Excellent Training is a Hallmark of NLADA's Service to the Equal Justice Community

But NLADA does more than just provide training. We are leading the development of a national training infrastructure that will help to ensure that advocates at all levels of experience obtain the skills and substantive knowledge needed to provide the best possible service to their clients.

NLADA Civil Training Events

• Each spring, the NLADA joins with the ABA to sponsor the Equal Justice Conference for advocates from across the many sectors of the equal justice community.
• NLADA hosts the Substantive Law Conference, the legal aid community's premiere national poverty law training.
• In June, 2006, NLADA will present the Litigation and Advocacy Directors Conference for advocacy leaders and managers.
• The nation's leading summit and training conference for equal justice advocates is the NLADA Annual Conference, held every November.

  Web-based Training Opportunities

  In addition to hosting conferences and in-person training events, NLADA is exploring delivering training through other mediums, like the internet. Through NLADA's partnership with the Practicing Law Institute (PLI), NLADA has taken the first step toward making training to the legal services community available on line. At the 2000 Substantive Law Conference, NLADA taped a session entitled "Bridging the Digital Divide" which can be viewed at PLI's Web site. View the session (Note: you will need to select the session entitled, "National Legal Aid & Defender Association.") While at PLI's site, you may also want to review the session on the Homeless Advocacy Project of the Volunteer Legal Services Program of the Bar Association of San Francisco. Please give us some feedback on how we can best utilize this partnership with PLI and what kind of training is best suited to internet presentation.

  Building a National Training Infrastructure

  In 1997, NLADA and the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) launched a joint project, The Project for the Future of Equal Justice (the Project), to expand and strengthen the nationwide partnership of responsibility for equal justice and to promote the development in every state of a comprehensive and integrated equal justice system. Funded by the Open Society Institute and Ford Foundation, one of the primary initiatives of the Project was to examine and rethink the role of training in the legal services community. As part of this initiative, the Project formed an advisory committee comprised of equal justice advocates, funders and bar leaders from across the country who set priorities to promote life long-learning, while highlighting the need to establish a national training infrastructure.

  NLADA has adopted the priorities suggested by the Project's advisory committee. (Read a summary of these recommended priorities). The Association is working with the equal justice community to build a national training infrastructure by maintaining a national training calendar(click on the link on the left) to promote and facilitate the ongoing training initiatives of the equal justice community; partnering with several other national organizations to provide high-quality training opportunities; and supporting and promoting state-based and regional training efforts and capacities.

  For more information on the training infrastructure in legal services, you may want to review the discussion paper, Training Infrastructure For The Future Of Equal Justice.

  Legal Services Training Report

  During the summer of 1998, the Project produced a paper examining the current training infrastructure in legal services. The ideas developed by the paper are still very current and largely unrealized. Follow this link to download the .pdf report: Training Infrastructure for the Future of Equal Justice (pdf, 227 Kb)
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