Readout of Director Rachel Rossi’s Trip to Northern California

 

Director Rachel Rossi of the Office for Access to Justice traveled to San Francisco to deliver the keynote address at the Pathways to Justice Conference, a statewide legal services conference held every three years. The engagement included meetings on access to justice issues and initiatives happening in Northern California.

Opening the visit, Director Rossi participated in a listening session hosted by the California Community Justice Workers Working Group, a group of legal aid and access to justice leaders aiming to leverage professional support from nonlawyers to support legal service providers in delivering legal assistance to underserved and marginalized communities. Director Rossi delivered brief opening remarks and then heard from working group members on its proposed recommendations for a community justice worker program in California. The presentation was followed by a discussion with legal aid leaders from across California.

Tuesday morning, Director Rossi delivered the keynote address for the Pathways to Justice Conference convened by the State Bar of California, the Legal Aid Association of California and the California Judicial Council. The conference convenes nonprofit legal service providers, private bar pro bono volunteers and staff from court departments and self-help centers from across the state to discuss access to justice topics. In her remarks, Director Rossi highlighted Office for Access to Justice initiatives and focused on the need to foster collaboration between state, local and federal access to justice stakeholders.

Following the keynote, Director Rossi met with leadership from the Legal Aid Association of California, a statewide membership organization of over 100 legal aid providers. In the meeting, Director Rossi listened to the most pressing issues facing California’s legal aid community and discussed support for efforts to increase interagency collaboration at the state level in the pursuit of access to justice.

That afternoon, Director Rossi attended a roundtable discussion with Bay Area public defense chiefs and leadership, including from San Francisco, Alameda, Santa Clara, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Solano and Marin County, California offices. Director Rossi shared information about Access to Justice Office resources including the Public Defense Resource Hub and the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable federal funding digital resource. The discussion included the challenges confronting public defense professionals in Northern California such as lack of resources, caseload and workload challenges, recruitment and retention concerns and the unique resource needs for specialized and effective youth defense representation. The roundtable also touched on best practices and innovative public defense strategies spearheaded across bay area offices, including their advocacy and policy work, creative recruitment strategies and holistic representation models.

Director Rossi then met with Prisoner Legal Services to discuss their work providing civil legal assistance to individuals incarcerated locally. She highlighted the pilot program launched by the Office for Access to Justice in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which similarly provides civil legal services to adults in federal custody, including through the first medical-legal partnership in a federal prison in the United States. They discussed future collaboration and sharing of best practices.

Director Rossi also met with the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of California to discuss implementation of the Report and Recommendations Concerning Access to Counsel at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Pretrial Facilities, unique issues facing Criminal Justice Act panel attorneys, and other issues facing federal defenders in the district. Closing the trip, Director Rossi met with U.S. Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey for the Northern District of California.