- Universal access means we guarantee free legal representation on all viable civil legal claims or defenses for adult residents of our service areas, with the ultimate goal of reducing poverty. We also strive to be neighborhood-based, be available, and provide legal information but these are secondary goals when compared to guaranteed legal representation. (ODL’s Program model Statement).
- Guaranteed legal representation is more important than timeliness, but if help is not provided in a timely enough manner it will not be effective.
- As reducing poverty is our ultimate goal, we aim to make sure that clients maintain and obtain the resources that research says make the biggest difference in reducing poverty: housing, safety, money, education, and health. This is codified in our standard outcomes.
- Our goal is to maximize our impact by deploying the minimum amount of resources necessary to reach our client’s goals. Ultimately, we want to serve the most residents possible and believe that with proper triage, a lack of capacity won’t be a barrier to helping.
- This means that the scope of help given should be proportional to the change that help will have on the outcome (ie- we don’t need to sub in full scope rep if it’s not going to make any difference in the legal outcome vs the person being pro per with our assistance).
- We aim to be demand-driven, meaning we are responsive to the issues that come to us, rather than seek out specific types of cases or grants where we don’t already have the clientele.
- However, with that said, our programmatic goal is to eventually offer legal services in all areas of law where, without an attorney, residents will lose or fail to obtain the above 5 resources. We currently believe (but it could change) that we don’t need to provide legal representation where the government already provides a free attorney (criminal, dependency, and potentially deportation defense), where another non-profit that specializes in representing clients on that type of case is willing to take the case, or where a private contingency fee attorney is also willing to take the case.
- Thus, ODL staff doesn’t personally have to provide all representation, successful referrals are still considered as a fulfillment of our mission.
- We are not focused on serving any specific population, except to the extent that we locate our offices within historically marginalized communities, and will focus our outreach and cultural competency efforts on specific populations.
- Currently, for residents of our service area who are over-income, small businesses (excluding sole proprietors), nonprofits, and residents with worker’s comp, medical malpractice, traffic/parking tickets, or those who want to evict a tenant, our long-term goal is to create a network that would ensure these residents could get help from the private bar and/or other organizations.
- For residents between 50% and 125% AMI, our focus will be on providing referrals to sliding scale/low bono attorneys. We may choose to assist residents over 50% AMI if funded by grantors specifically to do so, but as this may jeopardize our IOLTA funding, such a decision will be made on a case-by-case basis.