Access to Justice Network Conference 2026

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9:00am EDT

Getting Legal Help to People: Partnership Models for Navigation and Access

Thursday October 22, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am EDT

There is no single right model for getting legal help to people who need it. There are many, and the right one depends on your jurisdiction's resources, partnerships, and community infrastructure. A philanthropy-funded legal center works in a city with an engaged bar association and funding partners. A volunteer-powered self-help program works where there's a deep pool of community members willing to give time and a system for keeping them. Embedded legal access in public libraries works where anchor institutions already have community trust and foot traffic. Court-based navigator programs work where courts are willing to invest in non-attorney roles and community organizations are ready to partner. And running beneath all of these is a shared need: the people doing the navigating have to be trained, and trained well. Each model reaches people the others miss, and most jurisdictions need more than one.
This session puts distinct partnership models side by side so participants can compare them honestly:

A bar association that partnered with philanthropic funders to create a legal center serving thousands of nonprofits and the communities they represent.
A volunteer-powered self-help program built on a deep pool of community members willing to give time, and a system for keeping them.
A law library that embedded legal access workspaces directly into public library branches, meeting people in spaces they already trust.
Court-based navigator programs operating across multiple states, with a national perspective on what distinguishes programs that last from programs that fade after the pilot funding ends.
And a training approach that cuts across every model: Legal Link's Legal First Aid® curriculum, used for over a decade to equip frontline community workers to spot and address legal issues upstream, before they become courtroom crises, and now being adapted to meet the needs of court-based navigator programs as well.

Speakers

Samantha Larson

Attorney Manager, Non-Profit Legal Resource Center, Cleveland Metro Bar Association,

Samantha Larson serves as Attorney Manager for Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association's Non-Profit Legal Resource Center. She earned her J.D. at Saint Louis University School of Law and B.A. from Wesleyan University, where she majored in American Government, English, and French Literature... Read More →

Cynthia Luna

Supervising Attorney, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

Cynthia Luna is the Supervising Attorney for the Self-Help team at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (NLSLA). Self-Help legal aid staff work in partnership with Los Angeles Superior Court staff to provide in person and remote services to litigants across Los Angeles... Read More →

Andre Davison

Director, Harris County Law Library

As the Director of the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth Law Library, the largest county law library in Texas, I am dedicated to advancing our mission of providing equal and open access to justice for all. Our library focuses on delivering essential legal information, empowering... Read More →

Andy Wirkus

Senior Court Management Consultant, National Center for State Courts

Andy Wirkus J.D. (he/him) is a Senior Court Management Consultant with the National Center for State Courts where he works on creating greater access to justice through authoring toolkits, creating trainings, providing technical assistance, crafting innovative ways of presenting information... Read More →

Kate Crowley Richardson

Executive Director, Legal Link

Kate Crowley Richardson (she/her) is Executive Director of Legal Link, a California-based nonprofit whose Legal First Aid® curriculum has certified more than 4,000 community legal workers across seven states. She previously served as Legal Director at Swords to Plowshares, where... Read More →

Thursday October 22, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Partnership

10:45am EDT

Beyond Pro Bono: New Partnership Models Between BigLaw and Communities

Thursday October 22, 2026 10:45am - 12:15pm EDT

Cincinnati Convention Center

Pro bono is necessary and insufficient. Every year, large law firms donate millions of hours of attorney time to access-to-justice work — and every year, the justice gap barely moves. The model assumes that what communities need most is more lawyer hours. But what if they need technology infrastructure? AI implementation expertise? Developer time? Platform access? Funding for systems, not just staffing for cases? As AI reshapes legal practice and corporate legal departments build increasingly sophisticated technology capabilities, the question is whether BigLaw's community commitment will evolve to match — or whether the profession will simply automate the old model and call it innovation.
This session centers the people who actually need the resources (legal aid organizations, self-help centers, law librarians, court administrators) as designers, not recipients. Rather than another conversation about what BigLaw should do for the access-to-justice community, this is the access-to-justice community developing a collective vision for what next-generation institutional partnerships could look like. The session draws on research from the Duke Center on Law & Tech, examples from the tech sector's corporate responsibility models, and real-world cases where firms have contributed developer time, AI expertise, and platform access alongside traditional attorney hours. It also examines how custom-built workflows for legal services pleadings and AI-enabled pro bono clinics are expanding what's possible — events where volunteers using AI tools helped more than 115 families in a single day, demonstrating that technology doesn't just make pro bono more efficient but fundamentally changes its scale and reach.
The session's core is a design sprint. Mixed tables (legal aid leaders, court administrators, community advocates, and firm attorneys if present) design a new BigLaw-community partnership in 20 minutes with one constraint: it cannot be traditional pro bono hours. What's the community need? What's the firm's unique resource beyond attorney time? What's the structure, and what does a 6-month pilot look like? Tables pitch their designs to the room, which captures what the access-to-justice community wishes BigLaw would offer but currently doesn't. Afterwards, ideas are collected, themes are synthesized, and the results become a collective advocacy document. You'll leave with examples of partnerships, messaging ideas for engaging firm leadership, and, if the design sprint works, at least one new idea.

Speakers

Kelli Raker

Associate Program Director, Duke University

Graham Bennie, Esq.

Supervising Attorney for Training & Pro Bono, Maryland Center for Legal Assistance

Graham is the Supervising Attorney for Training & Pro Bono for the Maryland Center for Legal Assistance, LLC (MCLA). Graham is responsible for developing and administering the internal training curriculum for MCLA staff (including onboarding and continuing legal education), as well... Read More →

Jacqueline Schafer

ClearBrief

Jacqueline Schafer is the founder and CEO of the leading litigation drafting platform in Word, Clearbrief.ai (2026 Legalweek Litigation Product of the Year, 2026 Legalweek Technology for Good, 2025 Clio Best Practice of Law App, 2025 Compliance Solution of the Year), and a Lecturer... Read More →

Thursday October 22, 2026 10:45am - 12:15pm EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Partnership

1:30pm EDT

Courts Meeting Communities Where They Are

Thursday October 22, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm EDT

Cincinnati Convention Center

Most justice system "community engagement" operates on the institution's terms — surveys designed by courts, listening sessions held in courtrooms, advisory committees where community members are invited to advise but not to decide. The engagement looks good in annual reports. This session asks what happens when courts flip that model — going to communities instead of waiting for communities to come to court, and sharing actual power instead of just gathering input.
The session presents models that span the full spectrum of community engagement. At one end, a court-led initiative takes judges and court staff directly into neighborhoods — not for a PR event, but for sustained relationship-building designed to demystify court processes, build trust with residents who feel intimidated or disconnected from the legal system, and hear directly from the people whose lives are most affected by court decisions. The initiative was designed, implemented, and refined through community feedback, with careful attention to planning, safety, judicial agreements, and evaluation. At the other end of the spectrum, state-level efforts have embedded community voice into formal court governance — creating structural seats for self-represented litigants and community members on the committees that write the rules. Between these poles, additional perspectives explore how community partners in regulatory reform processes experienced the engagement from their side, and what it actually feels like to be the only non-lawyer on a court committee. The range of models shows that community power takes different forms depending on context — but the underlying question is always the same: Are you sharing power, or performing inclusion?
A power audit using the IAP2 spectrum asks each participant to honestly assess where their organization sits — Inform, Consult, Involve, Collaborate, or Empower — and identify one specific action that would move them one step up. The exercise consistently reveals that most organizations believe they're further along the spectrum than they actually are, and that the barriers to deeper engagement are more cultural than structural. Participants will also work with a practical planning framework for designing community engagement initiatives in their own jurisdictions — covering purpose, partnerships, recruitment, safety, evaluation, and the hardest question of all: what power are you actually willing to share? A commitment card captures what each participant will do within 60 days. You'll leave with the power audit tool, a planning framework, case studies from multiple states, and a concrete commitment you've made to someone who will hold you to it.

Speakers

August Hieber

Sr. Program Manager, Inclusive Access, Administrative Office of Illinois Courts

Judge Wende Cross

Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas

Thomas Beridon

Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas

Thomas O. Beridon began his legal career as a juvenile public defender before joining the City of Cincinnati as an Assistant Solicitor. In that role, he prosecuted cases, represented the City in civil litigation, and served as the City’s hearing examiner.
Prior to his appointme... Read More →

Nia Thomas

Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas

Crissy Anderson

Senior Court Program Analyst - Gender and Justice, AOC: Equity and Access

Gender and Race Equity
Court Access
Data

Nancy Drane

Executive Director, DC Access to Justice Commission

Nancy Drane has served as Executive Director of the D.C. Access to Justice Commission since 2016, leading efforts to expand access to civil legal help for District residents. She previously spent 13 years at the Children’s Law Center, representing children and families and later... Read More →

Gabriella Vazquez

Court Management Consultant, National Center for State Courts

Gabriella Vazquez is a Court Management Consultant with the National Center for State Courts. She works on a variety of access to justice initiatives at NCSC, including supporting eviction diversion programs in state courts, Safe Harbor policy development, user-centered design, and... Read More →

Thursday October 22, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Partnership

Access to Justice Network Conference 2026

From $62.13

Tickets

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Access to Justice Network Conference 2026

9:00am EDT

Samantha Larson

Cynthia Luna

Andre Davison

Andy Wirkus

Kate Crowley Richardson

10:45am EDT

Kelli Raker

Graham Bennie, Esq.

Jacqueline Schafer

1:30pm EDT

August Hieber

Judge Wende Cross

Thomas Beridon

Nia Thomas

Crissy Anderson

Nancy Drane

Gabriella Vazquez

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