Our Partners
Legal Link is a partnership-driven organization. We invite you to learn more about how we collaborate and become a community partner, advocate, and supporter today.
Community Partners
In California, Legal Link partners with over 70 leading community-based organizations that are deeply integrated into, and trusted by, the communities they serve. Our work furthers the goals of our partner organizations, creates a pipeline of Community Justice Workers with knowledge of the legal system, and fills a critical access to justice gap. A few of our current community partners are featured below.
Legal Partners
In addition to ongoing partnership with our local legal aid organizations, Legal Link also works with legal organizations across the country that want to launch justice worker programs building on our learnings and curriculum.
Advocacy Partners
Legal Link supports the expansion of Community Justice Worker programs at every level through informal partnerships, speaking engagements, and policy advocacy.
In 2024, the Legal Aid Association of California convened a working group of leaders from California’s legal aid organizations to explore the potential for a Community Justice Worker program. This group was led by Legal Link and OneJustice, with advice and support from Stanford Law School’s Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession and Frontline Justice. The group met over five months and produced a CJW proposal for California, which would allow legal aid organizations to extend and expand on their work for the lowest-income Californians using a justice worker model, as many other states are now doing. Our group is hopeful that our efforts to innovate and provide deeply needed services in a safe and measured way are embraced and carried forward.
Legal Link partnered with NYU School of Law’s Robert and Helen Bernstein Institute for Human Rights – along with Namati, Beyond Legal Aid, and others – to plan and organize the first ever U.S. Legal Empowerment Leadership Course. In October of 2023, a collective of 50 legal empowerment practitioners from across the country gathered in California for the inaugural U.S. Legal Empowerment Leadership Course. Over the course of five days, a cohort of organizers, lawyers, and researchers explored the role of legal empowerment in advancing community-centered justice through a mix of case studies, skill sessions, and small working groups. These sessions were built off learnings from a powerful global movement, and spanned topics such as Community-Driven Litigation, Power Mapping and Organizing, Community Centered Legal Ethics, and Role of Community Paralegals in Advancing Justice. Legal Link continues to collaborate with participants to organize, coordinate, and strategize around legal empowerment efforts across the country.
Our Funders
We are grateful to our supporters who make this work possible.