Design & Delivery of Core Courses
Since its inception, the Consortium has sponsored close to seventy multi-day courses representing a full range of advocacy, management and leadership skills that equal justice advocates and staff need to achieve justice for their clients. The Consortium’s laddered curriculum of core advocacy skills training provides a continuum of professional learning with courses geared for distinct groups of legal aid staff – program and litigation directors, new and more experienced attorneys, non-attorney advocates, intake staff and others. Consortium members remain committed to providing a regular schedule of core courses with some courses offered annually (e.g., Basic Lawyering Skills Training) and others offered on a two-three year cycle.
Leadership Support & Development
From the beginning, leadership development was an explicit part of the Consortium’s mission. Building on its original Leadership & Justice curriculum, the Consortium now sponsors a cutting-edge New England Leadership Institute, a transformative year-long program through which emerging legal aid leaders develop a comprehensive set of skills and concepts essential to the exercise of leadership in a social justice context.
Consortium members also focus on leadership development through the careful recruitment and support of program member staff who serve as course faculty and members of training design teams. With generous support from Practising Law Institute, the Consortium sponsors an annual Training for Trainers (TOT).
Fostering Affirmative Advocacy
Through its bi-annual Advocacy Symposia, the Consortium convenes legal aid advocates, academics and other opinion leaders to examine new and long-standing poverty-related issues, learn from others’ experiences in addressing them, and develop new strategies for tackling some of the most intractable problems facing our communities. From the first Symposium in 2002 --“Seeking Justice for Unrepresented Litigants” – to the most recent on “Structural Racism”, the Consortium’s role has expanded to include ongoing support for advocates working on issues coming out of Advocacy Symposia.