This document lists how to classify case outcomes according to our “standard outcomes” framework. Our standard outcomes can be thought of more as the “social outcomes” of our work, rather than legal outcomes per se.

Open Door Legal has an explicitly anti-poverty mission and, as a result, we have chosen to frame case outcomes in ways that would help our donors understand our anti-poverty impact. This generally means outcomes that can be related back to the impact on the client’s assets, safety, education, or health.

In order to mark a closed case as “positive,” at least one of these outcomes needs to be indicated during the case close step.

Causality - when assessing outcomes, staff must only indicate outcomes that passes “but-for” causality. This means that the outcome would not have been obtained “but for” the provision of legal services. If there is more than 50% uncertainty about whether our services created a positive outcome, the case should be classified as “unconfirmed.” Unconfirmed does not mean that our services had no positive social effect, just that we cannot verify the effect we had.

This should conform to our definition of universal access and each practice group’s case opening rules.

Note that these Standard Outcomes are different/separate from our “Grant-specific Outcomes,” which must be inputted independently and are reported to specific grants.

Outcomes & Explanations

Examples & Guidance:

Relationship to Our Theory of Change

Since our standard outcomes are validated anti-poverty outcomes that we have the documentation to prove, they form the core of our social return on investment (SROI) theory. You can imagine our impact operating at four theoretical levels:

  1. Positive cases: documented evidence of relevant social outcomes that leads to increased assets for our clients and their children - either directly or through improved lifetime earnings.
  2. “Unconfirmed” cases and advice intakes: based on research, we estimate 34% of these engagements resulted in a positive social outcome for clients
  3. Deterrence: based on social science models, we estimate the likelihood other bad actors will commit future acts based on variables like the type of claim and the reach of the adverse party. In the same way that a vaccine can dramatically reduce disease incidence through herd immunity, the more people we help more deterred bad actors will be from committing future harm, ultimately reducing the number of legal issues community members experience

The above three are included in our SROI, which you can read more about in our white paper. This is our estimated aggregated direct impact on community assets. In the last several years alone, we estimate to have generated tens of millions of dollars in current and future assets for low-income community members. We estimate that for every $1 we have spent, we have generated $21 in assets.

  1. Local economies: of course, when our clients obtain assets - it doesn’t just stay in their bank accounts. They use it to buy homes, to create businesses, to pay for education, and to purchase goods and services from other community members. It’s estimated that money will circulate 9x in this way in a healthy local economy. So, we can presume that local economic activity will grow 9x greater than the assets we generate.
  2. A thriving community: with greater economic activity and greater equity of income and assets comes a thriving community and a larger tax base to pay for human services. This is, ultimately, how poverty will be dramatically reduced. And it will all be held up by the rule of law; a shared reality that even the most marginalized member of our community can enforce their civil rights.

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Report on Standard Outcome selections after Oct 26 2023