Practice Groups

Legal Aid of North Carolina - 040028

Abstract Number: 040028

September 2004

Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC) created substantive legal Practice Groups to improve client advocacy, build program capacity, and to more effectively deploy resources throughout the state to ensure that LANC's clients receive the highest quality of legal services irrespective of where they live in North Carolina. In 2002, the LSC funded programs in North Carolina consolidated into one program and Practice Groups provided a tactical approach that allows LANC to strategically harness staff expertise throughout the statewide program on behalf of LANC's clients. .

LANC's Practice Groups are comprised of LANC attorneys and serve to institutionalize training and develop staff expertise in multiple areas of the law. Practice Groups are led by a Senior Managing Attorney and are organized by substantive legal areas which include housing law, benefits law, employment law, family law, consumer law, and education law. LANC's attorneys are required to participate in multiple Practice Groups in order to encourage attorneys to develop multiple areas of expertise.

In establishing Practice Groups, LANC surveyed their staff members to determine where staff members had experience and expertise that could be leveraged by the program. Each staff member is assigned to two or more practice groups, each of which is led by a Practice Group Manager who may be located in another part of the state. The Practice Group Manager's responsibilities include supervising cases throughout the state in their practice area, ensuring co-counseling occurs on a regular basis for every extended service case, and identifying training and CLE opportunities for the staff members that comprise his or her Practice Group. This includes giving Practice Group Managers case acceptance and denial authority in their substantive area instead of the local managing attorney. The Practice Group Managers work with Regional Managers and local intake staff to ensure that intake staff members know how to match a client with the appropriate staff member. In practice, this would allow clients to receive extended services from LANC where the lead counsel and substantive expert in the case may reside in another part of the state but the co-counsel would be in the client's local office. This provides both a strong training opportunity for the less experienced attorney while also ensuring that the client has the benefit of counsel with extensive experience in the client's area of legal need.

In doing so, LANC is establishing a program structure that is organized along substantive legal expertise thereby enabling supervisors with substantive legal experience in a particular field to decide which cases are accepted and denied on a statewide basis. LANC's statewide case management system serves as an indispensable tool for Practice Group Managers as it enables them to supervise cases across the state. LANC has found Practice Groups to be an effective tool to improve client advocacy as well as to ensure that young attorneys have the opportunity to gain crucial experience serving as co-counsel under more experienced staff.

Contact Information:

George R. Hausen, Jr.
Executive Director
Legal Aid of North Carolina
224 South Dawson Street
Post Office Box 26087
Raleigh, North Carolina 27611
Phone: (919) 856-2130
Fax: (919) 856-2120
georgeh@legalaidnc.org

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