Legal Link’s mission is to remove legal barriers that prolong poverty by adding critically needed capacity to the legal ecosystem. We are creating and supporting a new frontline of Legal First Aid responders.

OUR MODEL

Low-income families receive adequate legal help only 14% of the time. We’re here to change that. Here’s how.
Expand the Legal Ecosystem

Legal Link increases access and capacity within the legal ecosystem to address systemic barriers that prolong poverty.

Train Trusted, Frontline Providers in Legal First Aid®

Legal First Aid® certified community partners act as justice workers for families inadequately supported by the legal system. With Legal First Aid training, frontline staff at existing community-based organizations - like case managers, community health workers, and social workers - help to identify legal issues, surface unmet legal needs, and access legal protections.

Support Thriving Communities

Resilient communities access legal protections and build healthy families and vibrant futures.

PROBLEM + APPROACH

Families experiencing poverty often encounter a justice system that is under-resourced, fragmented, and difficult to navigate. An estimated 92% of families do not receive the legal help they need, and more than 80% of justice problems go unidentified as legal issues in the first place. These hidden and unresolved problems can quietly destabilize housing, health, and income. The consequences are especially severe in legal deserts and rural communities facing attorney shortages, as well as in urban areas where overlapping services and complex systems make it hard to find the right help at the right time. Over time, these barriers limit access to legal protections and erode trust in the system itself.

Legal Link was created to meet this challenge differently. Instead of relying solely on lawyers and courts, we equip the trusted community organizations people already turn to for help. Through our Legal First Aid® training, we prepare client-facing nonprofit staff to recognize legal issues early, respond with practical guidance, and connect people to appropriate legal protections and resources. Our model moves beyond traditional legal education toward legal empowerment — expanding who gets to understand and use legal information and shifting it from courtrooms and law offices into everyday community settings.

Through the Legal First Aid curriculum, frontline staff and community helpers gain a shared framework and practical tools to spot justice issues, respond early, and support community-centered solutions. This early intervention approach often prevents problems from escalating into crises that require court involvement or full legal representation.

Today, Legal Link partners with more than 100 community-based organizations that are deeply rooted in and reflective of the communities they serve. These frontline partners are essential access-to-justice multipliers — extending reach into rural areas, legal deserts, and densely populated cities alike. Together, we are building a growing network of Legal First Aid responders and helping make legal knowledge and protection more accessible, more timely, and more community-centered.

Legal First Aid

The Legal First Aid Training Program trains client-facing staff in our Legal First Aid curriculum, builds legal navigation skills, and provides ongoing direct legal support to community justice workers and their clients via remote legal consultations and access to key tools and resources.

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Training Design + Technical Assistance

We are happy to offer technical assistance to individuals and organizations who are new to, or in the process of, building justice worker programs in their community.

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DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION

At Legal Link, we recognize and condemn white supremacy, and we support the calls for change in our systems of wealth distribution, policing, criminal justice, civil justice, and immigration policies. We stand shoulder to shoulder with those working on the frontlines to support communities in navigating, democratizing, and changing these systems while recognizing that they are built on racist, inequitable power structures. We follow those with lived experiences and we commit to making our internal practices just, welcoming, and self-reflective.

OUR IMPACT

We rely on data collection and analysis to regularly inform our work. We use two metrics to measure our success: the increased legal capability of the justice workers we train, and the impact of the justice workers’ support on their clients’ poverty-related outcomes. We will continue to refine, build, and test, while always holding families and their paths out of poverty as our north star.

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of Legal Link trained justice workers report an increase in their legal capability

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Community justice workers trained in Legal First Aid