A Toolkit for Advancing Data-Driven Unauthorized Practice of Law Reform: Domestic Violence Advocate Case Study
The seven-question framework:
Question Seven:
What will be the scope of services?
The DV service community is generally excited about the potential of unauthorized practice of law reform. Through interviews with the research team, they identified criteria to consider in UPL reform including triage, eligibility requirements, training, scope of service, ethics of care, and risk management.
Key findings:
Advocates providing legal information to survivors is a necessary part of their existing scope of service.
DV organization leadership articulated ways in which permitting DV advocates to give legal advice could help triage service to survivors by complexity of legal need.
The DV service community is supportive of some eligibility criteria for advocates who want to train to provide legal advice.
Advocates view limiting the scope of their legal service as critical to reform.
Organization leaders want there to be clear boundaries for the scope of service authorized to ensure that advocates understand and are able to effectively communicate those boundaries to survivors and other actors in the civil justice problem-solving ecosystem, including attorneys
DV advocates and organization leaders articulated ethical issues that they would want to explore and resolve prior to onboarding legal advice into their advocate services, such as their duty of confidentiality as well as their status as mandatory reporters.
Generally, attorneys identified training as critical to any reform that authorizes DV advocates to give legal advice. They suggested training focused on “issue-spotting,” “similar training to what we’re required to do that is very specifically related to DV and DV issues,” “training about attorney’s legal obligations” and “training on how to limit services.”
Once advocates have received ethics training, organizations should strive to stay up to date on developments in ethical and professional conduct recommendations and continually and responsively train advocates on ethical guidelines.
Advocate Interest in Assisting DV Survivors with Their Legal Needs
DV survivors experience a wide range of civil legal needs and often seek assistance for these needs from DV advocates. Advocates are generally interested in helping with most of these identified legal issues. Advocates who completed the national survey were asked, on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being not interested at all and 5 being very interested, how interested they would be in learning more about each civil legal need. In contrast to advocates’ perceptions of survivors’ legal issue experiences, advocates were not asked to rank their interest between issues.
Protection Orders
Advocates also reported the greatest interest in providing survivors with legal advice about protection orders, with an average interest level of 4.32 out of 5. Of participating advocates, 92.2% indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in completing a training to provide legal advice about protection orders. Only 7.8% of advocates reported being somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training. Advocates are also aware of certain legal issues that complicate protection order assistance. Advocates identified sexual assault and human trafficking as issues that, when they arise in the context of a protection order, decrease the advocate’s confidence to assist.According to one advocate, “the difficult part is when you're kind of more at the initial stages of things,” of survivors wanting to get a protection order, “and getting someone to realize maybe that what you're describing is, in fact, sexual assault too, there could be added components to it in terms of trafficking.”
Custody and Divorce
DV advocates report that survivors often seek assistance with custody and divorce matters. Advocates reported the second most interest in learning about helping people with custody matters, with an average interest level of 4.27 out of 5, and most advocates reported interest in learning about helping people with divorce matters, with an average interest level of 4.03 out of 5. Of participating advocates, 91.4% indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in training on custody matters. Conversely, 7.6% of advocates reported being somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training. Additionally, 88.3% of advocates indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in training on divorce matters. In contrast, 11.7% of advocates reported being only somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training.
Housing Issues
Housing issues include eviction, property protection, housing debt, and foreclosure. Most advocates reported interest in learning about helping people with eviction, with an average interest level of 3.71 out of 5, and property protection, with an average interest level of 3.43 out of 5. Assisting with housing debt, with an average interest of 3.09 out of 5, and foreclosure, with an average interest level of 2.77 out of 5, were not ranked as highly. Of participating advocates, 84.3% indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in completing a training about helping people with eviction, with 15.7% of advocates reporting only being somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training. Regarding property protection, 80.4% of advocates indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in such training, while 19.6% indicated they were somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training. For helping people with housing debt, 62.7% of advocates indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in such training, with 37.3% of advocates indicating only being somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training. Regarding helping people with foreclosure, 49% of advocates indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in such training, with 51% of advocates indicating they were only somewhat interested, or not interested at all in such training.
Employment and Benefits
Advocates are moderately interested in learning about helping survivors with employment, with an average interest level of 3.29 out of 5. Regarding helping people with employment issues, 70.6% of advocates indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in such training, with 29.4% of advocates indicating they were only somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training. Advocates are moderately interested in learning about helping survivors with benefits, with an average interest level of 3.27 out of 5. Of participating advocates, 63.7% indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in training about helping people with benefits, with 36.3% of advocates indicating only being somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training.
Immigration
Advocates are moderately interested in learning about helping survivors with immigration issues, with an average interest level of 3.64 out of 5. Of participating advocates, 77.5% indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in training about helping people with immigration issues, while 22.5% indicated they were only somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training.
Although immigration issues are a civil legal problem that survivors experience, advocates reported only a moderate interest in helping survivors with immigration issues. This may be in part because advocates view immigration issues as complex and intertwined with other legal issues. One advocate noted, “I feel like when it comes to immigration, there’s so many complex issues oftentimes,” and “there’s not a whole lot of immigration attorneys in the area to even recommend someone to if we were able to refer someone to an attorney.” In addition, location and service population may impact advocate perception of need and interest. For example, one advocate said that they feel less confident working on “immigration, like applying for the visas and that, just because we don’t typically have too many of those because of our geographical location.” Another advocate stated, “when clients. . . are not a citizen, not only are they impacted legally, but they are impacted in terms of food stamps [and] public assistance.”
Finance and Consumer Issues
Advocates are less interested in learning about helping people with credit card and medical debt than with other legal needs, with an average interest level of 2.80 out of 5. 54.9% of advocates still indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in training about helping people with credit card debt, with 45.1% of advocates indicating only being somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training. Related to medical debt, 52% of advocates indicated they were extremely interested, very interested, or interested in such training, with 48% of advocates indicating only being somewhat interested or not interested at all in such training.
Advocate interest in assisting with other legal needs
Advocates reported interest in learning about helping people with other legal needs experienced by DV survivors. These other legal needs include helping survivors with criminal charges, procedures, and record expungement. One advocate identified tribal laws as an area of interest, and another identified alternative dispute resolution methods to address civil legal problems. Several of these identified needs are related to each other and to other legal needs identified by the research team and included in the survey.
Perspectives from the DV Services Community:
“It would be highly important that the advocates have regular training and access to attorneys to make sure what they are telling survivors is accurate and within the law.”
“I think just making sure that it's like, thorough enough, and kind of also having kind of a clear understanding of like, okay, at what point is something just going to be beyond our abilities? Like, we just need to get a full-blown attorney into this?”
“I know that there are like civil criminal codes of procedure that are like very specific, and people can sometimes really mess up their cases because they didn't follow the legal rules correctly. And people go to law school for that to learn about them and then get like mentorship and even still mess up --- we see attorneys that have gone to law school, pass the bar, and then still mess up.”
“By no means is every civil legal thing that comes in front of them something that requires an attorney.”
Advocates indicated that they “would like to have extra knowledge” and “understand the process and legal requirements to give appropriate advice regarding evidence and options.”