People do the right thing. They go to court self-help, the emergency department of legal services, ask for guidance, fill out forms, and try to follow instructions. Then the chain breaks. The next step might be legal aid, a navigator program, mediation, housing support, substance use treatment, or DV services, but the referral handoff process […]
In mission-driven organizations focused on justice, intake is backed up. A partner handoff failed. A report is due, and the numbers don’t reconcile. If you’re an executive director leading a justice nonprofit, you know the feeling: important work moving through fragile systems, often amid leadership transitions. Staff patch things with spreadsheets, extra emails, and heroic
Interim CTO for Justice Nonprofits: Calm the Chaos, Build a Plan Leaders Trust Read More »
The intake queue is full. A court navigator program makes a “warm handoff.” A partner says they’ll follow up. Then the trail goes quiet, disrupting access to justice. In justice support networks, that quiet can mean a self-represented litigant missed a deadline, lost housing, returned to harm, or showed up alone to a hearing. These
Your intake queue is swelling amid the justice gap. A partner referral went cold because no one saw it. A funder report is due, and three spreadsheets disagree. That’s not a staff problem. It’s a workflow problem. Spreadsheets are good duct tape, until they quietly become the system of record for intake, eligibility, case status,
The intake line hits a wall at 10:05 a.m. Calls stack up. Voicemails pile up. A person with a court date tomorrow tries again and again, then gives up. Later, staff find a note, half-written, with no call-back number. Everyone feels the same sinking thought: what did we miss? This is the scale problem in
Build An Intake Callback Queue That Cuts Abandoned Calls and Frees up Intake Staff Read More »
Monday, 9:12 a.m. The intake inbox is already a few hundred messages deep. Voicemails stack up. A partner emails, “Any update?” Someone flags a court deadline that was never captured in the first call. Intake staff do what they always do, they sprint, they improvise, they carry the anxiety for everyone else. This is the
At 4:47 p.m., the voicemail light is still blinking. Someone left a message about an eviction notice. Another caller says they missed court paperwork because they “couldn’t get through.” A staff member has a sticky note with a number they meant to call back, but it’s now buried under intake forms. This is a justice
It starts as a simple question: “Where is this case?” A staff member asks it. A partner asks it. Sometimes the client asks it, after days of silence. In justice work navigating the justice system, silence isn’t neutral. It can mean a missed deadline for survivors of crime, a lost housing window, a protection order
Justice Referral Handoff Process (End “Where Is This Case?”) Read More »
It’s 4:47 p.m. Someone forwards a court notice to “the team” with a subject line like “URGENT.” Two people assume the other one will calendar it. A third person saves the PDF to a folder “for later.” The next morning, the attorney swears they never saw it. Everyone’s trying. The system isn’t. A court notice
Court Notice Workflow: Stop emailing court notices around Read More »
At 4:45 pm, the intake queue is still long. A partner calls back with a “quick question,” but they don’t have the full context. A supervisor needs an answer that’s safe to stand behind. And the client is asked, again, to re-tell the hardest parts of their life. Repeating the story isn’t just inefficient. It’s
