Legal Key provides legal information and empowerment through:
- Legal Education (Training & Resources)
- Workforce Support (Consultation & Capacity Building)
- Systems Transformation (Social Care Program Design & Policy Advocacy)
Legal Education
Legal Key provides interactive and tailored training, education, and resources about laws and legal rights that impact health and well-being.
- For our partners, we have built the Unlocking Access Hub, where they can access a monthly virtual training series, training recordings, slide decks, and other resources to guide effective legal problem-solving. Legal Key’s partners have access to a monthly rotation of live trainings on core legal topics that most impact health, including housing, guardianship, education, and immigration.
- Since 2021, Legal Key’s Digital Digest is a freely accessible online library. Regularly updated, the Digital Digest has content for Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and federal law.
- Legal Key provides customized training and tools for those who are looking for a specific topic or a deeper dive into health-related legal issues.
Workforce Support
Legal Key builds the capacity of health and human services teams to know and use the law confidently and appropriately, to help their patients and clients meet health-related social and legal needs before they become crises, and to function better in their roles on behalf of those they serve. By working together, the entire team’s problem-solving knowledge and skills grow.
Embedding
Legal Key establishes ongoing relationships with our partners to build on the education and training offering. Essentially, Legal Key’s Law & Policy Consultants (LPCs) become a part of the care teams at our partner sites. Our LPCs attend team meetings regularly, and help care teams embrace the idea of incorporating legal issue spotting and problem-solving as part of a regular case review process.
Consultation
Legal Key is available to consult with partners on the specific legal questions that impact those served. Legal consultation is an upstream approach developed by Legal Key to address the scarcity of attorneys available for full representation, to uplift the legal problem solving activities that people who are not attorneys can engage in, and to support people who are in the best position to triage legal needs upstream to be able to take definitive steps to help those they serve
Systems Transformation
Legal Key guides organizations to build person-centered environments based on collaboration and trust to support innovation.
As other systems move toward greater integration and deeper upstream impact on people’s lives, Legal Key supports systems-building that ensures that people are at the center of social care design. Legal Key’s human-centered law and policy expertise centers prevention, a strengths-based orientation, and awareness of how legal contexts impact available remedies.
Examples of contexts in which Legal Key has offered system design technical assistance include:
- Planning for design of housing-focused social care programs.
- Aligning social care program goals with best practices for strengths-based communication.
- Vetting of community-based organizations for proposed social care partnerships.
- Readiness assessments for health care teams to be able to incorporate legal care into their existing care delivery system.