Mission First Legal Aid Explained
Mission First Legal Aid began in 2007 at the request of several of the District of Columbia’s largest and most long-standing legal services providers to make better use of their collective resources. This would avoid duplicating efforts and thereby better serve low-income residents of the District of Columbia. Leading advocates saw that the legal aid community collectively needed to act to expand the overall capacity of the District’s civil legal aid system so that all eligible residents of the District could receive necessary services. Instead of serving only those citizens who passed through the doors at their physical locations, this fresh collective endeavor sought to expand outreach beyond the doors.
In 2008 Mission First began to work with the DC courts and the 28 independent nonprofit legal aid organizations serving low income District residents. The goal was to increase client service and to address unmet legal needs by ensuring that low-income DC residents would be able to access legal services.
Mission First Legal Aid has five objectives, all of which are intended to fulfill its mission to support civil legal services for the District’s low-income residents.
1. We seek to ensure that a systemic, coordinated, and comprehensive of volunteer legal service activities exists in the metropolitan area, directed toward eliminating the unmet civil legal needs of the disadvantaged poor of the District of Columbia. We enlist volunteers from the private bar to serve as pro bono legal advocates as well as to work within the staff of nonprofit legal aid organizations. Our consortium of legal aid organizations ensures that opportunities exist for volunteer service in nearly every area of the law, thereby benefiting citizens and attorneys alike.
2 . We develop the ability to recruit, train, and support volunteers and pro-se litigants in need of a helping hand to navigate the court processes essential to resolving their issues. We have made a significant commitment to serve all four Civil Courts and have trained more than 50 people to date to assist pro se litigants in Family Court, Tenant Possession Court, Landlord Tenant Court, and the Small Claims branch of the Civil Court. Volunteers work alongside court staff and on their own to provide critical court related assistance.
- We seek to ensure that pro bono lawyers and new non-profit legal aid organizations have all the resources available to them to best serve their clients. We provide immediate assistance and materials to our members and help others within the legal community access the expertise often unavailable to non-profits.
- We develop the capacity to ensure that client intake processes are appropriate for the welfare of clients and are sufficient to meet the needs of non-profit legal aid organizations. We have coordinated volunteer intake for the district and have made significant improvements within the civil legal services community finding ways to ensure that less than 5% of applicants are turned away each year.
- We seek to increase the legal aid community’s capacity to meet growing demand for legal and social services. We continue to find opportunities to increase coordination among agencies, such as the aggressive streamlining of data collection efforts. We are actively seeking out innovations to improve services and reduce costs by using technology to support the work-the technology "best practices" report cited above and opportunities to partner with other local and national non-profits to assist clients in reducing the need for legal services as well.
Mission First Legal Aid Services
Mission First Legal Aid offers a broad range of legal services, the major focus being promoting and supporting family stability, enabling clients to get housing and/or gain or retain employment and move toward financial stability. Several of the areas of practice conducted by MFLA also and necessarily cross-over into others.
Family Law
This is the predominant area for which MFLA receives requests for assistance. MFLA accepts most cases, but some family law cases are referred out to other local legal aid offices in the District of Columbia or nearby Virginia.
Housing
Housing assistance is the second major area of practice at MFLA. The areas of housing practice include eviction defense; foreclosure defense and counselling; assistance with securing affordable housing units and rent subsidy; and advocacy to maintain public and affordable housing stock in the community.
Immigration
MFLA assists clients with applications for citizenship and permanent residence; refugee and asylee adjustment; VAW/AUVA petitions and waivers; U-visas for victims of crime and T-visas for victims of human trafficking. While not a major area of practice for MFLA, we are always looking to assist those who come to us for help with immigration matters.
Wills/Probate
MFLA provides legal services to clients in need of wills and advance medical directives. MFLA also maintains a small caseload for estate administration and estates disputes.
Who is Eligible for Mission First Legal Aid?
Mission First Legal Aid is dedicated to providing legal services to the low-income residents of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. We are proud to serve the poorest of the poor and look to bring tangible results. The people we assist face many barriers. The District of Columbia has the highest poverty rate for single mothers in the nation. For a single mother of two children, this means that she is living on $28,000 a year. Most of our clients are struggling to make ends meet on less. In sum, most of our clients have an annual income of $15,000. Compared to other programs in the area, Mission First has the lowest sliding fee and helps the most clients. Mission First serves families, individuals, and senior citizens. This includes clients who are HIV positive, homeless clients, and people with mental health issues.
How to Use Mission First Legal Aid
To access Mission First Legal Aid (MFLA) services, individuals can either call or walk in to their closest Mission First office. The organization does not require any specific documentation to be brought with you on your first visit, and an appointment is not necessary for them to determine eligibility.
When you arrive at one of the MFLA offices, you will be asked to fill out two forms. One is used to collect basic information about yourself and the reason you are seeking legal aid, the second will ask for data based on the income levels and size of your household . While completing these forms, the MFLA staff will be able to give you an opportunity to speak with an attorney, but this is not required and you can always choose to take the opportunity to both learn about the program, as well as what services are available.
After the MFLA staff has determined that you qualify for the services of the organization, they will work with you to develop an action plan for your case and begin helping you with the issue you are facing. They also offer community and litigation-based clinics based on the types of legal issues that their clients face. Some of these include general legal clinics, benefits clinics and even clinics to help with wills and powers of attorney.
Mission First Legal Aid Effects
Mission First Legal Aid governs the Business Operations fund, partially composes the grants allocated to all LSC-funded legal aid programs in the United States, and oversaw all LSC-provided services beginning in 2009 and continuing until 2017. The effect this corporate structure had on legal aid is nearly immeasurable. The good news is that recent studies have shown how successful Mission First Legal Aid has been at helping legal aid clients obtain their rights and pursue justice, despite the uncertainty created when LSC changed the way it delivered grants to legal services organizations. In addition, there are countless success stories from individual states showing the impact Mission First has had on client communities and LSC providers both. An example of such was a California study that showed the impact of civil legal aid on the community. Researchers came up with a figure that estimated the value of benefits to low-income California residents as well as the total amount of private funding matched to state dollars in the previous year to be $471,227,000 in total. This study was specific to California (and was the most recent one of its type) but it did grant insight into the impact Civil Legal Aid can have on a community. Regardless of the exact figures in this area, the Mission First Legal Aid initiative has done a great deal to improve the lives of clients seeking assistance with legal issues.
Mission First Legal Aid Volunteer and Support Functions
Mission First Legal Aid welcomes volunteers and advocates to further our mission of providing vital legal services to our clients. We encourage you to get involved with the relationships you already have and expand your community service network in order to help us fulfill our vision of a society that provides equal justice for all.
When you give your time to volunteer with Mission First Legal Aid, you will receive training from Mission First Legal Aid professionals and make direct impact on your neighbors in need by providing assistance with income support cases, housing cases, family law cases, and more . We also welcome additional support for our work, including funds for emergencies within the program such as funding for the Courts Access Project and the Senior Legal Line, where volunteers answer legal questions over the phone, as well as server fixes within our office that will allow us to update our technology. Donors who give a total of $1,000 or more per year are included on our Visionary, Advocate, and Champion site recognition boards.
Advocates can make important choices to help us serve more people than ever, like donating gifts or your time to help underserved children and elderly residents. Mission First Legal Aid welcomes individuals like YOU to assist us in achieving our programs’ goals.
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