Open Door Legal

The Problem

The U.S. constitution only guarantees lawyers in criminal cases and governments across the country don’t fund lawyers for the poor in civil matters. In California, there is only about one legal aid attorney for every 8,350 people in poverty. And without access to a lawyer, you can’t meaningfully access the law. In fact, the World Justice Project suggests its easier for the poor to enforce property rights in Nigeria than in the United States of America. This means that people experiencing poverty are left without an attorney in civil cases to protect their rights around basic human needs such as housing, public benefits, domestic violence, and immigration.

Their Mission

Open Door Legal’s mission is to prove that when everyone has access to the law, poverty can be dramatically reduced. They are doing this by pioneering universal access to legal representation. While working in community development in Washington D.C., Adrian Tirtanadi decided this was his personal mission in life. He put himself through law school and opened Open Door Legal in 2013 with only $8,000 in seed capital. Since then, they’ve enjoyed over 20x growth and were even named by Google as one of the most innovative nonprofits in the Bay Area. They are paving a path to social justice for all. And, they are just getting started.

How They Do It

The biggest challenge in creating universal access to legal services is the logistics. Coordinating the staff, volunteers, resources, and knowledge needed to perform competent legal services in over 35 areas of law is a huge challenge. To solve this challenge, they used Salesforce and a series of connected services to build a platform that manages every aspect of their services, automating internal processes, and providing instant reporting.

Open Door Legal is managing all of this all digitally in the cloud, across a growing number of employees and hundreds of pro bono volunteer lawyers. People and partner organizations, who need legal services or want to help their cause, can get involved easily across any device. Most importantly, they are fulfilling their mission promise by operating at capacity for each new case they take on.

Simple, Smart Intake – They’ve designed their intake system to ensure that within minutes any eligible person in need can get an appointment with a lawyer. Appointments have a triage priority and are subjected to multiple levels of screening, but clients with a high need can see someone next day.

All Processes Automated – Workflows are customized to Open Door Legal’s unique, proven process, and automated with flows in Salesforce. Each task can have soft or hard deadlines, with instant communication via emails.

Collaborative Case Flows – Each case is created with a full understanding of the constituent need, type of law, and the right lawyer or volunteers engaged and assigned to the case.

Knowledge Captured & Shared – Thousands of knowledge articles on law are shared widely for new lawyers, with related documents to enable each employee or volunteer to know exactly how to proceed.

Resolution with Measurement
Cases are closed with an incredibly high win rate, and outcomes documented for future cases. This gives them a transparent understanding of program effectiveness.

Impact and Social ROI

Every outcome is fully understood in terms of money saved, fines deferred, and overall quality of life improved. This impact data can be shared in front of any funder, sliced by region, demographic, or any other impact reporting standard. Most of all, it is accessible with complete confidence at any moment, on any device, and incorporated into storytelling for future fundraising efforts.

How You Can Help

Support their mission or learn more about program management.