Creating a Movement
1993
The Family Advocacy Project was launched at the Pediatrics Department at Boston Medical Center, creating the first ever medical-legal partnership. In those early years, attorneys were hospital employees who carried pagers and responded in real-time to patients’ acute legal crises – creating a “legal emergency room” response model.
2012
The project, renamed Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston (MLP | Boston), spun off from Boston Medical Center and found its home under the fiscal sponsorship of Third Sector New England, Inc. (TSNE). Independent of any single system, MLP | Boston formed relationships with multiple health and human services organizations. During these years, MLP | Boston operated a pro bono panel of attorneys to represent individuals with legal crises.
Moving Upstream
2015
MLP | Boston participated in a randomized control study called Developmental Understanding and Legal Collaboration for Everyone (DULCE). Results showed that integrating indirect legal support into a care team still led to reduced Emergency Department utilization, greater engagement with preventive care, and accelerated access to concrete supports like food resources and utility service.
2016
The data-driven learning in the DULCE program prompted MLP | Boston to fully embrace a new operating model geared to prevention, capacity-building, and team-facing partnership and support.
Hello Rhode Island
2017
MLP | Boston combined operations with the Rhode Island Medical-Legal Partnership, launching our presence outside of Massachusetts. Reflecting this expanded reach, Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston became MLPB.
MLPB’s Response to COVID
2020
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, MLPB launched the Digital Digest to help anyone involved in addressing health-related legal needs to stay up to date with a rapidly-shifting legal landscape. This educational resource remains freely accessible to anyone today, and provides frequent updates across a range of legal domains.
Cementing a Model of Legal Care
2021
MLPB launched the Unlocking Access® Hub, a learning platform that provides our partners with a range of trainings, resources, and guides.
2022
With support from the JPB Foundation, MLPB published Legal Problem-Solving and Flourishing: A Handbook for Perinatal and Early Childhood System-Builders. This handbook was the result of a learning community that brought together early childhood professionals and people with lived experience from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and California.
Today
In late 2024 we embarked on a process to find a new program name that embodies simply and fully who we are and what we do. And we found that with Legal Key Partnership for Health and Justice.
The word “KEY” has several meanings that resonate with our work today. As a noun, key means something that opens either a literal or metaphorical door. As an adjective, key is used to describe something that is important, critical, necessary. And as a verb, key means to take action and use information. So that single word embodies the essence of what we do: we unlock access to essential legal information that is indispensable for health and wellbeing, and help those who are not attorneys understand how to use it.
We are so excited to be entering into our next chapter as an organization as Legal Key!
Legal Key is a national leader in preventive law as preventive medicine. In a range of partnerships across Massachusetts and Rhode Island, we are demonstrating the power of legal partnering to support the health and social care workforce to be effective advocates for their patients and clients in addressing legal issues before they become crises.
