NYU Law's EPIC Prison Reform and Education Project
JLI is working in partnership with NYU Law's EPIC's Prison Teaching Project, to strengthen the legal education offered to people incarcerated in New York state prisons and jails.
Law students from EPIC teach people incarcerated in New York state prisons the legal research and empowerment curriculum developed by the JLI. It gives law students a chance to build human connection and learn from people in New York State prison who are deeply engaged in challenging the criminal legal system. EPIC students are also key team members in the co-creation of new materials and resources.
Additionally, EPIC students write to jailhouse lawyers around the country through the JLI Pen Pal program. Students are matched with jailhouse lawyers members to correspond as peers. The pen pal program aims to foster deep learning opportunities for law students and jailhouse lawyers, serve as a catalyst for collaborative action against injustice, and create new relationships of solidarity across the prison walls.
Zealous
JLI is working with Zealous to co-develop resources and trainings on storytelling and advocacy with formerly and currently incarcerated JLI members. Zealous is a national advocacy and education initiative working to topple the historic imbalance of power over criminal justice media and policy. They do this by supporting and training public defenders, advocates, and people with direct experience to harness the power of media, technology, storytelling and the arts.
Global Justice Clinic
Each year, teams of NYU Law students from the Global Justice Clinic become integral members of the core JLI team. The Clinic works with social movements and community partners to prevent, challenge, and redress human rights violations stemming from contemporary structures of global injustice. The Clinic challenges extractive economic systems and exploitative power relations, and engages with cross-border challenges that require transnational collaboration. Using a rights-based, legal empowerment approach, the Clinic seeks to work in solidarity with those most impacted by global injustice.
National Lawyers Guild
The National Lawyers Guild was the first home of JLI, and continues to be an important partner. Through NLG’s Guild Notes, JLI distributes short toolkits on legal skills to jailhouse lawyers across the country, as well as advertises JLI to NLG’s large membership. NLG is the nation’s oldest and largest progressive bar association and was the first one in the US to be racially integrated. Their mission is to use law for the people, uniting lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers to function as an effective force in the service of the people by valuing human rights and the rights of ecosystems over property interests.