The National Legal Advocacy Network (NLAN) just issued the Sheller Center’s Expanding Social Justice: Fee-Sharing Between Non-Profits and the Private Bar. NLAN, which focuses on building worker power through law and organizing, sought to clarify ways in which workers centers in local communities could build resources for their work by partnering with the private bar. This brief outlines how fee-sharing arrangements work, their compliance with rules of professional conduct, and the advantages of such arrangements between nonprofit organizations and the private bar. Social Justice Lawyering Clinic students Tram Ha (’22) and BK Katzmann (’22) authored the brief.
About Jonathan J. Koehler
Seeking feedback from attorneys about language access in PA courts
Social Justice Lawyering Clinic (SLJC) students David Baldwin (’22) and Livia Luan (’23) created a survey tool for attorneys to capture their experiences with limited English proficient (LEP) persons in the Pennsylvania courts. This tool was created as part of a statewide advocacy effort to ensure that LEP litigants, victims, and witness have a right to an interpreter in the Pennsylvania courts. This fall, law schools across the state will launch a survey with local community groups created by the same SJLC team.
For any attorneys who have experience with LEP persons in the Pennsylvania courts, please take the survey here.
In 2017, Pennsylvania issued a statewide language access plan in response to the systemic failure of Pennsylvania courts to provide interpreters to limited English proficient (LEP) persons. Such failures were previously documented by SJLC students in their reports Unfinished Business: The Continuing Challenge for Limited English Proficient Individuals in Pennsylvania’s Minor Courts and Barriers to Justice for Non-English Speakers in the Pennsylvania Courts. In collaboration with the coalition, this new work by SJLC is intended to assess the how the courts are faring with the new statewide language access plan.