This report evaluates the benefits and costs of expanding the Domestic Abuse Grant Program (DAGP) to improve access to legal aid for women seeking restraining orders. Overall, the research team estimated that the net benefit from enacting the DAGP expansion would be $9,840,500.
Practice Areas
National Evaluation of the Legal Assistance for Victims Program
The Legal Assistance for Victims Program (LAV) “has been a success” by promoting the delivery of high-quality and comprehensive services among legal aid and domestic violence victim service programs. The federal evaluation finds that despite LAV, there is a “chronic unmet need for attorneys.”
Medical-Legal Partnership: Impact on Patients With Sickle Cell Disease
This study looked at how legal interventions affected pediatric patients with sickle cell disease. The researchers find that of the 106 cases opened under the MLP partnership resulted in 99 closed cases with 21 of them “resulting in a measurable gain of benefits.”
Medical-Legal Partnership Impact on Parents’ Perceived Stress: A Pilot Study
This study analyzed patient stress before and after receiving a legal intervention through an MLP. The researchers find that patient stress decreased after receiving legal services.
Framing Legal Care as Health Care
This guide helps legal service providers in MLPs to reframe civil legal needs as social determinants of health and better message their work to help with health care audiences. This guide shows how civil legal aid versus health care talk about their mission, the description of impact, and description of work and where they can partner and develop a common language for talking about their work.
Economic Self-Sufficiency among Women Who Experienced Intimate Partner Violence and Received Civil Legal Services
This study, funded by a DOJ award, found that for women who were experiencing intimate partner violence (also called domestic violence) and who received civil legal services for assistance in obtaining a civil protective order or assisting with a family law problem, saw increases in monthly income increase and number of assistance resources decrease. The study finds that “civil legal services are a critical component of a community coordinated response to IPV” (abstract).
Psychological Well-Being Among Women Who Experienced Intimate Partner Violence and Received Civil Legal Services
This study uses Sullivan’s Social and Emotional Well-Being Framework to see why and how women who experienced intimate partner violence (or domestic violence) and received civil legal services experienced improvements in psychological well-being. Women reported a decrease in depressive and PTSD symptoms over one year after receiving civil legal services.
Optimizing the Health Impacts of Civil Legal Aid Interventions: The Public Health Framework of Medical-Legal Partnerships
This article shows how medical-legal partnerships, a healthcare delivery model, can address the social determinants of health — how one’s social conditions (like neighborhood, job, and access to resources) affect health.
Medical-Legal Partnership and Healthy Start: Integrating Civil Legal Aid Services into Public Health Advocacy
This article looks at the medical-legal partnership model and how it can improve health outcomes by addressing the underlying social determinants of health.
A Test of Unbundled Legal Services in the New York City Housing Court
The study finds that the Volunteer Lawyer for the Day Program is a feasible and useful approach to alleviate the overwhelming unmet legal needs of New York City Housing Court litigants.
Legal Aid Research 