Clallam-Jefferson County Pro Bono Lawyers
Project: Community Legal Aid
Request: $15,000
Clallam-Jefferson County Pro Bono Lawyers exists for a specific gap: Jefferson County residents who face a serious civil legal problem and cannot afford a lawyer. There is no public defender for civil matters. Whatever happens next, people face it alone unless someone steps in.
CJCPBL expects to serve approximately 650 people this year through individual consultations, volunteer attorney referrals, community legal clinics, and its Housing Justice Project.
Why a legal problem is a safety-net problem
An eviction is rarely just an eviction. It can mean losing a home, disrupting a child's education, separating a family, or leaving someone with nowhere safe to go. Through the Housing Justice Project, volunteer attorneys help tenants understand their rights and options, navigate the process, and provide representation when it's available.
The broader program handles family law, wills and estates, expungement and record-clearing, debt and collections, and consumer issues. None of these look like emergencies from the outside. All of them determine whether someone keeps their housing, their job, their family relationships and their financial footing.
Here are the problems you can help solve
Volunteer attorneys donate the legal expertise for this program. But donated time only becomes help when someone recruits and trains the volunteers, schedules the clinics, does the outreach to reach people who don't know the service exists, runs intake, coordinates cases, and maintains the case management technology. Unfortunately, these costs are increasing.
Demand for housing, family law and debt assistance keeps rising. Operating costs are up. Some sources of public and grant funding have been reduced or become uncertain. For a small nonprofit, even a modest drop in unrestricted funding translates directly into fewer legal clinics, less outreach, reduced staff capacity, and fewer clients matched with a volunteer attorney.
What your donation makes possible
The requested $15,000 breaks down as $8,000 for staff time on civil legal services and the Housing Justice Project; $2,000 for community legal clinics and outreach; $1,500 for volunteer attorney recruitment, coordination and support; $1,000 for client assistance and legal materials; $1,000 for technology and case management; and $1,500 for program operating costs.
With it, CJCPBL aims to help at least 75 Jefferson County residents access legal information, advice or assistance; assist at least 25 tenants through the Housing Justice Project; and hold at least four community legal clinics in accessible local settings, including outreach to remote areas and local tribal communities.
he bottom line
UGN/Give Jefferson funding is one of very few sources of unrestricted local support CJCPBL receives, and the only funding that comes specifically from and for the residents of Jefferson County. Unlike restricted grants, it can go wherever the need appears.
Keeping one tenant housed relieves pressure on shelters and homelessness services. Resolving a family matter stabilizes children. Clearing a record removes a barrier to employment. Civil legal aid works upstream of nearly every other safety-net service, and your gift is what keeps the door open.
