The Problem: Approximately 15% of Michigan households with children reported “sometimes or often” not having enough food to eat in the previous seven days. The same percentage say they have slight or no confidence in paying their next rent or mortgage payment on time. Many of these households qualify for aid but have little time to spare and don't know how to navigate complex application requirements. With their many responsibilities, their mental resources are pushed to the limit.

Legal Services Organizations (LSOs) exist to ease the burden of overworked, under-resourced families. But the LSOs themselves are facing increasing caseloads as needful population grows and their own resources shrink. This was never more true than under COVID restrictions when job losses skyrocketed (increasing the need for services) and corporations cut back their underwriting (decreasing funding for the LSOs).

Michigan Advocacy Program

The Michigan Advocacy Program coordinates a collaborative of nearly a dozen LSOs to provide legal access to the most vulnerable populations. They were already stretched when they came to us to solve their administrative bottlenecks.

The Solution: We launched a tailored, large-scale implementation of JusticeServer right before the 2020 lockdown. Nobody was expecting the stresses COVID would place on obtaining legal services, including us, when we launched. But the platform proved so robust that it not only maintained but increased the number of clients served and attorneys matched during the worst of the crisis.

JusticeServer presently serves the entire state of Michigan.