Tag Archive: legal aid

Feature Friday: FrontlineSMS:Legal

Just this Wednesday, there was a lot of buzz on the Twitterverse about FrontlineSMS:Legal, a new addition to the FrontlineSMS family. According to their website: FrontlineSMS:Legal helps our partners bridge the distance between communities and the legal services they need most, using low-cost mobile tools. FrontlineSMS:Legal develops and implements technologies that improve the delivery, reach,…

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Paid by “BigLaw” firms, young lawyers turn to public interest work

When I opened the New York Times website yesterday, I was really glad to see that one of the most popular articles was about the surge of young lawyers joining the public interest field. The article centered around the phenomenon of deferred associates spurred by the recent recession. “BigLaw” corporate firms have been affected by…

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The need for “holistic advocacy”

I’ve recently been reading more about “holistic advocacy,” and I think it’s an incredibly important theme for public defenders and others in the indigent defense community around the world to think about (not that I have much expertise on this topic…but here’s my two cents anyway!). Here’s an excellent quote from Robin Steinberg, Executive Director…

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Injustice in Haiti’s Prisons

I just found an excellent and heartwrenching article about Haiti’s incarcerated minors, and more broadly the life-threatening prison conditions in Haitian prisons as well as the lack of legal infrastructure. As in so many other developing countries, innocent individuals are often wrongfully convicted and thrown in jail, only to languish in the face of inadequate…

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Feature Friday: Paralegal Advisory Service Institute

Path to Justice from Penal Reform International on Vimeo. This quarter, I’m interning with the Northwestern University Center on International Human Rights, a legal clinic in the law school. One of our projects is an access to justice project in Malawi, where we work to improve legal representation for prisoners – particularly those sentenced to…

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Two roads diverge: two paths to thinking about social change

Recently, through a particularly enlightening conversation with a friend, I realized that there are, essentially, two pathways or methods of thinking about social change and development approaches. There is the “capitalistic” mode of thinking, and the “social justice” mode of thinking. While this is, essentially, the split that so starkly separates the Democrats from the…

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Where are the Millennial public interest lawyers the world so desperately needs?

Today, more and more young people are finding service-oriented careers attractive. Indeed, there is a seismic generational shift underway. Generation Y is breaking with the tradition of paying one’s dues and climbing the corporate ladder; instead, Millennials seek to find work that they are passionate about, that reflects their values, and that brings deep meaning…

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Beyond Gacaca and Guantanamo: the broader problem of legal injustice

Through my studies in the political science field, I’ve studied both Guantanamo Bay and the Gacaca process of post-conflict restorative justice in Rwanda in quite a bit of detail. Well, you might ask, what in the world do these two issues have in common? In essence, both alleged terrorists in Guantanamo and those on trial…

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