Women and Justice for the Poor

In 1863 the Working Women's Protective Union in New York opened the first legal aid organization with a full-time staff of women lay lawyers providing legal services to impoverished and working-class women. By 1938, a diversity of organizations had provided legal aid to over 5 million people. While several “definitive” studies of legal aid have been written, Felice Batlan makes a bold claim: by placing women at the center, she has exposed “the real history of legal aid, a story that the predominantly male leaders in the field of legal aid intentionally masked” (p. 3). She does not disappoint. Describing in detail the structures, philosophies, services, and clientele of organizations in New York, Boston, and Chicago, she identifies the ways gender, class, and ethnicity made a difference. The first women volunteers generally charged no fees, spent time with their clients, and made no distinction between legal and other services. In what Batlan describes as “the legal equivalent of a laying on of hands,” women lay lawyers provided “an environment in which poor women could freely tell their stories” (p. 4). Domestic servants, victims of sexual assault, and battered women all gained their attention. In contrast, the first organizations controlled by men primarily employed male professional lawyers and limited their assistance to legal claims. They generally charged a fee and limited the time of intake interviews

Criminology · Diversity (politics · Economic Justice · Empowerment · Ethnic group · Legal profession · Legal service · Political science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Law · Legal Education and Practice Innovations

• Blurring Professional Borders in Service of Anti-Poverty Collaboration

  Andrew C Schoeneman, Andrew Schoeneman•The Journal of Sociology & Social…•2017

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• Social Work and Substantive Justice

  Andrew Urban•Journal of American Ethnic History•2017

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