Legal Services Director Mentorship/Exchange Pilot Program

Colorado Legal Services - 030189

Abstract Number: 030189

February 2004

Jon Asher from Colorado Legal Services (CLS), Teresa Cosby from the South Carolina Centers for Equal Justice (SCCEJ), and Adrienne Worthy from Legal Aid of West Virginia (LAWV) participated in a Legal Services Director Mentorship/Exchange Pilot Program. This pilot program, funded by the Legal Services Corporation, was launched to provide support and mentorship to program directors of recently formed statewide programs. At the outset of this pilot program, CLS, the SCCEJ, and LAWV all had either recently been formed or were in the process of merging into statewide programs and, in light of these recent changes, this mentoring program sought to achieve four goals that could benefit programs as they experienced these changes in their state's delivery system:

1. To build a model that supports long-term meaningful mentoring relationships, which are programmatically helpful and personally fulfilling for statewide legal services program leadership.
2. To determine whether this model is effective and can be replicated effectively and efficiently by others.
3. To help directors understand and effectively address critical post-merger issues.
4. To support and expand the vision and implementation of state justice communities.

These goals were to be achieved through visits by each director to each of the three programs. The visits offered each director an opportunity to introduce the other participants to his/her program, prominent members in the state justice community, as well as unique challenges or delivery barriers faced by the program. The visits included structured meetings with set agendas where specific issues were discussed such as management structure, state planning, consolidation and merger issues, fundraising initiatives, and strategies for effectively working with a program's board of directors.

In addition to programmatic issues, all three participants found it incredibly beneficial to have peers, who were also directors of statewide programs, to whom they could direct questions and issues faced by the director with the assurance that the exchanges would be treated confidentially. Each participant committed to respond quickly and with care when one of the other participants was in need of assistance or advice and this proved to be an effective way to overcome the sense of isolation often experienced by directors of statewide programs. To learn more about this program, access the final report below as a PDF document.

Contact Information:

Jonathan Asher
Executive Director
Colorado Legal Services
1905 Sherman Street, Suite 400
Denver, Colorado 80203
Phone: (303) 837-1321
Fax: (303) 830-7860
Email

Adrienne Worthy
Executive Director
Legal Aid of West Virginia
922 Quarrier Street, 4th Floor
Charleston, WV 25301
Phone: (304) 343-3013 x28
Fax: (304) 342-3011
Email

Additional Information:

• Legal Services Director Mentorship/Exchange Pilot Program, Report to LSC, 30 September 2003 (74kb, PDF).

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