Library

The “Conducting Employee Surveys” tool provides guidance for organizations administering employee surveys, whether for the first time or the hundredth.

Incorporating staff feedback into its practices is vital to an organization’s health. In order to feel empowered to provide meaningful feedback, staff must feel respected and have faith that the organization willl consider, and follow up on, their comments and suggestions. This tool offers advice for administering employee surveys in a trauma-informed, effective manner.

Judges and court personnel are in a unique position to build trust with LGBTQ+ communities and address some of the barriers LGBTQ+ survivors face to accessing justice. Building that trust can create an environment that is a meaningful option for LGBTQ+ survivors.

Judges and court personnel can take steps to ensure courtrooms and court processes are more accessible for LGBTQ+ litigants, thereby creating a safer forum for LGBTQ+ survivors to seek justice after experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault, and/or stalking.

A prosecutor’s first opportunity to combat potential bias during a criminal trial is jury selection. Jury selection, also known as voir dire, provides an opportunity to address bias, correct misconceptions, and strive for fairness in the process. Jury selection is also an opportunity to educate the panel about the crime and parties, to obtain promises to follow instructions on the law, and to plant seeds about the concepts of fairness and justice in the context of the current case. For cases involving LGBTQ+ victims, a comprehensive voir dire strategy is key to ensuring that anti-LGBTQ+ bias does not determine the outcome of the trial.

This Guide is designed to support prosecutors in drafting jury selection questions and related motions in limine to help address anti-LGBTQ+ bias among potential jurors.

LGBTQ+ people experience intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and stalking at the same or higher rate as the general population. Transgender people and bisexual women are at particularly high risk of being victimized by these crimes. Despite these elevated risks, LGBTQ+ victims face major barriers to justice. Prosecutors should strive to ensure that LGBTQ+ survivors have equal access to justice throughout the criminal process, beginning by educating themselves in best practices in working with and supporting LGBTQ+ survivors in their cases.

This Guide provides introductory information and best practices for prosecutors working on cases involving LGBTQ+ victims of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and stalking.

These Standards of Practice for the Supervision of Domestic & Sexual Violence Attorneys arise from a trend that the Commission has noticed in recent years: attorneys representing domestic and sexual violence victims often do not have adequate supervision. In response to this concern, the Commission convened a steering committee, comprised of twenty domestic and sexual violence attorneys from across the country. Developed and peer-reviewed by supervising attorneys, these Standards offer a best practice guideline for the successful supervision of domestic and sexual violence attorneys in both legal and non-legal settings.

The Model Legal Services Agreement (also known as a retainer agreement) is intended to serve as best practice guidelines for attorneys representing victims of gender-based violence, and helps set the framework for trauma-informed, client-centered representation. The model agreement and accompanying materials will help organizations reassess and update their existing legal services agreement, and serves as a valuable tool for organizations creating a legal services agreement for the first time.

Attorneys who represent survivors of domestic and dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking often find themselves litigating against opposing parties who wish them ill. Occasionally, an opposing party will be prepared to act on these ill wishes. In the age of the Internet, a quick Google search of a person’s name can yield that person’s address and phone number, along with a list of their loved ones, among other sensitive information. Read our tipsheet on steps attorneys can take to keep their personal information safe.

Los criterios de selección de casos son los factores que un bufete de abogados utiliza para decidir si acepta o no un caso para su representación. Los proveedores de servicios jurídicos suelen tener una gran demanda de sus servicios, pero no disponen de suficiente tiempo de personal para satisfacer esa demanda. Los criterios de selección de casos son los factores que un equipo jurídico utiliza para determinar qué casos aceptarán prioritariamente.

Los criterios de selección de casos se guían por una combinación de consideraciones, entre ellas el tipo de problema jurídico, la misión de una organización, sus prioridades, los recursos y la capacidad del equipo jurídico para asumir la representación, entre otros. Esta Guía ayudará a las organizaciones jurídicas a desarrollar un proceso para reflexionar sobre estas consideraciones.

Case selection criteria are factors a law office uses to decide whether to accept a case for representation. Legal services providers often have high demand for their legal services, but not enough staff time to meet those demands. Case selection criteria are the factors that a legal team uses to determine which cases they will prioritize accepting.

Case selection criteria are guided by a combination of considerations, including the type of legal problem, an organization’s mission, its priorities, the legal team’s resources and capacity to undertake the representation, and more. This Guide will help legal organizations develop a process to think through these considerations.

Most people returning from war zones will have stress reactions and will need to readjust to being home. This guide provides information that will help advocates understand these stress reactions and their relationship to intimate partner violence in order to provide effective information and referrals to victims.