Training
MLL has trained over 15,000 lawyers and legal organizations to move beyond winning cases to building community power. We nurture individuals, sharpen institutions, and agitate our sector so that we can leverage every legal hook possible for our people.
Our training program supports individuals and teams to be more principled, collaborative and powerful long-term partners to organized communities. Whether you’re an experienced movement lawyering practitioner, just starting out, or not sure where to begin, MLL will help you deepen your practice. Our trainings are highly customized based on the needs of your group, and we regularly design new offerings to meet the needs of our movements. Reach out to request a training or explore a possible collaboration!
Customized Trainings For Organizations
Introduction to Movement Lawyering Lecture (90 minutes)
A perfect way to expose your team to the basics and get everyone on the same page about what movement lawyering is (and is not). You’ll come away with a lot to talk about: a working definition of movement lawyering, examples that interrogate how law has historically been used to support movements for social change, and exposure to the theory of change undergirding movement lawyering.Introduction to Movement Lawyering Short Workshop (½ day)
Our short courses build on the basics we introduce in our lectures with more time to try-on the concepts. We cover predominant legal theories of change, how movement lawyering differs from other approaches to building power, and key interventions movement lawyers must explore in these times.Introduction to Movement Lawyering Full Course (12-16 hours)
Our full courses are designed to support organizations to build internal alignment and get clear about how they can more effectively build the power of frontline communities. We invite participants to apply the theoretical concepts to their actual work in praxis (theory-reflection-action) with a focus on identifying problems and iterating solutions. We create a generative and productive space to discuss existing lawyering and collaboration models, supporting teams to refocus on the questions that matter most. We often run our full courses over several months–for example, a four hour training once a month for three months–with readings, homework assignments, and recommendations on group work in-between sessions.Wisdom Sessions and Fireside Chats (2-4 hours)
Oftentimes, the best way to tackle a thorny movement lawyering question is in dialogue with others. We curate intimate conversations in creative containers to nurture, push, or inspire teams. For example, we might bring together a group of movement lawyering elders, senior organizers, or visionaries from other sectors to help a team that’s stuck or contemplating a pivot. It’s incredible how much this type of purposefully designed “real talk” can open up for a group–even virtually (no actual fire required!)
Coaching and Thought Partnership
If you’re building legal infrastructure, connecting folks in complex networks, or trying things that no one has done before, it can be lonely out there. We support a handful of movement lawyering projects every year to dream, plan and execute their complex visions. This work might take the form of one-on-one or small group coaching, a short sprint to refine a tactical or strategy plan, a facilitated exchange with a group in another country or sector, or a multi-year deep dive to launch a new big thing. If you’re working on something that could use a boost from our team of senior movement lawyering practitioners, reach out.
Whether you’re a law student just starting out or a veteran practitioner, the movement lawyering path requires a lifelong commitment to developing our capacities. In addition to sharpening our substantive legal skills, we also must develop a range of multidisciplinary skills as social movement actors. Our training program supports individuals and teams to be more principled, collaborative and powerful long-term partners to organized communities.
In our coaching and training work, we focus on:
Rigorous Law and Organizing Praxis
Law is a tool and a tactic, not a means to an end. We ground all our trainings in the simple yet powerful truth that organized groups of working class people of color–not lawyers, lawsuits or legal decisions– are the true engines of social change. It’s at the praxis–integrating our work in the world with shared study and rigorous reflection–that we are our most powerful.
Fundamentals of Movement Lawyering Theory
We define movement lawyering, offer a frame to situate movement lawyers in the social change ecosystem, and discuss how movement lawyering is different from other legal theories of change. You’ll learn to identify your legal theory of change as well as that of your organization and the clients/communities you support.
Solutions To Common Movement Lawyering Challenges
What do you do when there’s not much organizing infrastructure, legal infrastructure, or both? What if you want to be a movement lawyer but your organization isn’t quite ready? How do you sync slow-moving legal processes with often more fast-paced campaigns? How do you build your skills as a movement lawyer? How do you get out of the hamster wheel of high caseloads, grant deliverables and filing deadlines? We’ve cataloged hundreds of examples from the field to help you ideate solutions to your movement lawyering challenges.
Purposeful Institutional Growth
Movement lawyering is a collective endeavor. To meet the needs of today’s social movements, we need to both incubate new projects and nurture existing institutions to become healthier, braver and more adaptive. Our team pulls from design thinking, adaptive leadership, embodied practices, and organizational change theory to help teams build the institutions of the future.
Principles and Practices Of Effective Partnerships
What does it mean to be accountable, trustworthy partners? How do you make decisions with your clients and community partners? We cover not just what you need to know but who you need to be inside your law and organizing partnerships.
Moving From Isolated Tactics To Long-Arc Strategy
Too often we file cases or launch campaigns without taking the time to plan and build with organizers. This means that even when we “win,” the wins don’t always endure. We teach step-by-step methods to help teams ground in vision, map and assess conditions, and sequence objectives before hitting go on any external-facing work. Planning, pacing, and sequencing work are crucial skills for law and organizing strategists who have an eye toward the “long-arc”–a vision so bold it spans seven generations into the future. Whether you’re delivering services, providing criminal defense, litigating, campaigning, advocating, negotiating or maneuvering behind-the-scenes, our team will help you level up your strategic capacities.
