CBA Record

Chicago Bar Foundation Report

I Need Legal Aid, Too

By Angelika Labno CBF Administrative & Communications Coordinator I need legal aid, too. But not in the traditional sense. I am fortunate enough to have a home, a job, and good health. I need legal aid so that the community I live in functions better. Shortly after I started at the CBF, I was tasked with penning the Campaign in Action blog series. The idea was simple: profile a legal aid organization supported through the CBF’s Investing in Justice Campaign, and give an overview of their legal aid services. My background, I should note, is not in law, but journalism. I had never paid much attention to the legal system before, let alone legal aid. The thought of interviewing lawyers and getting caught up in “legal speak” was intimidating (phrases like “grievance process” come to mind). But then I discov- ered that we shared a common language in social issues. Having covered nonprofits and their work in the past, social issues were something I could understand. In their individual (and sometimes collective) ways, each organization is trying to better a social issue in a legal context. Chicago Medical-Legal Partner- ship for Children, for example, tackles poverty from a new angle. A doctor can identify a social determinant of health, such as housing, and connect the patient

to legal assistance before the issue spirals out of control. Cabrini Green Legal Aid’s expungement help desks give people a second chance at life through employment, which consequently affects the unemploy- ment rate. Legal aid work leaves an impact that reverberates through the community. It affects us all. In addition to making a difference in individual lives, many organizations have had widespread impact through advocacy or class action cases. Such cases seek to mend a broken system or to secure relief for a particular set of people. Uptown People’s Law Center has 10 pending class actions against the Department of Correc-

tions, including one on the inadequacy of mental health and medical care provided for Illinois prisoners. The Children’s Initiative of the ACLU successfully forced extraordinary reforms on the state’s Department of Children and Family Services and the juvenile justice system. Their advocacy helped more than 40,000 kids get adopted since the early 2000s, shifting the balance from long- term foster care to family permanence. In May 2015, their work resulted in a ban on solitary confinement of juveniles. The impact doesn’t have to be achieved in a courtroom. Youth Futures, a project of Chicago Coalition for the Homeless,

18 JANUARY 2016