Beyond litigation: Policy work within cause lawyering organizations

Abstract

This article investigates why cause lawyering organizations choose policy work and how policy agendas are set. Interviews and documents from eight legal organizations in the LGBTQ movement reveal that policy work expands the scope of conflict, giving organizations not only more opportunities to act, but potentially providing greater autonomy to lawyers by allowing them to build their own opportunities. Furthermore, policy agendas are not simply tied to litigation and resources. Organizations balance perceptions of opportunity and need with resource availability. These perceptions are often informed by collaborations with state and local organizations, facilitating communication between groups, organizers, and activists at different vantage points. Thus, the nature of a legal organization's multidimensional strategy, which expands opportunities to reach their goals, may be shaping what those goals are. These findings contribute to our understanding of cause lawyering tactics and agendas.

Lawyers as infrastructures: mediations, blockages, and new possibilities in grassroots movements

“…There is nothing fixed about this centrality, and therefore the value of this 'categorical moment' 117 can only be evaluated based on how well it captures the modes of resistance, sociality, hope, and change. In the end, viewing lawyers as social infrastructures complicates the question of whether lawyers are a force for change or the status quo, 118 and whether lawyers facilitate social movements or hinder them. 119 Instead, viewing them as infrastructures can be a means of understanding the modes of resistance, with their contradictory potentials and effects.…”