A Toolkit for Advancing Data-Driven Unauthorized Practice of Law Reform: Domestic Violence Advocacy Case Study

One of the most pervasive and pressing needs that survivors face when exiting abuse is the need for civil legal help.

The Domestic Violence Advocacy Case Study reports findings from a national research study that explored the civil justice crisis perpetuated by UPL restrictions in the context of one specific, high-need population: domestic violence (DV) survivors. 98% of low-income households that have recently experienced DV reported experiencing at least one additional civil legal problem in the past year; 87% of low-income households that have recently experienced DV reported experiencing five or more additional civil legal problems. In 2021, households that experienced DV did not receive any or enough legal help for 88% of their civil legal problems. The Case Study illustrates how the seven-step framework for data-driven decision-making in UPL reform can apply in the context of expanding legal services for domestic violence survivors.

UPL Reform to Advance Domestic Violence Advocacy:

The Department of Justice defines domestic violence as:
“[A] pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.”
In the United States, more than 1 in 3 women (nearly 43.5 million) and more than 1 in 6 men (20.7 million) will experience intimate partner violence during their lifetimes. While DV has obvious impacts on the abused partner, it also has negative multi-generational consequences. Families who have experienced DV may experience chronic anxiety and other symptoms of intergenerational trauma. When a survivor exits, they step into a world of uncertainty: their housing, financial security, employment, healthcare, child care, and physical, mental and emotional health are all at risk. Evidence shows that receiving legal assistance is vital to DV survivors receiving favorable legal outcomes. But households that experience DV do not receive any or enough legal help for 88% of their civil legal problems.
In seeking to understand the service challenges that DV organizations and their advocates experience when they limit their help to legal information, not legal advice, we conducted 36 virtual interviews with advocates in 21 jurisdictions in the United States and 26 virtual interviews with DV organization leadership representing 20 jurisdictions, and 23 virtual interviews with DV subject matter experts across the United States. Using a semistructured interview guide, we asked both advocates and organization leadership about their understanding of the difference between legal information and legal advice, whether they have had any formal training on the difference, how they feel when survivors ask them legal questions, what services for survivors exist, and what challenges or successes they have experienced when survivors ask for legal help that is beyond the scope of their knowledge and/or abilities. Qualitative data analysis was conducted using an inductive, manual, computer-aided approach.

Landscape Analysis:

Across the US, 2,015 domestic violence service organizations work holistically to stabilize and support survivors. Dozens of domestic violence organizations across the country participated in this study; they reported an average of 16.62 service types within their organization, including hotlines, documentation, crisis counseling/crisis intervention, lethality/risk assessment, referrals to other social service providers, safety planning, strengths mapping, education about DV, victim’s rights education, assistance with housing, counseling, interpretation, community outreach, support groups, transportation, clothing and furniture. Much of this support is offered by DV advocates: individuals who work for organizations that serve survivors and have been specially trained to provide services to DV survivors.
The unmet legal needs of DV survivors have received early attention in states adopting new UPL reform models, with three states (Arizona, Utah and Alaska) authorizing programs that allow roles other than lawyers to assist DV survivors in navigating civil legal issues.

Using the 7-Step Framework to Explore UPL Reform to Advance DV Advocacy

Thoughtful design choices are central to successfully reforming UPL to authorize people other than lawyers to provide legal help. One motivator for this project was to collect, analyze, and synthesize jurisdiction-agnostic data that could streamline application of this framework in the context of DV services. The focus on the unmet legal needs of domestic violence survivors for this research is grounded in the high volume of legal needs specific to that population, and the fact that 3 of the 9 Justice Worker programs in the US provide legal help to DV survivors: jurisdictions adopting UPL reform are identifying survivors’ civil legal needs as a priority area of unmet legal need. This case study also highlights the domestic violence service community as a community trusted and positioned to meet those needs, and seeks to ensure that the perspectives of the domestic violence service community are included in important design choices across seven questions: