Our History

The story of the Center for Legal Aid Education begins in the late fall of 1999 when, still reeling from the 1995 federal funding cuts that dismantled the legal services community’s rich network of state, regional and national support centers, New England legal aid providers stepped forward to rebuild their regional training system. Starting modestly with four advocacy skills courses in 2000, the Legal Services Training Consortium of New England (the Consortium) gradually expanded the number and scope of its training deliveries. It also began partnering with national training providers – American College of Trial Lawyers and Practising Law Institute – to leverage additional critical resources for the New England legal aid community.

The Consortium soon gained national attention for its pioneering work in web-based training delivery. This new ability to reach advocates who had difficulty attending in-person trainings due to distance, cost, or family responsibilities, led to an expansion of the Consortium’s original vision to include a national online campus, Legal Aid University (LAU), to serve a broader legal aid and equal justice community. In January 2006, LAU, later renamed Center for Legal Aid Education, officially became an independent organization dedicated to serving the national equal justice community.

Since 2006, CLAE has steadily increased its scope and reach to include two state and regional campuses in New England and Florida, in addition to training programs for national audiences through its web-based campus, Summer Institutes, and individual training deliveries for state-based audiences across the country.

CLAE has also continued to expand its already extensive training curriculum. Between 2008-2009 alone, CLAE added three new courses – Whole Client/Whole Advocate, Essential Skills for Paralegals and Legal Assistants and Board Development: The Legal Aid Context.

Building upon its core advocacy skills training programs, CLAE develops ongoing networks that enable equal justice advocates throughout the country to work together to strategize and take collective action across geographical boundaries. CLAE’s advocacy symposia further provide forums through which advocates come together to learn and explore new frameworks for tackling emerging issues and long-standing problems. The most recent symposium on structural racism, for example, sparked discussions on racial justice issues across legal services programs, and the New England Structural Racism Coalition, which consequently emerged, has already played a key role in educating the broader NE legal services community.

Finally, CLAE’s expanded online campus, developed to transcend barriers to in-person training, continues to canvass advocates from diverse locations to learn together and reflect on their experiences, applying new concepts and skills to actual legal services practices.