Please join this informal discussion about how the government shutdown will affect recipients of SNAP benefits, including information about contingency funding during government shutdowns. Participants will be encouraged to share what is happening in their communities and any strategies to best support and defend them.

This session will bring together experts defending democracy to discuss how litigation and advocacy can preserve and advance access to civil legal services and public defense for communities, families and individuals unable to afford counsel.

This session will focus on the most common concerns noted by Office of Compliance and Enforcement staff during recent oversight visits and desk reviews, as well as those most commonly identified/referred by the Office of Inspector General. There will also be a discussion of the oversight tools used most frequently and changes to how oversight will be conducted during FY 2026.

• Attendees will gain a better understanding of the top regulatory and fiscal-related concerns identified by LSC's Office of Compliance and Enforcement and the Office of Inspector General.
• Attendees will gain a better understanding of upcoming changes to oversight in FY 2026 and what they mean to your organization.

Starting in January 2025, official communication with EOIR and AILA Chapters/local immigration advocates has significantly decreased. This paired with the dismantling of many institutional safeguards and changes in personnel have made our jobs as advocates even more difficult. Seeking accountability requires creativity. In June 2025, the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration (COI) officially launched their Court Observation and Awareness Project. This initiative offers attorneys, law students, and members of the public a chance to witness firsthand the challenges noncitizens face in court and to contribute meaningfully through structured, neutral observation. Volunteers observe Master Calendar Hearings and Bond Hearings in immigration court and complete a short form documenting what they see. Opportunities are available in immigration courts nationwide. As of August 8, over 790 court observations from 35 different courts have been submitted. COI uplifts local organizations already doing court watch so that, where possible, volunteers work with their advocating neighbors. This session will overview the project, share the Report Card with trends, highlight issues, and explain how to get involved!

• Understand how hateful rhetoric, policies, and laws are having long-lasting and immediate impact on our friends and neighbors in the noncitizen community.
• Articulate some of the trends happening in violation of due process and human dignity in immigration courts across the country.

In this session we discuss the role that legal services play in addressing fundamental needs. Using record-clearing as an example, we explore current findings from an evaluation completed by the Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School and Kansas Legal Services and supported by the National Institute of Justice. We evaluate the effect of record-clearing on recidivism, housing security, employment stability, perceptions of individual identity and well-being. We hypothesize that clearing a criminal record reduces instances of recidivism and improves the other metrics. There is reason to suspect this hypothesis is true, and reasons to doubt it. Together, this team fielded an RCT that hinged on the suspicion that the law in the study site was too complicated for an individual to successfully clear their record on their own, requiring lawyer assistance. That suspicion proved true, allowing this team to understand the effect of record-clearing on quality-of-life outcomes. We will discuss the role of lawyers in ensuring fundamental needs are met, the theory of change using record-clearing as an example, and the results of the evaluation. This evaluation provides causal evidence regarding impacts of legal services on record-clearing and impact of record-clearing on quality of life.

• Upon completion, participant will be able to articulate the impact of legal services on record-clearing & the impact of record-clearing on quality of life.
• Participants will be able to articulate the benefit of including legal representation in record clearing cases.

The Public Defender's Office has successfully utilized data to advocate for increased funding and resources. Over the past seven years as the office has shifted towards data-driven and evidence-based practices, the Public Defender's Office has increased its benefited positions by 100% and its overall budget by over 100%, which amounts to a nearly fifteen-million-dollar increase. Throughout our workshop, we will provide examples of how the office achieved these accomplishments through the expansion of data capacity. Specifically, we will demo the offices recently launched Power BI data dashboard and discuss how we are utilizing the dashboard to report on office metrics and build data transparency across public safety agencies. This presentation focuses specific on Defender voices and how services can be enhanced in Indigent Defense. Additionally, with the focus on Holistic Defense, these data metrics from our advocates helps provide the great client outcomes we've been able to achieve through anecdotes as we look to expand data capacity. Data is dramatically improving how public defenders and public safety groups function and make critical decisions. The impact of not having accurate data when making decisions leads to time wasted on ineffective solutions. Such decisions can result in long-lasting consequences, which subsequently affect all criminal justice stakeholders. The first step in making better budget decisions is understanding the true picture of our communities and jurisdictions by collecting data. When data is collected from our frontline staff, there is a cleaner and clearer picture of the criminal justice process. Just like pixels in a picture, the crispness and clarity of an image increase based on the number of pixel dots that are present. Once you have data, analyzing that data enables a detailed view of the big picture. Relevant metrics can be designed, designated, and measured. The Public Defender's Office has expanded data capacity within its content management system, Defender, to create reports and data presentations. Currently, the office has transitioned to Power BI as a data visualization and presentation tool for reports.

• Participants will be able to identify and describe at least three ways data-driven toolsa??such as Microsoft Power BIa??can be used to advocate for increased funding and resources in public defense.
• Participants will be able to outline the key steps to building internal data capacity in a public defender office, including data collection from frontline staff, analysis, and visualization for decision-making

Defending evictions claiming criminal activity in public and subsidized housing remains mysterious and complicated to many legal services attorneys. The decision in Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker, 122 S. Ct. 1230 (2002), led many to believe that tenants facing such claims have no choice but to move. To the contrary, tenants have many available defenses from federal, state, and local law which are easy to overlook. We will discuss the required eviction elements for each program and relevant defenses, using examples to aid in issue spotting, efforts at federal, state, and local levels to develop more appropriate eviction policies, and recent developments.

• Find the federal, state and local statutes, regulations, ordinances and common law governing criminal activity eviction cases in all of the public and subsidized housing programs.
• Advocate with legislatures, state and local government, and public housing authorities to promote more humane eviction policies.
• Develop volunteer attorney programs for representation in public and subsidized housing eviction cases to supplement legal aid representation.

As legal providers face reductions in funding, engaging larger numbers of private attorneys in pro bono is increasingly critical to ensuring fairness for those who cannot afford a lawyer. At the same time, the term "pro bono" has been used in the media to encompass issues beyond the traditional meaning set out in ABA Model Rule 6.1, focusing on the provision of free legal services to persons of limited means. Join us for an engaging discussion on how we, as a community, can refocus the conversation on ensuring that those who cannot afford a lawyer are able to access legal help and on motivating lawyers to volunteer. Panelists will reference Supporting Justice V and other studies to promote strategies for effectively communicating the need for and commitment to pro bono.

• Attendees will be able to describe the definition of pro bono as set out in Model Rule 6.1
• Attendees will be able to verbalize the difference between pro bono, public service and community service.
• Attendees will be able to analyze whether a specific activity meets the definition of pro bono as set out in Model Rule 6.1,

Fair Housing and civil rights are under attack. In this session, you'll hear from former HUD Counsel, and A one of the current HUD FHEO whistleblowers about the administration's initiatives, and about how federal changes impact communities from a community advocate in Detroit.A The panel will discuss how to preserve the Fair Housing Act, and strategies for continuing to advocate for clients when government systems are no longer available.

This session brings together leading researcher Rebecca Sandefur and Frontline Justice CEO Nikole Nelson, plus frontline community justice workers to explore how locally rooted advocates strengthen the rule of law and protect democratic values. Drawing new research and real-world examples, the discussion will highlight how justice workers expand access to legal help, foster trust in institutions, and in doing so empower communities to actively participate in democracy.

• Upon completion, participants will be able to describe how community justice workers advance the rule of law.
• Upon completion, participants will be able to list the steps they can take within their communities to support community justice workers as a means of supporting democracy.
• Upon completion, participants will understand different ways in which justice worker projects can be supported within local jurisdictions.