This fact sheet summarizes the mission of Poverty Justice Solutions, an initiative that seeks to close the justice gap in New York City by expanding the pool of attorneys available to represent low-income New Yorkers in Housing Court and apply an innovative problem-solving approach to housing court matters across the city.
On our 'New Thinking' podcast, Nashville's top public defender Dawn Deaner explains why she thinks public defending has been "set up to fail" and how working to engage the community—both those who need public defenders and those who never will—is a lifeline for a profession in crisis.
This planning guide is intended to assist courts to better meet the needs of self-represented litigants in domestic violence cases. It describes specific practices that courts can adapt, proposes ideas for enhancing existing programs, and suggests strategies for working with community partners in order to more holistically meet the diverse needs of domestic violence litigants. The information in the guide is based on the recommendations of national experts who helped identify core values and critical strategies relevant in domestic violence cases.
As part of our podcast series on prosecutor power, Scott Hechinger of Brooklyn Defender Services offers a view from the other side of the adversarial process, discussing prosecutors' impact at key decision-points in his clients' cases and the prospects for reform in a time of increasing scrutiny of prosecutorial discretion.
Jordan Dressler, the director of the recently created New York City Office of Civil Justice, discusses Mayor Bill de Blasio's ambitious five-year plan to provide free or low-cost legal assistance to every low-income New Yorker facing eviction, deportation, or other potentially life-altering civil proceedings.
Poverty Justice Solutions fellows sat down with New York City Housing Court Supervising Judge Jean Schneider for a roundtable discussion on changes underway in housing court. Judge Schneider commented on the growing number of tenants with legal representation, as well as the importance of procedural reforms for promoting access to justice.
For a justice system to be truly just, it must be accessible to all individuals. However, litigants may face challenges when courts are not responsive to their cultural identity. For survivors of domestic violence, these challenges present additional barriers towards accessing justice and obtaining fair outcomes.
For a justice system to be truly just, it must be accessible to all individuals. However, litigants may face challenges when courts are not responsive to their cultural identities. For survivors of domestic violence, these challenges present additional barriers to accessing justice and obtaining fair outcomes. Watch Building a Culture of Justice and read the viewers' guide to learn how justice-system staff and stakeholders can serve litigant needs by implementing culturally-responsive practices in courts handling domestic violence cases.
In this New Thinking podcast, Harvard Law School Professor James Greiner talks with Aubrey Fox about why he launched the Access to Justice Lab, which has researched topics as varied as how to provide self-help materials to defendants involved in civil debt collection cases to the effectiveness of commonly used pretrial assessment interview tools in criminal court. Greiner also discusses what he sees as a strategy for improving the legal profession's openness to evidence-based thinking.
Undertaken to inform the work of the Center for Court Innovation’s Legal Hand project, this street-intercept study in Crown Heights, Brooklyn documents the most common civil legal needs facing the community, and how, if at all, community members address these needs.
