Our mission is to advance just and equitable legal and social institutions by anchoring systems change in the full participation of those directly impacted by racism and mass incarceration.
Our Featured Projects & Programs
Legal Literacy at Work builds LLAW fellows’ capacity to work effectively with lawyers, policy makers, and law students. Fellows use this knowledge to enable people currently and formerly incarcerated to advocate effectively for themselves and their communities. Click here to learn more!
The Paralegal Pathways Initiative (PPI) seeks to amplify the talents and perspectives of those who have directly experienced incarceration in an effort to create economic opportunity for our participants, advance racial equity in the legal field, build knowledge of the impacts of the criminal legal system among current and future legal professionals, and expose the legal profession to an untapped wealth of legal experience and talent. Click here to learn more about this groundbreaking program.
This course and practicum, the first of its kind, will enable participants to blend artistry, law, policy, and community engagement, and in this way to produce narratives with powerful impact in policy spaces where change can happen. The course will equip law students to tell powerful stories--themselves and in collaboration with artists and community members--and use legal knowledge and skills to amplify artists’ and community activists’ impact in venues where laws are made and power is exercised. The workshop will also build artists’ capacity to merge high quality, high impact, rigorous artistry with community narratives and research & high level policy activists. In the process all the participants will work with community members to amplify the power of their stories through artistry informed by legal and policy research. With criminal justice and education as the policy focal point, the workshop will enable participants to craft and enact compelling stories about justice and injustice in “theaters for change” where they can shift hearts and minds of thought leaders and policy makers. Click here to learn more about the course.
Media Coverage
What if the institutions we rely on—our workplaces, schools, and legal systems—aren’t built for full participation? And what if real change starts not from the top, but in small, intentional spaces we create ourselves? In this episode of Learning Through Experience, host Heidi Brooks and legal scholar and change-maker Susan Sturm explore the paradoxes of institutional transformation, and how facing uncertainty–rather than seeking to eliminate it–can create new possibilities for participation, collaboration and justice.
You can also listen on Yale Insights, Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
Columbia Law School students collaborate with formerly incarcerated participants to leverage legal experience into employment.
Susan Sturm’s latest installment of the Our Compelling Interests book series, What Might Be, inspired a panel discussion between the author, Ted Mitchell, and Freeman Hrabowski discuss the importance of creating antiracist spaces as leaders and encouraging full participation from students of all backgrounds. The event took place on March 18th, 2025 at the National Press Club. It was hosted by the University of Michigan’s Center for Social Solutions in partnership with the American Council on Education.
