Access to Justice Network Conference 2026

9:00am EDT

Courts + Community for Justice Workers: Building Programs That Last

Wednesday October 21, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am EDT

Across the country, a new model for expanding legal help is gaining ground: Justice Workers — trained community members authorized to provide certain forms of legal help to people who would otherwise navigate the system alone.
While these programs are emerging in different forms in different states, they share a common foundation of partnership between courts and community organizations that requires trust, regulatory navigation, and institutional commitment from both sides. This session goes beyond the concept to the mechanics — how do you plan and implement Justice Worker programs?
The session opens with a 10-minute national landscape overview, including where Justice Worker programs exist, what models are emerging, and what the regulatory environment looks like across states. Panelists will then explore three phases of program development:
(i) conceptualizing Justice Worker programs,
(ii) designing jurisdiction-specific programs, and
(iii) program implementation.
Attendees will gain the perspective of program administrators on how to build trust with community while navigating the development of new programs.
After an initial self-assessment of the ‘state’ of justice work in an attendee’s jurisdiction, attendees will participate in small-group guided discussions with similarly situated attendees, exploring topics like relationship-building, program ideation, funding, and assessment. At the end of this session, attendees will have a plan for what next steps they can engage in to begin or advance conversations to realize justice work in their jurisdiction, including what connections in other jurisdictions might lend support along the way.
This session is for court administrators, legal aid leaders, community organization leadership, and anyone asking whether Justice Worker programs could work in their jurisdiction — and wanting a realistic answer.

Speakers

Mark McCall

Arizona Administrative Office of the Courts

Mark McCall is the Legal Service Innovations Manager for the Arizona Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC). Mark has nearly thirty years of public service experience as a middle school educator, HR administrator, and management professional in all three branches of government... Read More →

Antonio M. Coronado

Professor of Practice, Community Legal Education, I4J Innovations for Justice

Antonio M. Coronado (they/them/elle) is Professor of Practice and Co-Coordinator of Community Legal Education Programs at Innovation for Justice, housed at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business. Antonio... Read More →

Nikole Nelson

CEO, Frontline Justice

Nikole Nelson is the founding CEO of Frontline Justice. Prior to joining Frontline Justice Nikole was the Executive Director of Alaska Legal Services Corporation, Alaska’s only statewide provider of free civil aid. During her 25 years in the field, she worked to build community-led... Read More →

Hayley Cousin

Executive Director, Community Justice Advocates of Utah

Maryt Fredrickson

Chief of Staff to the Chief Justice, Utah Supreme Court

Maryt Fredrickson is the Chief of Staff to the Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court where she works on access to justice and regulatory reform initiatives. Maryt has worked in state courts since 2014. She joined the Utah Judicial Branch for her current position in January 2025... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 9:00am - 10:30am EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Partnership

10:45am EDT

Whole-Person Justice: Cross-Sector Partnerships That Change Outcomes

Wednesday October 21, 2026 10:45am - 12:15pm EDT

Cincinnati Convention Center

Legal problems don't arrive in isolation — they arrive in people's lives, tangled together with health crises, housing instability, substance use, family disruption, and economic precarity. A tenant facing eviction is likely also navigating medical debt, a custody dispute, or a probation requirement. A person experiencing homelessness may have outstanding warrants, untreated mental health needs, and civil legal issues they don't even recognize as legal. The justice system's response is almost always siloed: each problem gets its own case number, its own office, its own eligibility screen. This session asks what happens when partners across sectors decide to work together instead.

Four case studies present different models of cross-sector partnership, each built around a different population and a different constellation of partners. In Cincinnati, a court-treatment liaison model demonstrates how behavioral health and judicial systems can move from fragmented referrals to coordinated pathways of support. This work is not just about sending someone to treatment; it is about creating a warm handoff and a clear point of communication between clients, attorneys, judges, supervision partners, jail partners, treatment providers, and community support.

The liaison listens not only to the client’s needs, but also to how the judicial system understands and responds to structured support. By translating between legal expectations and treatment realities, the model helps create clearer communication, better-informed treatment orders, stronger continuity of care, and earlier identification of barriers before they become violations. At its core, the Cincinnati model shows that connection is the intervention.

Another Cincinnati case study demonstrates the impact of a criminal-civil legal partnership for juvenile court-involved youth. And in Austin, a community court developed a Mobile Court program and outreach approach to help resolve outstanding cases and warrants while connecting people to case management and social services, reducing service barriers and building on trusted relationships with community partners. Each model is different, but the underlying insight is the same: better outcomes require partners who see the whole person, not just the case.

In Newark, in a state where tenants do not have a right to counsel, a social service agency with experience in community courts and a legal services agency teamed up to provide comprehensive and holistic services to households facing eviction. One partner provided navigation, case management, rental assistance, and various wraparound services. The other provided legal consultation and representation. They would meet weekly to troubleshoot cases and partnered in outreach endeavors to facilitate Know Your Rights groups to the community. They learned to leverage each other’s resources to provide more meaningful services to their participants.

After the case studies, participants move from observation to action. An ecosystem mapping exercise will help participants identify common legal problems, map every actor already touching that person's life — courts, social services, health providers, housing agencies, employers — and identify which actors are not currently connected to the legal system but should be. Participants will have the option to work through two case studies, or choose to work through a common scenario specific to their home jurisdictions. You'll leave with a cross-sector partnership template, case study summaries, and a concrete plan for one partnership you can initiate in your jurisdiction.

Speakers

Jordan McLane

Court Liaison- Social Worker, Center for Addiction Treatment

Jordan McLane, MSW, LSW, LICDC-GAMB, OCPSA, is a social worker and Court Liaison at the Center for Addiction Treatment in Cincinnati, Ohio, where McLane developed the Court Services/Liaison Program. Working collaboratively with judges, probation officers, public defenders, social... Read More →

Angela Chang

Director, Youth Defense, Hamilton County Public Defender

Angela Chang is the Chief of the Hamilton County Public Defender, where she has been a defender since 2015. Angela began her legal career representing the criminally accused in both misdemeanor and felony cases as a Deputy State Public Defender for the Office of the Colorado State... Read More →

Sasha Naiman

Executive Director, Children's Law Center KY

Sasha Naiman is the Executive Director of Children’s Law Center, a nonprofit legal organization serving children and young adults across Ohio and Kentucky. She leads the organization's advocacy, strategic growth, and interdisciplinary collaborations to improve outcomes for youth... Read More →

Yaniris Gomez

Project Director, Center for Justice Innovation

Yaniris Gomez serves as the Project Director for Newark Community Solutions, a community justice program aimed at providing court-based and community interventions in Essex County, NJ. NCS runs a community court in the Newark Municipal Court (adult criminal diversion), Youth Impact... Read More →

Allison Nolan

Senior Staff Attorney, Volunteer Lawyers for Justice

Allison is a Managing Attorney at Volunteer Lawyers for Justice. She is the Program Lead for VLJ's Tenancy Program and also supports the Debt Relief Legal Program.

Prior to joining VLJ, Allison was an associate at a private law firm where she practiced civil litigation. Allison... Read More →

Sarah Rodriguez

Austin Community Court

Sarah Rodriguez joined DACC as the Mobile Court Program Development Coordinator. Sarah earned her undergraduate degree from Pacific Lutheran University and her master’s degree from Cornell University. She previously worked as a housing organizer in Dallas before working at the City... Read More →

Giana Martinez

Austin Community Court

Wednesday October 21, 2026 10:45am - 12:15pm EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Partnership

1:30pm EDT

Changing the Price Tag: Building Coalitions for Financial Justice

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm EDT

Cincinnati Convention Center

Filing fees, outstanding warrants, criminal fines, court costs — the financial barriers to justice are well-documented and deeply resistant to change. Reports get written. Recommendations get made. And then nothing happens, because changing entrenched financial policies requires more than good analysis. It requires a coalition powerful enough to overcome the institutional inertia and the interests — courts that depend on fee revenue, jurisdictions that use fines as a budget tool, systems that have operated this way for so long that the harm has become invisible to the people who administer it.
The national landscape of financial barriers frames the conversation: what the research shows about how fees, fines, and warrants create cascading harm that extends far beyond the courtroom — lost jobs, lost housing, lost custody, spiraling debt, and a population that learns to avoid the justice system entirely rather than risk the cost of engaging with it. Then three case studies share different approaches to reducing these barriers.
Behavioral science insights from ideas42 reveal how court communications themselves compound financial barriers — how the language, timing, and design of notices and payment demands create confusion, fear, and inaction, and how evidence-based redesign can help people avoid barriers in the first place.
Judge Steve Duble, Justice of the Peace in Harris County Texas, demonstrates what one expansively minded court can accomplish on its own, including warrant recall and ability to pay reform, but also the challenges faced when trying to make systemic change without the support of a robust coalition.
Finally, several warrant withdrawal initiatives in Northeast Ohio illustrate how legal services attorneys, prosecutors, and courts came together to address massive warrant backlogs — including the unlikely alliance with a prosecutor's office that became a champion rather than an opponent, and the strategic choices that made that possible.
The through-line across all three perspectives is that financial justice reform isn't just a policy problem — it's a relationship problem, a communication problem, and a power problem.
Participants will be encouraged to explore how to use the presentation details to make financial justice reform happen in their own jurisdiction.

Speakers

Lisa Foster

Co-Executive Director, Fines and Fees Justice Center

Lisa Foster is the Co-Executive Director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending the unjust and harmful imposition of fines and fees in the criminal legal system. A retired judge, Lisa is also the former director of the Office for Access to Justice... Read More →

James Levin

LegalWorks

Colleen O'Toole

St. Thomas University Law School

Anne Stotler

ideas42, (Un)Warranted

Anne Stotler is a Principal Behavioral Designer at ideas42. She leads partnerships with courts and other stakeholders to improve court date communications nationwide through the (Un)warranted initiative, which has already prevented over 125K missed court dates and the resulting warrants... Read More →

Paul Hergenroeder

LegalWorks

Paul Hergenroeder is a staff attorney with LegalWorks Inc. a Cleveland non profit legal services organization. A retired physician, I graduated from Cleveland State Law School in May of 2025. LegalWorks primary focus is representing clients with criminal record expungements. Today's... Read More →

Judge Steve Duble

Justice of the Peace, Harris County Courts

Steve Duble has been the Justice Peace for Harris County Precinct 1, Place 2 (located in downtown Houston) since January 1, 2023. Since taking office, he has taken bold action to increase access to justice. He earned his undergraduate degree from Texas Christian University in 1986... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:30pm - 3:00pm EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Partnership

3:15pm EDT

Housing Stability Through Partnership: How the Eviction Ecosystem Coordinates

Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:15pm - 4:45pm EDT

Cincinnati Convention Center

There will never be enough attorneys to represent every tenant facing eviction. That reality can be paralyzing — or it can be the starting point for building something different. In Hamilton County, Ohio, a collection of partners decided it was a starting point. The elected Clerk of Courts, a law school clinical program, a city councilmember, a housing mediation organization, the United Way, and a health-focused philanthropy came together — not through a strategic plan, but through a series of relationships that grew into a coordinated eviction mitigation ecosystem. Same-day limited representation for tenants who would otherwise appear alone. Pre-eviction mediation to resolve disputes before a filing ever happens. A rental assistance pipeline administered through the United Way's 211 system. A tenant guide co-created with community partners. Monthly eviction docket observation sessions where stakeholders from across the region witness firsthand how eviction actually functions in the courtroom. Each partner contributes something the others can't provide, and the whole produces outcomes no single organization could achieve alone.
This session presents that ecosystem as a case study in collective partnership — not just what was built, but how. How did the Clerk's office become a partnership hub rather than just a filing window? How did the city council's unanimous passage of the Access to Counsel ordinance create the funding infrastructure for limited representation and rental assistance? How did a health philanthropy become one of the most consistent investors in eviction prevention — attending the very first docket observation, testifying for the ordinance, and funding technology expansion? How did a housing mediation organization launch pre-filing mediation as a way to prevent evictions from being filed in the first place? And how did a university law school partnership allow the Help Center to staff attorneys who provide limited representation at scale? The panelists aren't presenting from a distance — they built these partnerships together, and they'll be honest about what was hard: the negotiations that almost stalled, the institutional skepticism that had to be overcome, and the data infrastructure that had to be built from scratch to measure whether any of it was working.
After the Hamilton County story, participants map their own eviction ecosystems. Each table identifies every actor touching housing stability in their jurisdiction — courts, legal aid, tenant organizations, landlord associations, sheriffs, social services, housing authorities, philanthropies — and maps where coordination exists and where it doesn't. The gap analysis consistently reveals partnerships that seem obvious once you see them on paper but that nobody has initiated. Each participant drafts a specific 30-day partnership ask — "I'm going to reach out to [specific organization] to propose [specific collaboration]" — and exchanges it with a neighbor for accountability. You'll leave with the Hamilton County model documentation, an ecosystem mapping template, the Access to Counsel ordinance text, and a commitment to one new partnership conversation you'll have before the next month is over.

Speakers

Pavan Parikh

Hamilton County Clerk of Courts

Nicha Zingarelli

Hamilton County Municipal Court Help Center

Nicha Zingarelli (she/her) is the Director and Chief Attorney of the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Help Center. Nicha has practiced law for over twenty years and has overseen a dramatic expansion of the Help Center during her leadership. Nicha has co-founded the eviction limited... Read More →

Megan Folkerth

Interact for Health

Megan Folkerth is Senior Director of Strategy and Programs at Interact for Health, where she leads grantmaking philosophy and practices grounded in trust-based philanthropy. She ensures the organization’s values are reflected across all grantmaking and provides strategic leadership... Read More →

Elisabeth Risch

Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME)

Elisabeth Risch is the Executive Director of Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Greater Cincinnati (HOME). She started in this role in April 2022. She leads the organization’s mission to eliminate unlawful housing discrimination in the Cincinnati area and promote stable and integrated... Read More →

Meeka Owens

Cincinnati City Councilmember, Cincinnati City Council

Moira Weir

United Way of Greater Cincinnati

Moira Weir became the first female President and CEO of United Way of Greater Cincinnati in 2020. She has guided the organization through transformative change designed to help all people achieve economic well-being within its nine-county service area in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:15pm - 4:45pm EDT
Cincinnati Convention Center 537 Elm St, Cincinnati, OH 45202

Partnership

9:00am EDT

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

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

Cincinnati Convention Center

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

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