Up front and in the end, it’s about you (it is law FOR the environmental grassroots, after all). And that’s how it should be. Any ‘matchmaking’ project must be usable and useful to you; it must help reduce the time spent looking for legal help or answers to legal questions. It needs to ensure that you can trust its services and can build relationships with providers, and identify legal issues before they become legal problems. And if done right, with your input, it could be a powerful tool in your arsenal: helping to incorporate your group as a non-profit; providing high-quality legal analysis on a particular issue; partnering in navigating the often complex world of agency regulation; deciding whether, and how, to proceed with a lawsuit.
Organization Next Steps
It can be frustrating for organizations: on the one hand, you’re working because it’s what you want to do and what you believe in. On the other hand, you sometimes feel like throwing up your hands, because there’s always more to do, less time to do it in, and even fewer resources to do it with. Besides, you’ve talked about all this before, right? This project recognizes that it can’t revolutionize access to legal support, but it 100% believes that more can be done. If there are available legal resources out there, people who want to help but aren’t quite sure how – why should they not be connected to you? Why shouldn’t you be able to access that help? We need better connections and connectors – but we also need your input; it won’t work without you.
- Help identify existing legal needs
- Help identify self-help topics
- Use and build the LEG network
- Tell us what you think – about anything!
Law for the Environmental Grassroots 