3 Remote Ways to Support Access to Justice

At Paladin, we’re lucky to be able to work remotely with minimal impact during COVID-19, but we know many others don’t have that luxury. The outbreak might worsen pro bono clients’ economic and legal situations, the very communities we seek to serve.

In light of that, we’re encouraging law firms, corporate teams, and lawyers to continue supporting access to justice from afar:

1. Take on a remote pro bono case: Whether it’s helping veterans receive disability benefits, answering civil law questions over the phone, or counseling clients on preventing eviction, there are many ways to help low-income clients directly from your phone or computer. Check out your local bar association’s website, take a look at the ABA’s nationwide Free Legal Answers project, and contact your firm’s pro bono counsel. You can even team up with colleagues and get started on a new remote opportunity together.
2. Make a donation: Legal service organizations are stretched thin. With clients losing employment, at risk of homelessness, facing quarantine with an abusive partner, or fearful of seeking medical care due to immigration status, making a donation to a local legal services organization will help these crucial providers continue their work.
3. Help develop an AI issue-spotting tool: Join the Stanford Legal Design Lab and Suffolk Law’s Legal Innovation and Technology Lab’s AI training project, Learned Hands. Learned Hands is a game in which you spot legal issues in real people’s stories. Each time you play, you train a machine learning model to identify legal issues. This model will be used to develop access to justice technologies that connect people in need with public legal help resources.

If you’re feeling powerless, remember, you have the skills to help. However you contribute, you’ll be supporting vulnerable people and harnessing the power of lawyers to build access to justice even in our most difficult times.