As soon as we passed the Right to Counsel in NYC in 2017, our coalition began building out a robust pipeline of new attorneys to work in housing law and support the tenant movement. We supported the recruitment and training of hundreds of attorneys and supervisors through our pipeline initiatives like our law school "Road Show," and the creation of the Housing Justice Leadership Institute.
Developing the tenant-attorney pipeline is now more important than ever, with tenants and legal services providers across NY state fighting for a Statewide Right to Counsel for ALL New Yorkers facing eviction. To implement Right to Counsel, our state will need attorneys with the expertise, capacity, and resources to ensure high quality, full representation for tenants. To that effect, we've identified a number of strategies that city and state elected leadership can take to support the growth of a pipeline of highly capable eviction defense attorneys.
We're actively building our statewide pipeline: This summer, we relaunched our Road Show with an event at Albany Law School, we developed two virtual crash course sessions for housing law interns on the Right to Counsel movement and upstate housing law, and we hosted a Summer Mixer for law interns in NYC!
Organizers with Right to Counsel member organizations, Capital District DSA and United Tenants of Albany, meet with Albany Law School students to discuss the RTC movement and housing law
Representatives from RTC member organizations, Urban Justice Center, CASA, and Hudson Valley Justice Center, present at our Summer Mixer where housing legal interns from across NYC gathered to learn about how tenants and attorneys can work together to fight evictions and keep New Yorkers in their homes!
We're very excited about the next generation of tenant attorneys! The law students we met with this summer shared a deep commitment to a vision of housing as a human right and passion for organizing as well as law. You can hear from a few of them directly on why they want to become tenant attorneys:
Do you want to join our movement to inspire, recruit, and organize the next generation of RTC attorneys in New York state? Help us build on the momentum of this summer by bringing us to your law school for a tenant-attorney pipeline "Road Show" event! Submit an interest form and we'll be in touch!
