Full scholarships and discounts to attend PLI programs are widely available to attorneys working in nonprofit/legal services organizations; pro bono attorneys; government attorneys; judges and judicial law clerks; law professors and law students; senior attorneys (age 65 and over); law librarians and paralegals who work for nonprofit/legal services organizations; unemployed attorneys; and others with financial hardships.  We encourage all eligible attendees to complete and submit a PLI Scholarship Application

Why You Should Attend
Native people face disproportionately high rates of incarceration, criminalization and poverty across the United States. In response to these challenges, the Yurok Tribal Court has partnered with Root & Rebound, a reentry legal advocacy center, to establish free mobile legal clinics in tribal community settings. The collaborative recently published a comprehensive best practice guide for the formation of legal clinics that are focused on supporting Native people with criminal records.

This program will give an instructional framework for providing effective, holistic reentry legal services to people in tribal communities. Topics addressed will include: best practices for establishing new mobile legal clinics, strategies for providing legal services in a rural location, and recommendations for building trust and collaborative partnerships between tribes and legal organizations. Presenters will also discuss the history of Native disenfranchisement in the United States and best practices for ensuring legal services are culturally competent. This program will guide legal practitioners, tribes, legal professors and community-based organizations to expand or begin legal-tribal partnerships that increase access to justice in rural, indigenous communities across the U.S. By piloting this Project together as a legal aid organization and a tribal community and court, we hope our learnings can help others to hone the program to the needs of Native people and develop practices that can scale to the other 565 officially recognized tribes in the U.S. and more.

What You Will Learn
• How to establish culturally responsive, holistic legal clinics in tribal communities;
• How to address logistical challenges in setting up rural clinics;
• Recommendations for maintaining communication with clients;
• The historical and present-day policies that have disenfranchised tribal communities in rural America;
• The role of tribal courts in criminal justice and their relationship to reentry;
• How attorneys can supplement existing community resources through partnership and scaled services; and
• How attorneys can develop collaborative, culturally appropriate relationships to improve reentry services in rural Tribal communities.

Who Should Attend
Attorneys looking to expand their knowledge of reentry legal services and learn skills for delivering holistic, culturally competent services in a clinical setting. Attorneys interested in pro bono advocacy, criminal defense, civil rights, criminal justice reform, and racial and economic justice. Tribal members and legal practitioners who work in government, non-profit organizations and law firms. Legal professors and law students who are interested in partnering to provide clinics.