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Chicago Bar Foundation
Report
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
I Need Legal Aid, Too
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,
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JANUARY 2016