jhody2

I learned the rule of law in a place designed to deny it. I am a former jailhouse lawyer. Before I was a founder, before I was a professor, before anyone called me an expert, I was a woman in a Florida prison learning the law from other incarcerated people: and then teaching it. In the law library, I watched people arrive holding paperwork they could not read, carrying deadlines they did not know were running, and living under punishments no court had ordered. And I watched jailhouse lawyers...

For too long, the law has been treated like a foreign language: something spoken only by people in expensive suits behind heavy oak doors. But at Legal Empowerment & Advocacy Hub (LEAH), we know that the law doesn’t belong to the courts; it belongs to the people. We believe that those most impacted by systemic injustice are not just victims of the law, but the very architects of its transformation. This belief is the heartbeat of community paralegal training. It is a movement rooted in the...