding and long term sustainability.

1 Kimberly Sanchez is the current Executive Director at Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida (CLSMF). After graduating from the University of Miami School of Law in 2005, Kimberly began her legal career in the public interest with Legal Services of Greater Miami. After a few years in private practice representing Central Florida consumers, she then came to CLSMF where she led CLSMF’s Housing and Fair Housing Units until her promotion to Advocacy/Deputy Director. As the Advo-cacy and Deputy Director, she managed the litigation for the law firm and worked to create organization-wide litigation goals and vision. She supervised and managed the firm’s substantive law units, including thirty lawyers and numerous staff persons in eight offices spanning 12 counties. As Executive Director, Kimberly is responsible for overseeing all the day-to-day operations of the firm, leading a management team composed of financial, fundraising, operations and compliance profession-als. She works closely with CLSMF’s staff and Board of Directors to ensure that CLSMF continues to thrive as a non-profit law firm and to provide high-quality legal assistance to low-income and vulnerable populations. Kimberly may be reached at [email protected].

Kirsten Anderson is the Litigation Director at Southern Legal Counsel (SLC), a non-profit public inter-est law firm that works statewide in Florida on behalf of individuals who otherwise would not have access to the justice system to address systemic civil and human rights issues. She joined SLC as a staff attorney in 2007 and litigates complex civil rights cases in federal and state trial and appellate courts. Since 2007, she has directed SLC’s Ending Homelessness Project which utilizes litigation, policy advocacy, community education and outreach to remove legal barriers to ending home-lessness. Kirsten may be reached at [email protected].

Local Lawyering Continued from page 40

Amy Petkovsek, Esq., is currently the Director of Advocacy for Training and Pro Bono at Maryland Legal Aid. Amy oversees the Joining Forces Veterans Hotline and manages Maryland Legal Aid’s Commu-nity Lawyering Initiative, including the “Lawyer in the Library” statewide program. Amy has served as co-chair of the Partners for Justice Conference since 2014, and is currently the Vice Chair of the Maryland Bar Asso-ciation’s Delivery of Legal Services section council. Amy has also presented at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association’s annual conference since 2014. Prior to serving in her current position, Amy repre-sented children for seven years in Maryland Legal Aid’s child advocacy practice. She also served as an appellate law clerk for the Honorable Sally D. Adkins. Amy serves on the board of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law Alumni, is the volunteer camp director of the Carroll County 4-H Residential Camping Program, and coordinates the Loaves and Fishes home-less food delivery program at St. Ignatius Parish in Balti-more, Maryland. Any may be reached at [email protected].

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