Colorado Legal Services (CLS) developed a process to unify and integrate three legal services programs into CLS. Program mergers tend to be difficult processes and CLS confronted this challenge by creating working groups that enabled management to synthesize and incorporate a number of perspectives into the new CLS. CLS began this process by holding a statewide staff meeting where staff could discuss their perspectives on legal services. From this meeting, it became clear that CLS would benefit from a more detailed examination of various issues that arose at this meeting. To resolve these issues, CLS created separate working groups to address and define CLS' approach to establishing program priorities, improving program support for CLS' work, discerning ways to make CLS more efficient, and developing a program wide approach to impact work.
Working Group Members contributed roughly 5-10 hours per month over the course of six months to address a set of questions established in the statewide meeting. Each Working Group created a report with recommendations for how CLS should approach and handle issues assigned to each group. For example, the Impact Working Group created a CLS policy statement outlining CLS' role in pursuing impact work and created a procedure for identify and tracking the results of impact projects. Once each group completed their reports, CLS' managing attorneys met and discussed the reports until they reached a consensus on adopting the recommendations contained within each report. Subsequent meetings were held to discuss the implementation of each recommendation and policy created by the reports. This process provided staff with a voice and allowed management the opportunity to incorporate various approaches into CLS. To learn more about this project, access the Memorandums and Working Group Reports below as PDF documents.
Contact Information:
Manuel Ramos Director of Advocacy Colorado Legal Services 1905 Sherman Street, Suite 400 Denver, CO 80203 Phone: (303) 866-9329 Fax: (303) 830-7860 mramos@colegalserv.org
LSC:
America's Partner for Equal Justice 
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