Community Lawyering (& Street Law)
Community organizing starts from a simple idea: the people closest to a problem are usually the ones who best understand it, and they have more power together than they do alone.
Community organizing starts from a simple idea: the people closest to a problem are usually the ones who best understand it, and they have more power together than they do alone. Organizers help neighbors, workers, tenants, and others find one another, name what matters to them, and act on it together. The work is slow and relational. It happens in living rooms, church basements, and community centers, one conversation at a time, long before anything shows up in a courtroom or a city council meeting.
Integrative Law shares those roots. Both begin with listening, with relationships, and with the belief that people are capable of shaping their own solutions. In the traditional model, the lawyer is the hero who rides in to fix things. In community organizing, the lawyer is more like a gardener than an architect, tending the conditions in which a community can grow its own strength. The lawyer’s skills serve the community’s goals, not the other way around.
Two closely related traditions show what this looks like in practice. Community lawyering puts lawyers in the neighborhoods they serve, working alongside residents. Street law teaches the law to people who are not lawyers, in plain language and in the places where they already gather. Both rest on the same belief: when people understand the law that shapes their daily lives, they are better equipped to use it, question it, and change it.St
Street law is now a global movement, but it began in the United States more than fifty years ago. In 1972, a small group of Georgetown University law students created and taught classes at two Washington, D.C. public high schools, Eastern and what was then Woodrow Wilson. They wanted young people to understand the law and to see the careers it could open to them. The high school students nicknamed the program “street law,” and the name stuck. Today the movement teaches both children and adults about the law and government in an informal, welcoming way. (Street Law history)
Street law is now a global movement, but it began in the United States more than fifty years ago. In 1972, a small group of Georgetown University law students created and taught classes at two Washington, D.C. public high schools, Eastern and what was then Woodrow Wilson. They wanted young people to understand the law and to see the careers it could open to them. The high school students nicknamed the program “street law,” and the name stuck. Today the movement teaches both children and adults about the law and government in an informal, welcoming way. (Street Law history)
In India, lawyer Kanan Dhru took the same idea in a different direction. Practicing in the courts, she saw how many people did not understand the basic laws they met every day. With her sister Kelly, also a lawyer, she created Lawtoons, a comic book series that uses stories and cartoons to teach children about their rights and the Indian Constitution. The comics grew out of the talks she was already giving to schoolchildren, and they let her reach far more young people than she could in person. (Visit Lawtoons)
At the center of both traditions is the learner. The hierarchy and formality of the legal world have little place here. Plain language and clear communication come first, so that everyone can understand the laws that apply to them. Street law programs take on topics people are already living with, such as consent and family violence, even if they have never seen them in legal terms. Once someone understands the law behind an experience, they can apply it in their own life.
These programs also bring students face to face with the legal system through mock trials and meetings with lawyers, which widens their sense of what is possible. Patrick Campbell, an attorney who has served on the Board of Directors of Street Law, Inc., was inspired to become a lawyer by the street law program at his high school. (Watch his story)
In the decades since Georgetown, law schools and community organizations across the United States have adopted the model, along with others in Belize, Russia, India, Ireland, South Africa, and beyond. It travels well because it starts with the learner and the local law, wherever that may be. Anywhere in the world, it can give people a voice.
Community Lawyering (& Street Law)
- Street Law, Inc.: Our History. The story of how street law began at Georgetown in 1972 and grew from there.
- Community Lawyers. Plain-language legal videos and resources in English and Spanish.
- Lawtoons. The comic book series by Kanan and Kelly Dhru that teaches children in India about their rights.
- Patrick Campbell’s story (video). How a high school street law program led one student to become a lawyer.
- The Quint: Law Can Be Confusing, But These Comic Books May Help. A news article on how and why Lawtoons got started.
- TFAS profile of Kanan Dhru. Kanan Dhru on founding Lawtoons and what children have done with it.
- Open Law Lab: Lawtoons comics for Indian constitutional law. A legal design view of the finished Lawtoons comic book.
