Legal Aids and the Art of Mastering Community-Building
Undoubtedly, legal aid organizations in this country provide incredibly important services for those that otherwise could not afford legal help. For many, these services are the difference between a roof over their head and a crowded shelter. When you impact your clients’ lives in this way, you have the opportunity to make a difference in your community, as well. Through meaningful engagement and outreach, you can cultivate a strong, lasting community relationship that stays with the individual during and after their legal resolution.
Engaging the community around you can be a difficult task, which is why we’ve developed suggestions for some of the best ways to develop a positive, impactful, and fulfilling community relationship.
Building Ladders
An unfortunate part of running a legal aid organization is that it is impossible to offer help to everyone that reaches out. While these limitations are made to ensure there’s capacity to give focused and attentive help to each client, it can still leave many facing uncertainty regarding their legal situation. With these walls between them and resolving their problem, what is needed most is some guidance, or what I call “Building Ladders.” These “ladders” are resources offered to the public or events conducted by your organization that can help people help themselves.
Legal Self-Help Guides
Choosing to represent yourself can be intimidating, especially when faced with the challenge of understanding complex legal jargon. The combination of these two factors often leads most people to give up before they've even started. As a legal aid organization, you have intimate knowledge of the legal issues facing your community. With this knowledge, you can develop comprehensive legal self-help guides. Legal self-help guides are impactful resources that guide users through the process of approaching and resolving a variety of legal issues. With its plain language, procedural-focused approach, users get an easy to understand, informative guide that cuts away the complicated conceptual information and helps them take control of their issue.
Legal self-help guides not only help your community help themselves, but it boosts traffic on websites, social media pages, and at outreach events as more and more people interact with the tools you’ve created. Creating these guides involves the collection and analysis of case data within your organization. By identifying 4-5 common case types people approach your office with, you can determine what legal procedures would be the most helpful to have a guide for. Published guides can be posted directly to your website, on social media, or as printed pamphlets to have in-office or give away at outreach events.
Some examples can be found from legal aid organizations all across the country, like:
- The People’s Law Library of Maryland provides information on general and complex legal matters, with a robust list of resources. Their guides are found directly on their website, organized by common user questions.
- Illinois Legal Aid Online also provides legal self-help guides on a variety of legal topics. Users can scan through topics that apply to their legal matters and access detailed guides. For example, users seeking help getting custody of their children can follow their detailed Custody Guide.
- Swords to Plowshares in California also provides their community of Veterans with guides to help them navigate problems unique to Veterans.
Building Clientele
Community outreach is typically a core part of acquiring clients for many legal services organizations. Outreach events also serve as a great opportunity to interact with the community you serve. These events offer the unique opportunity to interact with a wide range of people and advertise your services, your newly published self-help guides, or conduct a seminar on legal issues facing your community. Here are two core ways to ensure your community outreach plan is as impactful as possible:
Having Designated Community Outreach Staff
Enacting community outreach strategies can be incredibly time consuming as a project tacked onto another employee’s workload. To ensure engagement with the community you serve is given the attention and effort it requires, consider hiring a new staff member or a team of staff members to handle all things community outreach. Look for people who are passionate, charismatic, and creative. These folks will serve as the face of the organization within the community and will expand the team’s influence–ensure it is a positive one!
Set Up Regularly-Scheduled Community Events
Remaining a consistent and dependable part of the community is incredibly important to nurturing your position as a neighborhood resource.
Consider:
- Monthly seminars that present pertinent legal issues facing the community around you. These can be held at local libraries, schools, or recreation centers.
- Online webinars, which can be recorded and uploaded to social media or the organization website to reach a larger audience.
- Partnering with local community organizations to organize city-wide events your organization can table at and offer your services as well as the resources you’ve created.
- Western New England University School of Law’s Center for Social Justice has taken a creative approach with their outreach efforts, deploying a “Justice Bus” (pictured above) to bring legal aid to their community.
When you take the time to develop a personal connection with the community you serve, people feel less hesitant to reach out and the legal world becomes a bit less mystified. Remember: your clients are also your neighbors!
Social Media
In this digital age, having a presence on social media is key to expanding–and maintaining–the influence of your organization. Posting once a week provides a steady, reliable stream of content the public can engage with.
Consider:
- Posting videos of outreach events, attorney Q&As, or what a day in the office looks like. Check out the variety of content some legal organizations have uploaded to Tiktok, and the fun they’re having doing it:some text
- Center for Arkansas Legal Services advertises their events and turns legal information into fun skits
- Northwest Justice Project uploads daily informational videos on common legal problems facing their community
- South Carolina Legal Services has seen tremendous success through their interactive, informational, and funny, lighthearted videos.
- Monthly newsletters that showcase works written by staff on issues they are passionate about as well as an overview of events being held that month.
- Posts that share information regarding developing legal issues–like relevant policy changes at the local, state, and federal level.
Taking the time to develop engaging social media content can boost engagement and name recognition, opening up the organization to new funding opportunities and volunteer help as your reputation in the community grows.
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At A2J Tech, we have a passionate and dedicated team of individuals whose backgrounds in legal aid and design come together to produce beautifully innovative and impactful work. Let our team take the stress of building a marketing plan from the ground up out of your hands. Explore our website for the services we offer, work we’ve accomplished, and testimonials from satisfied former clients. Reach out to us when you’re ready to get started!
Conclusion
There are many ways to get involved in your community, some more involved than others. Regardless, the effort you put into building relationships with the people you serve has a lasting impact. Seeking legal help does not have to be an additional emotional taxation on someone. Be loud and active and engaging. Let your community know you’re in their corner and watch as it grows and thrives.
