L.E.A.H

The Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub (LEAH) is a national initiative formalized in 2019 as Florida’s first Participatory Defense Hub. Now physically located in New York City, LEAH is dedicated to equipping isolated communities most impacted by incarceration and systemic injustice with the legal tools, education, and collective power to transform systems and shape just futures. LEAH advances legal empowerment as a proactive tool of abolition, working to dismantle harmful systems and build community-led pathways to justice, healing, and democratic participation.

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LEAH was birthed from the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative (JLI), a project founded by Jhody Polk to support incarcerated legal workers—known as jailhouse lawyers—who study, use, and share the law from inside prison walls. LEAH was created to further JLI’s fourth goal: to develop pathways for jailhouse lawyers to return their legal knowledge and skills back to their communities during and after incarceration. In 2026, LEAH will launch the LEAH for Justice podcast—a platform to amplify the voices and legal work of jailhouse lawyers and to host online conversations that make legal empowerment accessible to people around the world who are shaping justice from the ground up. Through this work, LEAH aims to help build a broader movement to democratize legal education and reimagine legal ecosystems rooted in dignity, self-determination, and collective care.

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Through its three core strategies—Legal Empowerment, Participatory Action Research (PAR), and Community Peacebuilding—LEAH is developing pathways for community paralegals in the U.S. and working to bridge the gap between law and community. LEAH brings together jailhouse lawyers, community organizers, legal practitioners, and institutions to co-create solutions and foster inclusive, accountable systems of justice—locally and nationally.