Director Rachel Rossi Delivers Remarks for the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York’s Annual Awards Celebration

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Good evening. Thank you for the generous introduction. Nic Rangel, thank you for your leadership and commitment to access to justice. I must thank Tammy Gaynor as well, for all your efforts to plan this convening and host us. And to the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY), thank you for the honor to join you today for this celebration.

Congratulations to the honorees and thank you for your commitment and work that is being recognized today.

And I must acknowledge all of the legal aid lawyers, organizations and leaders in this room, working tirelessly on the front lines for civil access to justice. The work you do every day is not easy and often thankless. It requires a deep sense of empathy and dedication, but also resilience and stamina. I know you don’t hear it enough — thank you for your service.

As I consider the theme of today’s event, “Justice For All,” I’d like to talk about what stands in the way of this ideal — barriers to accessing justice — what they are — and how each of us in this room are, and must continue to be, part of comprehensive and collaborative efforts to dismantle them.

The mission of the Office for Access to Justice is to ensure that all communities have access to the promises and protections of our legal systems. At its core, this means that we work to break down barriers to the founding principle and enduring promise of equal justice under law.

Similar to you, we believe that justice belongs to everyone. If you are unable to access it because of how much money you have, who you are, where you live or what language you speak — we simply cannot call it justice.

Our office has now grown to a staff of over 45, and we’re building and solidifying initiatives and programs focused on dismantling these types of unfair barriers to equal justice. Today, I would like to give you a brief update on some of this work.

First, we are combating economic barriers.

Our office recently issued a report highlighting common and innovative approaches taken by state and local jurisdictions nationwide, that are reducing criminal and civil fines and fees, particularly for youth and low-income individuals.

We know that legal system fines and fees, when imposed without regard for discriminatory impact or ability to pay, can be devastating. While a ticket may be annoying for a wealthy litigant, but for someone with less economic means, it can be the difference between putting food on the table or risking contempt of court or even incarceration. This exacerbates longstanding, systemic inequities and undermines the goal of equal justice.

We’re also disrupting language access barriers.

As many of you know, our office houses the department-wide Language Access Coordinator, who chairs the department’s Language Access Working Group, and leads our Language Access Program.

Last year, we led efforts to modernize the department’s Language Access Plan for the first time in over a decade. And we’ve launched a pilot initiative to translate external facing resources. To date, we have completed over 2000 translations of federal resources and information for U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and other Justice Department offices across the country.

Our office is also working to shine a light on the access to justice barriers faced by the nearly 26 million Americans with disabilities and to develop tools to address them, including through the release of a resource, “Access to Justice Is Disability Access.”

We’re also looking inward, where we are dismantling barriers to accessing the department. Justice Department services and programs are the tools we use to advance our mission of justice, and for this reason, access to justice requires access to the Justice Department.

We recently launched Access DOJ, a department-wide initiative led by the Office for Access to Justice. Similar to what we’re seeing driven by access to justice leaders across the country, this initiative uses human-centered design principles alongside access to justice best practices and research to make the Justice Department’s services more accessible, effective and efficient. As one example, we conducted public user testing of the form to apply for a presidential pardon, then used that feedback to streamline and improve the form, making it easier for those without a lawyer to access post-conviction relief.

And of course, we are promoting access to counsel and legal help. I don’t have to tell those in this room how critical legal help can be to mitigate against the access to justice barriers I’ve mentioned.

One way we support legal help, is by harnessing the resources and power of the federal government to support access to counsel and legal assistance. Our office directs and staffs the work of the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR), a collaboration of 28 federal agencies co-chaired by the Attorney General and White House Counsel. This past April, our office launched a new LAIR federal funding resource, a hub for quick and streamlined access to funding opportunities from across federal agencies that can support legal assistance.

As another example of our work to support legal assistance, we recently launched an innovative pilot program to provide civil legal help to individuals incarcerated in Federal Bureau of Prison (FBOP) facilities. We’ve started at a facility in Bryan, Texas, where we have conducted civil legal needs empowerment workshops on issues like family law, child custody and divorce; banking, debt and financial issues; and access to federal benefits. And for a select number of incarcerated individuals who qualify, as part of this pilot, we’re implementing the first-ever medical-legal partnership in a prison facility in the United States. Through this partnership, a team of law and medical professionals will help incarcerated individuals apply for Social Security disability relief, with the goal of promoting successful reentry.

Our support for legal help also includes supporting public defense, through steps like our first-of its kind review of access to counsel in federal pretrial detention facilities with the FBOP, and our Public Defense Resource Hub, a one-stop destination of resources and materials to support public defense professionals and related organizations.

And we support access to counsel and legal help through our leadership of the Federal Government Pro Bono Program, our unique tool to mobilize a massive number of lawyers in our country — federal government attorneys and staff — to pitch in by doing pro bono work. Through the program, we connect any federal government employee to pro bono opportunities, we pre-vet and check for conflicts, provide resources and training and set up clinic volunteer opportunities.

We are prioritizing expanding the program’s resources, staff and reach like never before. Just last year, we launched the Pro Bono Program’s new DOJ Pro Bono Portal on Paladin. Many of you may know, an online Portal provides quick and simple access to pro bono opportunities with the click of a mouse. The DOJ Pro Bono Portal encourages pro bono engagement regardless of geography and makes it easier for Justice Department attorneys to volunteer for those who may have previously been out of range. To date, over 1280 Justice Department attorneys in 15 states, including New York, have logged in to their Paladin DOJ Pro Bono Portal accounts to find pro bono opportunities and events.

In a few weeks, we’ll celebrate the annual Federal Government Pro Bono Week, where our team will offer programming to train attorneys, encourage their involvement and celebrate their pro bono accomplishments. Each year, we host a number of events, webinars and pro bono engagement opportunities and clinics to promote and uplift this work.

And finally, as we focus this month specifically on Domestic Violence Awareness, our office is focused on expanding access to legal help for survivors. Access to justice barriers can be particularly harmful when safety from violence is at stake.

One study revealed that legal services are second only to medical services as the most requested need of victims. And the cascading legal needs they can experience go beyond the immediate need for a protective order or services related to the violence or abuse. They can include issues related to housing, child custody, healthcare, food security and more.

The Legal Services Corporation’s 2022 Justice Gap report showed that 98% of low-income households with recent domestic violence survivors experienced — in addition to the domestic violence — at least one additional civil legal problem, and 87% experienced at least five.

Studies also confirm that when they are available, lawyers and legal help make a difference in legal outcomes. One study found that 83% of victims represented by an attorney obtained a protective order, while only 32% of victims without an attorney had the same success.

This is why your work to advance access to justice for survivors is so critical. I’ve been inspired to learn of LASNNY’s Domestic Violence Legal Assistance Project, assisting with obtaining orders of protection, child and spousal support, custody and visitation and divorce, but also broader civil legal problems related to public assistance, food stamps, foreclosure, landlord/tenant, consumer, employment and immigration issues. Your Crime Victims Attorney Project also supports access to victim compensation and representation in orders of protection, custody, child support, matrimonial and other legal matters. We applaud your focus on providing legal services to survivors by addressing these broad and complex intersecting legal needs while also prioritizing a trauma-informed approach.

To further advance our office’s commitment to this joint mission, I am excited to announce that today, our office has published a brand new resource to help courts, legal services providers, domestic violence service organizations and pro bono volunteers to support survivors of violence and abuse by encouraging pro bono service.

Our resource released today amplifies awareness of the POWER Act, a law established to engage federal district court judges in promoting pro bono legal services as a critical way to empower survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking and to engage citizens in assisting those survivors.

Through our resource, we aim to amplify the usefulness of the POWER Act as a tool to expand legal help for survivors and to streamline access to information on various resources of the Office for Access to Justice and other Justice Department Offices to support this work.

It's only fitting to announce this effort here today, as the District Court for the Northern District of New York has been a leader and pioneer when it comes to encouraging pro bono engagement under the POWER Act. NDNY has taken the lead in coordinating cross-jurisdictional POWER Act events with other district courts and has gone even further to develop a resource map of services for survivors of domestic violence and other abuse across New York State.

As I close, I want to again commend the leaders in this room for your commitment to serving as the disruptors of barriers to justice.

When I recall my time starting my legal career as a public defender, I was struck by the inability of our systems to deliver on the promise of justice on their own, without leaders, advocates, committed and dedicated fighters pushing to make this ideal a reality.

Whether it was representing someone accused of a crime, and struggling to have the resources, time and support to advance a defense that I knew was legitimate; or representing a victim of intimate partner violence who could not obtain the types of civil legal help she needed in a criminal courtroom; I saw firsthand that justice was not inevitable simply because it was written into our laws.

And that is why today’s event is more than a celebration, but a reminder of the role we all play in making justice real for everyone. And how your work — even in those moments when it seems undervalued or unseen — turns the aspirations of our legal systems into reality.

Legal service providers are barrier disruptors. Your work strives to level the unequal playing field, to dismantle unfair hurdles and to ensure that justice is not a privilege for the few, but a promise accessible by everyone.

So, again, thank you for being here today and for your dedication. As you continue in this difficult mission and this awesome responsibility, please know that the Office for Access to Justice stands shoulder to shoulder with you as a partner and ally.

Together, we can close the justice gap and ensure justice for all.

Congratulations again!

Thank you.