Empowering Justice Through Technology: How Her Justice Transformed Operations with Litera’s Legal Solutions
About Her Justice
Her Justice is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing free legal services to women and families living in poverty across New York City and advocating for policies that improve the civil justice system for all New Yorkers. Specializing in family, matrimonial, and immigration law, Her Justice ensures women have the power of an excellent attorney at their side as they turn to the court to seek safety and autonomy in their lives.
The organization focuses on supporting some of New York’s most vulnerable neighbors. The impact of their work is striking: 93% of Her Justice’s clients are women of color, 86% are survivors of intimate partner violence, 71% are mothers, and 51% require interpreters to access the court system. These statistics highlight their dedication to serving those who are often marginalized and underserved.
By leveraging a network of volunteer attorneys and pro bono partnerships with law firms, Her Justice ensures that women who lack the financial resources for legal representation still have access to justice. Their goal is to make the legal system more accessible and equitable, providing vital support to women who need it most. As Susana Saul, Director of Legal Programs at Her Justice, explains, “This work matters to me as a New Yorker because I see that many communities are struggling. The systems that are designed to help them and assist them with creating opportunities, with giving them basic rights, are not working for them.”
By focusing on both individual cases and broader policy initiatives, Her Justice not only supports individual women navigating the legal system — it works to improve the legal system itself. Hamra Ahmad, Head of Legal Programs and Policy at Her Justice, notes, “We address the systemic barriers that women living in poverty and other New Yorkers face collectively and advance policy initiatives that improve the system for future litigants.” This dual approach ensures that their efforts have a lasting impact on both their clients and the community at large.
The Problem
As an organization with limited financial resources, Her Justice faced operational challenges, particularly in managing their legal documents and workflows. The manual processes in place were time-consuming and inefficient. Additionally, working with multiple legal partners, they were concerned about the security of the highly-sensitive documents they needed to share.
Some of the key challenges included:
- Inefficient Document Creation: Staff and volunteers spent excessive time creating legal documents manually, increasing administrative overhead
- Collaboration Barriers: Working with external law firms and coordinating internally was difficult due to a lack of effective collaboration tools
- Version Control Issues: Without a reliable system for version control, the team often dealt with outdated or inconsistent documents, increasing the risk of errors
- Workflow Bottlenecks: Critical workflows, such as document approvals and case tracking, were managed manually, slowing down operations and reducing productivity
These issues created operational roadblocks, limiting the organization’s capacity to assist clients quickly and scale the amount of clients they could support.
The Solution
To address these challenges, Her Justice implemented several of Litera's comprehensive legal solutions as part of a pro bono social good initiative. Litera's innovative legal tools provided Her Justice with advanced document automation, collaboration, and management capabilities.
- CE Manager: Her Justice manages the thousands of lawyers who receive CLE credit for their work through CE Manager, streamlining the process of tracking and managing continuing legal education credits.
- Litera Draft: This suite of tools provides Her Justice with advanced document automation, collaboration, and management capabilities. It helps streamline the creation of legal documents, reducing the time and effort required to produce accurate and consistent documents.
- Litera Compare: With Litera Compare, Her Justice compares different versions of legal documents efficiently. It ensures that all team members are working on the most up-to-date documents, reducing the risk of errors and inconsistencies
Saul highlighted the impact the organization has seen since implementing these tools. "As a direct services organization, we're constantly juggling multiple clients, their needs, and their issues. Working with Litera's tools helps us to be much more efficient so that we have time to give back to those clients."
She continued, “Our attorneys are handling extremely sensitive data, private data for our clients, and working with Litera's technology maximizes both efficiency and security of those documents."
The Results
Her Justice’s partnership with Litera illustrates the power of legal technology to enhance the operational capabilities of non-profit organizations. By adopting Litera’s suite of solutions, Her Justice was able to overcome challenges related to document creation, collaboration, version control, and workflow management.
The result was a more efficient and effective organization, capable of providing faster, higher-quality legal support to low-income women and families in need. Her Justice’s transformation not only increased their operational capacity but also ensured that more families in New York City have access to the justice they deserve.
With Litera’s tools in place, Her Justice is better positioned to fulfill their mission of making the legal system accessible, equitable, and empowering for all women, regardless of their financial situation.
According to Ahmad, "Litera will give Her Justice infrastructure to make our work more efficient, accurate, and secure. I’ve also been so impressed with Litera and the team. They really took the time to get to know us, to listen to us and our needs, and the experience just felt very tailored and thoughtful."
To learn more about Litera’s solutions and to witness the power of our tools firsthand, schedule a demo with one of our experts here.
