2024 NLADA Annual Conference

We will explore how civil legal aid and law students can collaborate with Tribes to enhance access to justice within tribal court systems. Tribal courts face unique hurdles, including jurisdictional complexities, resource limitations, and cultural barriers. This session will delve into these challenges, highlighting how Skagit Legal Aid, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, and the Native American Law Student Association at Seattle University Law School created educational pathways, mentorship programs, and collaborative initiatives designed to prepare and support new attorneys dedicated to practice in tribal communities.

Topics to be addressed in this presentation include:
--How legal services providers can effectively build capacity in rural communities;
--How the unique needs of rural communities can shape and direct legal advocacy and education efforts;
--How to engage in cross-collaborative community education; and
--How to scaffold translating legal advocacy into community self-advocacy.

The United States Justice Gap has reached an unprecedented 92%, steadily increasing over the past decade. With this alarming trend in the US, the urgency for innovative solutions has never been more critical. When legal aid organizations band together as a cohort to pilot a new project, the impact reaches even further.
Alaska Legal Services successfully applied for LSC’s Disaster Relief funding on behalf of five tribally serving legal aids to support 12 new Community Justice Worker (CJW) paid positions. Join our workshop to learn directly from our cohort leadership team about the transformative impact as well as some challenges of expanding the 'Alaska Model'. Hear firsthand accounts from CJWs on the front lines, sharing their experiences and successes in delivering vital legal services in underserved communities. Discover how this collaborative effort is reshaping access to justice nationwide.

As people who have chosen to lend their hearts and minds to the cause of public defense, we often see ourselves as our clients' most vital and fiercest champion. But when it comes to the daily life of practice, all too often the scope and urgency of our clients' needs can prove overwhelming, especially in an under-resourced and over-extended work environment. We want to do more, but it feels like we are forever doing more with less. This session will focus on how re-aligning our work through a client-led lens can open up new, adaptable, and innovative ways of fighting for our clients’ needs both inside and outside the courtroom. We will outline a theory of collaborative defense, illustrating what successful interdisciplinary practice can look like, and showcasing some immediate things offices can do to strengthen their ability to operate as a client-led collaborative defender. We will conclude with a vision of what this new framework can do to expand how public defenders are valued and defined by both their governments and communities. We know we need to be doing more---so how can we start doing it and increase the support we get to grow?

 County jails and state prisons across the country charge individuals serving time the supposed costs of incarceration. The laws authorizing these practices, referred to as “pay-to-stay,” have been subjected to little scrutiny by the courts and the public. But pay-to-stay fees threaten to entrap those subjected to the criminal system in substantial debt they will never be able to pay off. More advocacy around this issue is needed to elevate the stories of those who have been impacted and turn the tide of public opinion against these practices. Because legal aid attorneys and public defenders are often in the best position to encounter these fees—as part of sentencing or a civil collection action—they play a crucial role in challenging the practices surrounding their imposition and collection.

This session will focus on combatting pay-to-stay fees through affirmative litigation and challenging such fees when they are imposed as part of a criminal sentence. Using examples of litigation filed in Connecticut and Iowa, the panelists will discuss the litigation strategies that have been used to challenge the collection of fees. As pay-to-stay is often imposed as part of a criminal sentence, the panelists will also discuss potential defenses to its imposition, most notably the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment, which is an under-utilized tool for combatting such fines. There will also be a discussion on the real harms caused by pay-to-stay, which will approach the topic from a litigation standpoint and may also discuss academic perspectives, depending on the availability of panelists

Public defenders, Legal Aid lawyers and pro bono attorneys have long faced the reality of trying to help clients with a legal problem while the client also struggles to secure housing, food, clothing, transportation, medical care and other necessities. Advocates are acutely aware that these life challenges often create barriers to effective legal representation. Nonetheless, Rule of Professional Conduct 1.8(e) in most jurisdictions prohibits attorneys from providing financial assistance to clients in connection with pending or contemplated litigation. In 2020, the ABA adopted a new model rule 1.8(e), also known as “the humanitarian exception,” allowing public interest lawyers to provide such assistance in certain circumstances and a few states have followed suit. This session will discuss Rule 1.8(e), its application in the context of legal aid and public defender work, and the benefits and challenges related to implementing the humanitarian exception.

Staff working in public interest settings, including civil legal service and public defender organizations, are significantly impacted by the tolls of this work. Burnout and vicarious trauma impact their ability to zealously represent the clients they serve. Typically, conversations revolve around the concept of "self-care," which often does not provide individuals with enough support to navigate these challenges. This presentation will not only explore the unique challenges that the staff of these organizations face but also provide skills and strategies to sustain public interest legal staff while doing this critical work.

This past year, attorneys from the Science and Surveillance Project and Civil Justice Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services began collaborating to tackle what we identified as a major uptick in prolonged phone seizures by law enforcement and prosecutors. With the increasing ease of accessing and extracting data from phones, criminal defendants face significant privacy risks that extend beyond the immediate inconvenience of losing their cell phones. These risks include potential use of data for prosecution, as well as more insidious threats such as the use of information in databases, AI, and predictive policing systems. Drawing on our experience from the Science and Surveillance Project and the Civil Justice Practice, we will share effective tactics and collaborative approaches to fortify protections for our clients' digital privacy. Our goal is to illuminate these risks for fellow public defenders and demonstrate that there are numerous avenues to challenge the seizure and retention of clients' data.

The presentation will begin by exploring the historical and contemporary contexts of tribal sovereignty, emphasizing the unique legal and cultural landscapes that shape tribal communities and their justice systems. Understanding this background is essential for fostering meaningful and respectful partnerships.  

The presentation will highlight the multifaceted importance of partnerships between tribal communities and organizations that serve tribal members. These partnerships can bridge gaps in resources, knowledge, and infrastructure, ensuring that tribal members have better access to justice, healthcare, education, and economic opportunities. By working together, tribal communities and their partners can develop sustainable solutions that are culturally relevant and tailored to the specific needs of each community. In some tribal justice systems, a public defender or civil legal aid attorney are not always guaranteed. Tribal members may be unfamiliar with the law and how to navigate the justice system pro se. Native Americans in urban settings may be geographically distant from their community, and building sustainable partnerships can help connect them to resources and services that are accessible through their community.

The presentation will feature several case studies and success stories that illustrate the tangible benefits of effective partnerships. These examples will showcase collaborative initiatives that have led to improved legal services, enhanced community health, economic development, and the preservation of cultural heritage. Through these stories, participants will gain insights into the practical aspects of building and maintaining successful partnerships with tribal communities.

This session will discuss best practices in designing training programs for community justice workers that have the ability to scale to meet community demand. It will focus on what the evidence shows us about effectiveness of training programs and why using low-barrier adult education models are needed to achieve scalability.

The Holistic Defense Project is a partnership between the AK Public Defender Agency and Alaska Legal Services Corporation that provides past and current public defender clients with a team of professionals to assist them with social service and legal needs. The HD project is a multidisciplinary team of professionals who strive to help clients address the underlying problems and circumstances that brought them to the legal system in the first place. ALSC's Community Justice Workers--locally embedded, culturally appropriate and community connected legal helpers work directly with lawyers to offer wrap around services to PD clients, putting them in a better position overall and less likely to come back into contact with the justice system.

This panel aims to break the mold of normalized perfectionism by sharing real-life experiences of 1) caving in negotiations, 2) missing an opportunity for testimony, 3) making a filling error, and 4) losing at trial. Each panelist will share lessons learned from cases they did not win. New attorneys need to know that the practice of law is just that, that we all learn and grow from our losses – oftentimes even more than we do from our wins.

The panel will share how each of their practices changed after their losses. The lessons learned go beyond any specific practice area and focus on being client-centered, trauma-informed, prepared, and brave. Part One: Panelist share their losses and what they learned Part Two: Practice learning and vulnerability. Attendees will be split into small groups to share with each other a loss and how they applied the lessons from that loss to their practice.

A panel of LSC and non-LSC legal aid attorneys from three states will present on SSA Anti-Alienation violations in state criminal court debt practices. Specifically, the panel will focus on how these practices violate federal anti-alienation rules and the litigation and advocacy strategies that have been used to address these violations in their states. Panelists will be from Arkansas, Iowa, and Virginia legal aids.

Public defenders and civil legal aid attorneys should be partners in the fight to ameliorate the devastating consequences of the criminal court system. Unfortunately, we are often siloed from one another. How do we consider the potential housing and employment consequences of various outcomes in criminal cases? How can we use those tangible consequences in negotiations with the state and for mitigation purposes?
Navigating intentionally coercive systems in which the concept of "choice" is a farce, we must use an integrated approach whenever possible to adequately advise people we represent about the various outcomes. In this workshop, we will explore these concepts and provide examples of the ways we work together in this fight.