Episode 333: Bridging the Legal Gap for Vulnerable Communities | Kate Marr | Executive Director, Community Legal Aid SoCal
Kate Marr is on a mission to make justice accessible for everyone. As Executive Director of Community Legal Aid SoCal, she leads a team of attorneys tackling issues from housing and immigration to domestic violence, health, and consumer rights. In this episode, Kara and Kate talk about why knowing your rights is key to empowerment, how legal aid transforms lives, and the hidden barriers many low-income families face. You’ll hear how Kate’s leadership is giving citizens their power back, what it takes to serve an entire community’s legal needs, and why access and privilege often determine life’s outcomes. This episode explores legal equity, community empowerment, and the fight to make justice a right—not a privilege.
“We are conditioned as women to hold in our rage, hold in our anger. But our rage is our power and we can use that to change the world.”
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Time Stamps:
01:43 Welcome to the Powerful Ladies Podcast
01:56 Meet Kate Mar: Executive Director at Community Legal Aid SoCal
02:16 Understanding Community Legal Aid SoCal
03:03 The Legal Aid Gap and Services Provided
06:03 Challenges and Real-Life Examples
07:49 The Importance of Knowing Your Rights
09:56 Economic Realities and Legal Aid
11:52 Mental Resiliency and Case Management
18:02 Fundraising and Financial Challenges
22:40 The Impact of Legal Aid and Personal Reflections
25:38 The Power of Collective Effort
26:51 Early Aspirations and Career Path
30:11 Channeling Rage into Positive Action
32:34 The Importance of Community Support
36:44 Global Perspectives on Leadership and Resilience
44:50 Innovative Legal Aid Initiatives
48:29 The Role of AI in Legal Services
50:11 Final Thoughts and Ways to Connect
For every $1 invested in legal aid, you see a return of about an average of $7 for every dollar spent funding legal services, and that $7 comes in the form of benefits that are returned to a person.
That's Community Legal Aid. SoCal, executive Director Kate Marr. I'm Kara Duffy and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Success in life today is often correlated to access privilege, and if you know your rights. Thankfully, there are organizations such as Community Legal Aid, SoCal, that are working to meet the legal needs of low income people covering everything from housing rights to immigration, domestic violence, health, consumer rights, and more.
Kate Marr is the executive director leading the charge with a full team of attorneys dedicated to supporting the local community and giving citizens their power back.
Welcome to The Powerful Ladies Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to talk to you because you are in charge of a very important organization. So let's dive right in and tell everyone your name where you are in the world, and what it is that you're up to.
So my name's Kate Mar. I am coming to you from Long Beach, California. And I am the Executive Director at Community Legal Aid. SoCal.
What is Community Legal Aid? SoCal.
We are a nonprofit legal services program that serves both Orange and Los Angeles counties. We provide services that are completely free to low income folks. As I said in Orange County and the southeastern part of Los Angeles County, so like the Compton Norwalk area, which is really the most under-resourced part of Los Angeles County.
And community like the community Legal aid isn't that old. It's about 65 years. I think it just celebrated.
Yes. We just, we celebrated our 65th anniversary in 2023.
Okay. And for people who don't understand how law works and how often we need legal support what's the gap that you guys are filling?
Attorneys are very expensive and, most people, even middle income people really have a hard time affording attorneys. But for the most vulnerable people in our community, folks that are low income, and we're talking like 200% of the federal poverty level. Which obviously in California that is the cost of living here is so high.
But it. Folks really can't afford legal assistance, and many of them cannot navigate the justice system on their own. And so we provide, our services, as I said, are completely free and, we provide services in several areas of law. Our largest need that we are seeing right now is housing eviction defense.
We also provide ser, we provide family law services. Most of our family law clients are survivors of domestic violence. We also provide immigration services. And our immigration services are really targeted towards victims of crime. And we have a. A public benefits team that helps folks get on benefits that they're eligible for cash aid, CalWORKs, food stamps, things like that.
We also have a team that does consumer defense work. We have a team in Orange County that focuses on access to healthcare and a seniors unit in Orange County that works exclusively with. With folks that are over the age of 60 in a variety of areas of law, basically all the areas of law that we handle.
But the, that unit is targeted to working with folks that are over the age of 60 in Orange County. What else did I forget to mention? Oh, we also have a systemic impact unit that works on sort of affirmative work to try to. Address some of the trends that we're seeing in the community from our other substantive units.
And they also do some policy advocacy as well. And we have a case management team, so most of the clients that come to us have a variety of issues going on. They need help in more than one area of law, and they also have other needs that we have. We have a team of case managers who are trained social workers, essentially.
Who work with those clients to help them with other needs that they may have in their life that are preventing them from, moving forward or having a successful outcome in their legal case. They do a lot of work around like job interviewing skills, helping folks get on benefits, things like that.
I think that this is an area where so many people don't realize how big the gap is and how easy it is to, for people just to not know what they don't know, and as a result, become more vulnerable and like it's this domino effect that just keeps going. I know from the work I've done with Casa for Foster kids.
You get caught off guard by what people don't know about how life functions. Because they've never been exposed to it. They've never had someone show them. They just don't know it's a thing. The story I love is of a boy who got a job, his casa advocate like was getting reports of how great he was doing and months later he goes, yeah, I love my job, but what are they gonna pay me?
And he's what do you mean? And he's they give me these envelopes, but they don't gimme any cash. He had a shoebox full of checks because he didn't know that you got paid by a paper check. Wow. He didn't know how to set up a bank account. He didn't know how to sign checks, any of those things.
He, in his world, everything for work was cash based.
And it's such a simple example of the gap of knowledge that doesn't mean it's, just not knowing, right? Like he was clearly smart and capable. He was doing the work. Everyone at work loved him. He just didn't know this fundamental foundational item.
And like, how often are you seeing that for the people you help of they just don't know what rights they have. They just don't know that what they're dealing with, like how wrong it actually is for those right of us who know better.
Yeah. Yeah. And I absolutely, that is definitely. Issue and the number of people who don't realize that an issue that they're having in their life may have a legal solution, like folks who are living in.
Really poor living conditions and their landlord refuses to fix something in their apartment. There's roaches or there's no heat or something like that. Like we have so many clients that call like two one one for information not knowing like that there is a legal solution to the problem that their landlord has an obligation legally.
To provide habitable living conditions. And so yes, absolutely. That is, I think they say that like I, I don't know exactly what the statistic is, but there's something like, three quarters of the issues that folks are having that have a legal solution, they don't even realize that there is a legal solution to that problem.
And so a lot of what we do in addition to actually. Representing people in court or providing legal advice is know your rights, like going out into the community and telling them what their rights are what their rights are with respect to their landlord, what their rights are with respect to their employer, what their rights are with respect to immigration enforcement, things like that.
And that's a theme I think across the US in general right now, right? Where so many people are asking what their rights really are, because even those who felt more informed about rights and how government and law at the, from city to federal worked, so many things are happening now. Were like, wait, hold on.
Did I actually not know how this worked? Or how is this okay? What can we do about it? And so I think now more than ever, people are really checking in to see what, where the line where the lines are. Because everyone at some point is being disrupted. You mentioned before about the poverty rate, like what that income level is in Southern California.
Like I fell off my chair recently because I heard a stat that $120,000 a year means you're, if you're earning that or more, you're in the top 1% of global wealth in orange County in particular, a hundred thousand dollars is low income. That there's a $20,000 gap between the top 1% of global wealth and poverty in this county. Like I, my, like I, I can understand it, I can do the math. And there is just this cognitive dissonance of how does this Math,
I look at, the cost to rent an apartment right now, and remember back when, when I was in law school and feeling like, oh my God, $500 to rent an apartment, how am I possibly gonna be able to afford that? And we're looking at people paying five times, 5, 6, 7 times that, to rent in Orange County. Yeah.
It's insane. It's crazy. And then I think also the systemic level of the domino effects, like if. When you are someone who is struggling and I think that variation between 120 and 100 shows, like how close so many people are to struggling. That once you have one domino fall, the chances of others falling. Yeah. Is so much greater. And it goes also into this overwhelmed space. Like you're burnt out, you're exhausted, you're stressed out, trying to figure this all out, trying to maintain some sorts of normalcy, adding kids, adding health conditions, add in other things to it. Suddenly you don't have one crisis. You have right. 15. Like how are, what are you seeing when you're working with people in regards to. Their mental resiliency or the other, the support they need that's maybe softer support and not legal aid support.
And that, that's particularly why we established our case management team is to provide some of that. Other support and help people who are in that crisis mode where it's so many things in their life feel like they're falling apart, that they don't even know how to prioritize and put one foot in front of the other. And that's really what our case managers do with them is help them figure out, okay, you've got all these issues going on.
We're gonna, we're gonna make a list, we're gonna tackle them one by one, and I will help you. I will walk with you and help you through this. This scenario. And it is, you talk about there's this concept of secondary trauma, which we see a lot of in our work. My background is working with domestic violence survivors so that that work is very hard and it's hard not to, absorb, what you're hearing. But the other thing that's so cool about the work that we do is there's also this like secondary resilience as well. And when you see someone go through that journey of having, needing a restraining order, not having to get custody of their kids back and.
Walking on that journey with them for, sometimes for years I had, when I was practicing and handling cases, I had clients that, I worked with for 10 years and would go from just, the worst situation in the world to having their own business and, thriving and having their kids thriving and it's.
It's amazing and it's it really builds you up. And I just feel, I feel so blessed that I have been able to do this work, I get a little bit emotional talking about it, but yeah, it's been such a gift and now being able to support a whole team of people that are doing that work is awesome.
I, I. There's that TV show that was on Netflix. The maid, the woman who left her abusive partner, had a child, couldn't rely on her parents for support. Tries to get a job. Can't get daycare 'cause she doesn't have a job. Can't have a job. 'cause she needs daycare. And you're watching this show screaming at the TV where I'm like, just call me.
The kid can stay at my house. Like so many people need one day, one night, one week. There's such little need. And the story that people don't work hard and the story that people want to just take. Makes me crazy. Yeah. Because I haven't met anyone who is positioning their life plan on taking advantage of systems.
There's too much pride. There's too much bigger dreams. There's too much wanting to be independent and figure it out and be responsible, and I think that narrative is so harmful to the, how many people need short-term supports.
And if I don't know. I don't know. When we decided that people who were in our community went from neighbors to strangers.
But if your neighbor asked for something, you would help them. If a friend of a family did, and it makes me crazy when. Someone that we happen to not know in our neighborhood needs help, and we're like, oh, guess they couldn't figure things out. And you're like, what?
It's some sort of deficiency in them. Yes. Yeah. The, just the lack of sort of empathy and recognizing the humanity of everyone, that we all have intrinsic value. It. And it's like a disease right now.
And it, I it comes from scarcity, right? Yeah. Like whatever the resources are, too many people are hanging out in scarcity and having to protect and defend and mine, mine.
And the truth is we have more than enough of everything, that we could ever need. Even the simple stats of we have enough clothing on this planet for the next 100 years. There's truly nothing that we are. Lacking other than the empathy right now. Or the desire to share.
And it, it just, it makes me totally crazy because when you look at a room full of like kindergarten children they all have the same level of hope and opportunity. And I don't like, there again, we decide these rules like you're an adult, guess you lost all your hope. And you're like, what?
And yet there are people in the world. I won't name any names who have more money than they and their entire family could spend in a hundred lifetimes.
Yeah. And you have this great stat on the website that for every dollar you get, you it ends up becoming seven. And so I've coached a lot of nonprofits and I pivoted to coaching for profits because.
It often made me crazy, either that a nonprofit wasn't operating like a business, which I know you guys are. Or just like the, how hard it was so much easier to get someone to buy a t-shirt Right. Than to give $5 for something that, you know would go so far. How have you like managed that process of getting support and explaining the power to people?
It, we really have just because we are facing. Significant threats to our funding just based on, the current political reality. And we really have switched a lot of our messaging to trying to demonstrate the. The return on investment for the work that we do and for the money that is invested in our program.
And thank you for quoting that, that statistic that for every $1 invested in legal aid, the, you see a return of about an average of $7 on for every dollar spent funding legal services. And that $7 comes in the form of. It could be, benefits that are returned to a person, but it's also if someone is thriving in their community and working, they're spending money in the community.
And they're if they're not in a domestic violence situation, there's a savings for law enforcement costs, things like that. It's the hidden. Savings, but we really have shifted our messaging to talk to that, to speak to that because that, that sort of hopefully has an appeal a across, across the political spectrum.
But raising money is not easy. You were totally correct that people will go out and buy. Things that they don't need before they will donate to legal services. So we, it's been difficult. We have our fundraiser coming up that hopefully we'll be bringing in some, some significant contributions this year.
But yeah. It's difficult. Most of our funding is government funding. So we get a lot of federal funding, a lot of state funding. Our federal funding is at risk the. The current administration has proposed defunding the Legal Services Corporation, which is our largest funder.
But we're lucky in a state like California. That would be a huge hit for us, obviously, and I am, I'm hopeful that won't happen. But we're lucky in a state like California that the, that California values. The work that we do and has invested in it. But there are other states across the country where legal Services corporation funding is the only funding they get.
And if it were to be defunded, there would be no legal aid and that's in some of the poorest places in the country where we are helping people who are voting for, the Republicans. So it's it's. It's terrifying to think of what could happen.
And it comes down to not knowing, right? There's a battle right now about information and keeping people informed and having the transparency and people knowing their rights and like I am, I'm at a loss most days of like how we made this transition into. Wanting to limit people's power in such a way. But for people who are hearing this and they, they wanna donate, they wanna support, can they go to your website and absolutely donate in line? Okay. Yes. And that's just community legal socal.org. Dot org. Okay.
And make sure you check out, there's a page on there that has information about our event coming up on September 17th. I like to say that it is the best. Legal services fundraiser in California. It's a ton of fun. We do a theme every year.
This year is seventies, so it's gonna be groovy. We've got we're honoring our pro bono partner of the year, which is really exciting. And we've got the Orange County school of the Arts. Their dance troupe comes and performs and we do a little dance lesson. We're gonna be learning the hustle this year. You can purchase tickets there on our website or a sponsorship, so I hope people will check that out too.
You mentioned briefly like the resiliency and the, like, how emotional it is to see people taking their space back and transforming their lives. How has doing this work changed you?
I, so many ways it's hard to say. It, I, like I said I'm, I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have done this work for as long as I have. I, it'll be 25 years in December. Can't believe it. That makes me feel pretty old. But it, I, it, I feel I the, like I. I have four kids, so it's really important to me that they see what I do and see that it's fulfilling. And yeah, maybe I'm not making as much money as I could make in private practice, but like the riches of what it has brought to my life and hopefully to theirs as well is it's more, it's worth more than, all of the money that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have combined.
How has your perception of the power of other people changed doing this work?
You, there's that quote from Margaret Mead, never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has. And it, just like our organization, we are, we're. A small but mighty team and I think about each of us is doing our own small part and, but the power is in that we're all in there, in it, doing it together.
And I feel like, so throughout my career at this organization and other organizations, I've been just so lucky to work with the most passionate, committed. Like selfless people who are just are committed to showing up every day to just make that small difference for the one caller, for the one client for the one.
And those little things like seeing differences in in all the people that we've helped, it's, that's what changes communities, right? I'm the luckiest girl in the world.
If we go back to 8-year-old, you would she have imagined that you were a lawyer, let alone doing this?
I feel like I wanted to be a lawyer for really as long as I can remember.
I think like at some point deviated from that a little bit when I saw Top Gun and thought that I was gonna be like a fighter pilot for some reason. But yeah. But yeah, I, so I definitely feel like I always knew that I wanted to be. Trying to do my small part to make things a little better.
For a long time, I thought, even when I first started law school, I thought that I wanted to be a public defender. But when. My first sort of job, summer job while I was in law school, was working at a domestic violence clinic in Baltimore and I had taken it as a backup 'cause I wasn't able to get anything with the public Defender's office.
I took it as a backup and two weeks in I would, I knew this is what I wanna do with the rest of my life.
It's, somebody asked me recently, what infuriates me the most about how the world works today and how can that become what you build everything else around? And I've been thinking a lot about it because I feel like most women have like a long list of things that, that are like, why? This is dumb, why is this broken? We have solutions for this. Yeah. But the more that I think about what that base, fundamental. Issue for me is it drives me crazy that people don't know that there are solutions to the things that they're tolerating, right?
Whether it's in their business, whether it's in legal parts of their life. But there's this, when we compare the wealthy to the non wealthy and how they go through life. The wealthy know that there's a solution to any issue they run into and they don't hesitate to ask their network how they can avoid this thing.
Or make it go away. And that could be a DUI charge. That can be, I don't like my landscaper. That can be. The only options for flying to Paris don't work for me. It's really anything. But there's this standing in just the concept that if it doesn't work for me, if it's not giving me the outcome I want, there's an alternative and there's many alternatives.
And I've been trying to like, refine this more to be able to put it into a sentence for myself as a mission statement. But I feel the, like the work I'm doing on the business coaching consulting side. Is nowhere near as important as the work that you guys are doing, but it comes from this same route of, it doesn't have to be this way.
How often do you feel yourself stepping into Mama Bear? Because I do for dumb things that are more about people, how they're spending their time and not about how they're being negatively impacted as you are.
Yeah. It's hard. I, it's hard because I. I, yeah I feel a lot of rage and frustration.
I recently read this book called Rage Becomes Her, which I highly recommend if you haven't read it. And like my takeaway from that is we as we are conditioned as women to hold, hold it in, hold in our rage, hold in our anger. But the power, our rage is our power, right? And we can use that to change the world.
Like we just need to learn how to, what she calls it anger, competence, or rage competence rather than anger management or anger or controlling it, it's having competency and knowing how to channel that into positive action. I'm working on that a lot right now. Instead of just being angry actually.
Taking that and standing in it and being like, I'm gonna use this frustration that I feel like in a really positive directed way.
It, converting it is all of it. I've once heard that women are like rivers. We're gonna, we're gonna flow, we're gonna flow fast, and we're gonna, you can either, build up some supportive dams to channel our energy in a certain way, or we will flood entire areas.
If you like. That's like that. That's the power we have. And some of that channeling, like we have to do ourselves. But there's also this there's even like studies. This is going into a woo space of like people who are not managing their stress and anxiety and other mental conditions like they can be causing the exorcism.
They're studying this in Switzerland, so it's like very interesting. It's like our, we get all the rage, builds up with their frustration and it like, it, it almost leaves us 'cause there's nowhere else for it to stay stored inside of us.
Yeah, I can see that. I can see that. That's not that. Woo.
Thank you. So I like, I feel like it's the same way and it's so inspiring to meet women like yourself who are taking the power that you have and the abilities that you have and using it to like just open up space for all these other people who, other would just be sitting in it otherwise and suffering and. That's the part that just makes my brain start to melt of we don't need to be sitting and suffering. We don't need to be dealing with these things.
And I mean there's this, like this scarcity mindset that if someone else gets something, it's somehow taking away from me. But what if we flipped that and thought instead, like a rising tide lifts all boats and when my neighbor's doing better, that means I'm gonna be doing better and my, this community that I'm raising my kids in is gonna be doing better. I just, I don't get why people can't understand that.
And no, and it's so interesting because they'll easily use the kind of biggest loser concept in other areas. Where we can our success can only be measured by whoever's coming in last in the group. And like why wouldn't we wanna give those them resources so that we can be balancing our averages like somebody sent me a video about like, why socialist concepts never work, and I was like I've lived in Europe.
Like I can't accept this concept. And being someone who you know, is clearly has two feet in a capitalist space of helping people run businesses, like there's a place for. Loving your neighbor and like driving and carving your own path that can equally exist.
I just don't know. I don't know why we want there to be extremes in like why there have to be such differences and what I can have in what you can't have Yeah, there's a fundamental baseline of.
Do we have shelter? Do we have food? The Maslow hierarchy of needs. Isn't that complicated? And I just, in addition, the concept that people are self-made complete nonsense and that no one's ever had help. Complete nonsense. And just not understanding what privilege is.
Yeah. Is like a whole other like layer of. We just have a, like people I used to think people needed more passports, but I'm curious if people just need to leave their zip code more at this point.
Yeah. As someone, obviously I have a lot of privilege. I'm a white woman. I grew up in Orange County in, in a pretty well off family.
I never really wanted for anything, and I wish that everyone who came from a background like I did, could. Walk a year in the work that I've done and see that we didn't get where we are just on our own. There was generations of stuff that came before us that led us to where we are now.
And not everyone in Orange County, in LA County in the world had that privilege. And that's, that's another thing that I've learned in doing this work. I didn't get that until I sat in it. I still cared about and wanted to help other people, but I didn't understand like that whole.
White privilege concept until I really did this work. And I'm like, I'm so grateful to have learned that.
Yeah, we recently had four women who are running NGOs around the world on for a powerful conversation episode and I was left, so relieved because I think there's so many.
Women who are doing the best they can to change their world, whether it's their family, their community at bigger levels who have been so frustrated and defeated in the past couple of months. And it's the first time that many people in America have experienced the shock to the system that can happen with leadership change.
And having these women from Burma and Kenya and Tanzania and Syria on. All of whom have had radical leadership changes. They sometimes, like they've had rights given they've had rights taken away. They've, there's been civil wars, there's been peace, there's been like, just things that we've been so privileged not to experience on our soil. One woman even was said like, oh if we get bombed during the Zoom, I'll just jump back on once I can. Yeah. I was like, or just don't go handle things. That sounds serious. But that I was talking to them about like, how do they keep going forward when everything around them changes. And we're actually having a happy hour about this in a few weeks in Colonel Delmar to discuss this. And they all just said it doesn't matter who's in charge. It doesn't matter what's happening around us, these needs don't go away. And it gave me like, I was left so proud to be female. Yeah. Because you, you start looking at how for generations, women have done the work no matter what. It's always been done. And I, it allowed me to flip to be so grateful and appreciative when it is easy and it is in flow. And there is support. Because otherwise it doesn't change.
Yeah. Like the number of resilient, hardworking men and women that we've all come from, and the things that women have done despite all the things we're told we're not supposed to do. It just keeps going and it, it gave me this space and peace to not feel like. Our focus or identities needed to change.
Yeah. It's just another thing that we have to be shielded from. Yeah. It's oh, we need the umbrella out for a little while. But we're gonna keep walking in the rain because that's what we do.
Yeah. I have a board member who grew up, under a couple different like authoritarian regimes outside of the United States and came here.
I think she came here in law school and I was having lunch with her like shortly after, like in probably early February. And she was like. Like I've seen this before, like there is another side to, there is something on the other side of this and we just keep doing the work and we'll get to the other side of it.
But man, when you're like in the middle of it, it's hard to remember that sometimes.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's also why I love doing this podcast because it gives me, I was serious before about I probably have a scroll that could go out the door, down the street of like things that I'm aware are broken or not optimized.
That, and I think all of us women have these big lists, right? But when we're able to. Hold hands and know people are in different corners. And like some of us should be the connectors and the runners. And making sure other people have to stand in that one particular space and do that thing.
And it gives me relief seeing how many women are doing incredible work every day, that we're not talking about enough, that we're not celebrating. I love what Taylor Swift can do for our country and change our mood. And there's a million people who are doing things that change people's lives at a such a tangible level every day.
And you're one of those people, like it's knowing you're in my community, made me go, oh, thank God. Okay, good. Kate's here, legal a's here. Okay. Like we're not gonna fall apart. Things aren't as on fire, but. It doesn't mean that we don't need to rally together at this time either.
What does powerful and ladies mean to you, and do their definitions change when they're next to each other?
I think that their definitions do change when they're next to each other because I think that it is the collective, that's where that's, we all have our own power to do small things right.
But, we all have our power to do like small things in our own community, but it's that collective of all of us doing our part and. It's like everybody, like you said, everybody has a part. Taylor Swift has a part, she's keeping us going. The people in the street protesting are keeping us going.
The legal aid attorneys, the people that are sharing posts on social media, we're, we all are doing our little part. And yeah, I think when you put the two together, it, it is that collective that makes it, the sum is no the sum is greater than. The parts. Yeah. You know what? You know what I'm saying?
I've also been really inspired by a lot of businesses who are switching into. Having charitable expectations. It's something that I've been considering for my clients. I won't take you on as a client if you don't have a charity partner that you're contributing to every year. We've always had our charity partners that we're committed to a minimum amount every year.
Because there's, I, there's just it's part, to me, it's part of why we're doing this. It's, there's, when I think about, often people use the tithing component, like sharing 10% is really no big deal. It would be weird if we ate the whole pizza by ourselves, right?
So like finding people who are dedicated that way. Like how many partners do you guys have? Do you have like what does it look like for people who want to support you in an ongoing, consistent way? How can they get involved at that level?
There's a lot of ways to support our org and our work and it's not always just financial, right?
So we have pro bono partners that, will help take cases and do things like that, but we, we also have, we have board members who have expertise in certain areas and they help us out that way. Obviously we love financial contributions, but there are other ways to support and if folks feel like, I would love to support this org, but I maybe don't have the financial resources to do I just reach out.
We can find a way. Everybody has a skill, and everybody has a role in this struggle.
We ask everybody like how we can support you. What is on your to-do list, to manifest list, what is something you'd like to put out to this community to help you make happen?
So I'm really excited about this project that we're working on in Orange County.
It is. A partnership between the five sort of lar really the five big legal services providers in Orange County and we're all different sizes. And so it's community legal aid, SoCal, it's the Public Law Center, it's Elder Center elder Law and Disability Rights Center. Veterans Legal Institute and Asian Americans advancing Justice SoCal, and we are trying to create a one sort of one stop shop point of entry for all.
Residents of Orange County that need legal services. And so if we're calling it just oc, we're very, we're, we have been fundraising for it and we're trying to get it off the ground. We just hired a consultant to start on phase one our planning phase. So if you all can think good thoughts about that, if you wanna contribute to that.
Our goal really is to create. A legal safety net in Orange County for the most vulnerable residents of Orange County. But we also see opportunity there with all the data that we'll be able to collect to spot trends and really like just improve access to justice for the folks that need it most.
I think it's so interesting that you talked about the dataset. 'cause my head immediately jumped to, oh my gosh who's designing this interface? Because there's so much automation that could be happening that will cost you nothing once it's built. To collect inquiries, to process them, to sort like they're right.
I think I'm also in that brain space 'cause we're changing some of our tech platforms right now. And no, there's mo like I, because also when you think about legal aid, I think there are people who probably need it that think, oh, I don't know if I qualify. Especially around here. And I, I would argue to people if they have a legal question, they should probably start with you. And see where they belong. But. I think streamlining resources is always a good idea. I think people who have the same mission, combining forces is always, it's like creating your own superhero right group.
And we're also really hopeful that historically in the legal services community.
There has been a lot of that like scarcity mindset even and competition amongst programs. And we're really hoping to model a way of collaborating in a meaningful way that sort of puts aside what the best interest of our organization may be for what's actually in the best interest of the people that we serve. 'Cause that's really why we're here.
Yeah. And I think it's interesting too, 'cause often when social type services are being consolidated, you worry about the jobs that might get deleted or eliminated because we don't need the overlap. But when you're talking about lawyers, you're like, now you can just go get paid more money. There's room to go into,
Or we'll be like, we'll realize that, maybe this need is fully covered by this one agency, but there's this other need that nobody's handling. Yeah. So we can pick that up.
Yeah. And I don't think we're, I. When we look at what, how the recent economy has impacted different industry types and clients none of my lawyers have been impacted.
There's, that's not going away. I don't, you can't replace a lawyer with ai. You could replace part of what we do with ai. But not all of it.
No. And it's so risky. Yeah. Like it might work for a first draft or an initial right concept. But am I gonna send that to anyone and feel like I'm safe?
No. There, there are attorneys that have made that mistake though. Oh, I believe it. I mean it's people have been asking me a lot lately about how I think AI is impacting all different types of industries and business. And I come from a world of working in fashion where we had to brief people all the time.
Brief marketing brief, a product person. And when I think about how strong AI is, like until we can properly brief until we know how to ask the right question, it will never work the right way. And there's so much bias built into it too. So much bias and we don't know. We don't know, so we can't ask the right question. Which is why we need a lawyer. Yeah.
We're hopeful though, at least for this project that we're working on, that we will actually, be able to use some AI at the sort of, at the beginning of the process, at the initial screening level, which will open up our capacity for humans to be doing more of the stuff that you need an actual human for.
So we'll see. We're very excited about it. I want anyone listening to this podcast, please if you believe in manifesting, we're gonna make it happen. One way or the other, though, we're very committed. So
I love this. I think it's a great idea. I think a lot of listeners will too. For everybody who wants to follow you, support you connect, collaborate, where can they do all those things?
So you can find me on Instagram at cco, no c SoCal underscore Kate. That's my professional handle and I'm also on LinkedIn. And please follow our organizational social media handles. You can find them on our website.
Perfect. And we'll link everything in our show notes too, but Great. I know how busy you are, already as a mom of four kids, plus running this organization. There's never enough time, I am sure in your schedule. So thank you so much for taking time to talk to me and share your story with us today. Again, thank you so much for the work you're doing. It means so much to me. It means so much to our community. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and share it with a friend. Head to the powerful ladies.com where you can find all the links to connect with Kate, community Legal Aid, SoCal, and learn how to donate. Come hang out with powerful ladies on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and you can find me and all of my socials@karaduffy.com. This episode was produced by Amanda Kass and in our audio engineer is Jordan Duffy. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope you're taking up me and powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
