Our collective principles.
MALC is a values-driven practice, and we think our values should be public so that anyone considering working with us — as a client, as a collaborator, or as a member — has the information they need to decide whether we are the right fit.
Our collective principles run on a single commitment: people and peoples have the right to live free of violence, domination, and exploitation — whether that comes in the form of anti-Black and anti-brown state violence, the criminalization of poverty and migration, occupation and colonial war, or the structural violence of capitalism against the workers and communities it extracts from.
From that commitment, specifics follow. We support the dignity, safety, and freedom of movement of migrants and refugees, and we oppose the border regimes that criminalize, detain, and kill people for crossing lines drawn by states. We support Black liberation and an end to anti-Black state violence. We support the right of all peoples to self-determination and to live free of occupation, colonial violence, and genocide — from Palestine to Ukraine to Sudan to Congo to every other place where these systems are operating today. We support workers' rights to organize, bargain collectively, strike, and build labor power.
These values shape which cases we take, which movements we work alongside, and which clients will find MALC to be the right fit for them. We understand that being public about them means some prospective clients will choose not to work with us, and some prospective members will choose not to apply. We think that's the honest way to operate a values-driven practice: name what you stand for, and let people decide with full information.
MALC is a growing collective of attorneys committed to mutual aid principles.
Every MALC member commits to a minimum of twenty hours per month of pro bono legal work as a condition of membership. Newer attorneys at the collective have access to mentorship from more experienced members. Decisions about whom we bring in are made together.
Our goal is to build an ecosystem, not just a firm — one where lower-income community members can find representation that is rigorous, accountable, and free of the funding restrictions that shape most civil legal aid in this country.
Mutual Aid Legal Collective at this moment can take cases in Illinois, including the Northern District of Illinois, and New York. Our jurisdictional reach can change as attorneys join the collective, so please ask if you're considering a matter outside these areas — we may be able to take it, or we can refer you to movement-aligned counsel in your jurisdiction.
If you are an attorney interested in joining the collective, see our Join MALC page for membership details.
A note on how legal aid is funded in this country.
Most civil legal aid organizations in the United States — including the biggest and best-known — receive a significant portion of their funding from the Legal Services Corporation, a federally-chartered nonprofit established by Congress in 1974. LSC funding has kept civil legal services alive through decades of underinvestment. It is also subject to congressional restrictions that materially limit what LSC-funded attorneys are allowed to do.
LSC-funded programs cannot, with narrow exceptions: represent most undocumented immigrants; bring or participate in class actions; collect attorneys' fees even when they win; lobby or engage in most policy advocacy; represent prisoners in most civil matters; handle most cases involving assisted-suicide, abortion funding, or certain political redistricting claims; or organize or participate in most welfare-reform litigation. These restrictions apply even to the non-LSC funds an organization receives, as long as it receives any LSC money at all.
The practical effect is that the best-resourced civil legal aid infrastructure in the country is systematically prevented from using some of the most powerful tools in a lawyer's toolbox on behalf of the clients it serves.
MALC was built to operate outside those restrictions. We take undocumented clients. We bring class actions where class treatment is the right mechanism. We collect fees where we are entitled to. We advocate, we lobby when it matters, and we align our practice with movement work. That is what "mutual aid" means in our name: we do not accept a funding structure that tells us which of our clients are off-limits.
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