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Trials are far from impartial if the defendant is poor or reliant on public defenders. These people are working to re-balance the scales of justice.

Emily Galvin-Almanza
Co-Executive Director,
Partners for Justice

Emily Galvin-Almanza practices holistic defense, a set of techniques pioneered by the Bronx Defenders, a public defense organization where she worked before co-founding Partners for Justice in 2018.

Holistic defense involves embedding non-lawyer advocates in the public defense system to provide wraparound services for the accused, including help with housing, transportation, education, medical and mental health care, substance abuse treatment, food benefits, and more.

鈥淭hese trained non-attorneys are relieving the attorneys from having to worry about these things,鈥� Galvin-Almanza says. 鈥淏ecause public defenders worry about this stuff.鈥�

The approach also helps address a judge鈥檚 questions about the defendant鈥檚 plans for the future, their support network, and their family鈥檚 needs, which can influence sentencing and bail decisions, for example.

The nonprofit currently receives about 40% of its funding from state governments, and as of April 2022, the organization works in .

Partners for Justice鈥檚 advocates are more racially diverse than the legal profession overall, Galvin-Almanza says, and offer valuable insight into the needs of poorer and non-White communities that are more likely to need a public defender.

Sonja Ebron
CEO,
Courtroom5

Sonja Ebron鈥檚 big idea came when she was sued and found she couldn鈥檛 afford an attorney on a middle-class income.

鈥淚 represented myself, I got crushed by the other side鈥檚 lawyers, and the whole thing left a sour taste,鈥� Ebron says.

Ebron, a programmer, realized that the court system was impenetrable to most people, even when it came to basic tasks like knowing when to file which documents.

As a result, Ebron and her wife, Debra Slone, a librarian, created : a do-it-yourself clearinghouse of procedural and legal information for all 50 states, guiding clients through the minutiae of filings.

Someone being sued can use Courtroom5鈥檚 software to guide them through the bureaucracy. They鈥檒l still need an attorney at trial, but Ebron says a defendant may find enough information to help them avoid a trial entirely.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 tell people what the outcome should be or give legal advice, but we do make what the judge wants to see transparent to them,鈥� she says.

So far, about 70% of the company鈥檚 users have reached what Ebron considers a positive outcome: dismissal, negotiated settlement, victory, or simply 鈥渘ot getting crushed鈥� at trial.

Raj Jayadev
Participatory Defense Coordinator,
Co-Founder, Silicon Valley De-Bug

Silicon Valley De-Bug organized in 2001 around police accountability work in San Jose, California. In 2008, the organization expanded its services with a community organizing model for people facing criminal charges, now called Participatory Defense. The initiative aims to allow the defendants鈥� families and communities to come together and affect the outcome of their cases, shifting the balance of power in the court system.

Raj Jayadev, who coordinates the initiative, says that involving families and community members provides support for the accused and also helps show the court system that the defendant is a person outside of the confines of a single case. Family and community members also may have critical information about the case that could help change the outcome. 

鈥淚n all aspects, it鈥檚 a bulking up and rounding out of a defense team,鈥� Jayadev says.

Participatory Defense started as an informal group of families supporting each other in court, then evolved into a series of regular meetings. Nowadays, De-Bug volunteers are often inside the courtroom during arraignments, establishing contact with and gathering information from defendants and their families to bring before the judge.

De-Bug has trained groups in other communities in the same best practices and now counts nearly 40 organized groups meeting regularly in 16 states.