CLS understands impact advocacy as an LSC grantee and a legal aid organization. As a grantee, CLS adheres to LSC’s Performance Criteria, which defines impact advocacy as “maximizing resources to achieve the greatest possible benefits and systemic solutions for other low-income people who may face similar legal problems and for the eligible population as a whole.”² As an organization, CLS understands there is no such thing as a small legal aid case. Every case affects a client’s life, livelihood, and ability to thrive.

Still, CLS knows that some cases and projects affect more lives than others, and impact litigation can set legal precedents that interrupt systemic injustices. Baca shares that there is no substitute for standing up in court for CLS clients and seeking justice. This understanding spans any forum, from the Colorado Supreme Court to administrative appeals. As an executive director with extensive litigation experience, Baca seeks to build on this foundation and expand the impact of the CLS’s advocacy.

CLS continually demonstrates its dedication to increasing access to justice by carefully selecting which impact cases to pursue. Litigation is just one of several ways CLS conducts this advocacy. Other avenues include handling high volumes of related cases and filing amicus briefs with the Colorado Supreme Court.

While CLS litigates cases in all practice areas, several issues surface more than others. Cases involving common law marriage, public benefits, migrant and agricultural worker rights, and obtaining government identification are the most common in CLS’s litigation portfolio. When deciding which litigation to pursue, CLS attorneys weigh several factors:

1. What is the current state of the law (i.e., outdated or recently changed)?
2. Have statutes or regulations relating to the current law recently changed?
3. Are there potential precedents CLS could dispute or set through litigation?
4. Is the client in the case passionate about having an impact beyond their own circumstances? If so, are they willing and available to partner with the CLS legal team on the case?
5. Are there other strategic or impact litigation aspects to consider?

The second way CLS advocates for its clients is by handling high volumes of individual case types that do not necessarily change laws or set precedents, such as public benefits or housing cases. Baca explains that the high volume of these cases that CLS resolves for clients surmounts to impact advocacy due to how the cases significantly impact their clients’ lives for the better since helping them stay in their homes or maintain eligibility for public benefits helps their well-being. CLS also analyzes high case volumes concerning similar issues, which may indicate existing statutes and rules that infringe on its clients’ rights. This proactive approach helps CLS identify and address these issues through litigation, judgments, or broadly applicable settlements, thereby resolving future cases before they arise.

CLS also engages in impact advocacy by filing amicus briefs with the Colorado Supreme Court, sometimes at the Court’s invitation. When determining whether to submit briefs in these cases, CLS considers the impact of the case’s outcomes on Colorado’s low-income residents. Another consideration is if the case might provide opportunities for future litigation. For example, if a case outcome benefits immigrant farm workers, CLS can litigate on behalf of clients who benefit from that precedent if their employer willfully ignores the outcome and denies the workers their rights.

These methods contributed to CLS staff attorneys increasing the organization’s overall LSC- reported litigation cases from 6.4 percent in 2021 to 8.1 percent in 2022. In these cases, housing and family issues litigation increased by 59 percent and 21 percent, respectively. CLS also demonstrated its commitment to protecting its clients’ rights in matters like human trafficking, criminal record expungement, and naturalization by closing 65 percent more individual rights cases in 2022 compared to 2021.³

 

Staff in the Migrant Farm Worker Division (MFWD) stay aware of state and federal laws regarding farm workers’ rights, how regulations have changed, and which areas most affect potential clients. For example, Colorado’s Agricultural Workers’ Rights Bill, passed in 2021, provided health and safety protections for farm workers and prevented employers from restricting their access to service providers, including legal aid and health care.4 The bill prompted several farm and ranch employer organizations to sue the State of Colorado in 2022, alleging that the bill violated their Fifth Amendment rights if key service providers, characterized as “uninvited visitors” in the lawsuit, were allowed to visit farm workers at any time at their place of employment.⁵

By staying apprised of ongoing lawsuits and legislation affecting migrant workers, the MFWD identified the opportunity to file as an intervenor-defendant, recognizing that, if successful, this lawsuit would severely restrict workers’ access to legal aid.⁶ The MFWD successfully argued that the labor organizations had no legal basis for arguing that this bill violated the organizations’ Fifth Amendment rights, and the law remains in place despite ongoing efforts to challenge it.⁷

Common law marriage cases also offer a ripe opportunity for CLS to advocate for Colorado’s client-eligible population. Legally married couples can access benefits that single individuals cannot, like jointly purchasing property, filing taxes, and applying for public benefits. CLS has filed amicus briefs relating to common law marriage cases before the Colorado Supreme Court, including In re Estate of Yudkin in 2021, to expand access to justice for low-income Coloradans in domestic partnerships.

The Yudkin case challenged the standards that allowed couples to qualify for common-law marriage. Mr. Yudkin’s estate passed to his legal ex-wife after he died. However, the respondent asserted that as his common-law wife, she should be his estate’s representative.⁸ CLS filed an amicus brief supporting an update to the legal test applied for common-law marriage declarations. This update would broaden equitable access to marital benefits that significantly help low-income residents. As a result of the case, the Colorado Supreme Court agreed with the reasoning CLS provided in the amicus brief and, as a result, broadened the definition of common law marriage.⁹
 

It is impossible to overstate the long-lasting impact on a client’s life that results from assisting them in obtaining government identification (ID). CLS partnered with Denver Human Services and two community organizations, Metro Caring and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, to assist qualifying residents with fees relating to obtaining copies of legal documents required to obtain government IDs. These documents are also crucial to exercising rights like voting and accessing essential services like transportation, housing, health care, and public benefits. However, many low-income residents cannot overcome the financial barriers to obtaining proper identification. While these cases do not involve civil rights litigation per se, they have a long-lasting impact on the thousands of individuals the Colorado ID Project has helped.¹⁰

Through the ID Project, CLS and its partners provide vouchers, funded by the state and administered by Metro Caring, to assist qualifying residents with fees for obtaining copies of legal documents required to obtain government IDs.¹¹ CLS also provides legal representation for income-eligible individuals with complex cases that require court action, such as transgender clients seeking name and gender marker changes on their ID, social security information, and birth certificate. Ironically, most documents required to obtain an ID also require IDs to request them. CLS helps its clients break this stalemate by clearing the legal hurdles.¹²

The Colorado ID Project helps over 5,000 people across all its partners annually.¹³ With funding from the project partners, CLS’s ID-related caseload has increased over the last three years, from 576 cases in 2020 to 676 cases in 2022.^14,15 By helping large numbers of Coloradans obtain IDs, CLS creates a long-lasting impact on individuals who otherwise could not gain employment, public benefits, or housing.

Creating a positive impact through legal services cannot be measured in just one way. Baca outlined several ways CLS measures its success, such as client impact, setting legal precedents, and social return on investment.

The qualitative metrics CLS uses to measure the effects of its work span from hearing how routine legal aid cases profoundly affect clients’ lives to understanding how setting legal precedents helps them maintain their civil rights. Day-to-day legal aid cases do not always make headlines, but they still provide clients peace of mind, justice, and dignity in the most dire moments of their lives. For example, the positive emotional impact, safety, and relief domestic violence survivors feel when CLS helps them obtain protective orders cannot be measured numerically.

Baca also understands that strategically litigating cases based on new laws or updated case law has a widespread impact on low-income Coloradans. The Migrant Farm Worker Division MFWD) helped secure additional protections for agricultural workers through its intervenor- defendant filing discussed above. The failed challenge by farm and ranch employers to restrict access to essential services for its agricultural and migrant farm workers set the legal precedent for these workers to maintain their access years into the future.¹⁶

CLS also measures its case outcomes to share the impact of the organization's work using its annual, third-party Social Return on Investment (SROI) report. The SROI measures the total economic impact of social services organizations through cost-benefit analyses in two phases.¹⁷

1. Phase 1: The first phase measures the value the organization’s services deliver to the community, otherwise known as the Fair Market Value outputs. These outputs include values for the cost to the community to acquire the same services CLS provides if the organization did not exist to deliver them, in addition to the value the clients receive.
2. Phase 2: This phase measures the long-term value of the output services delivered, called the outcomes in the SROI, which may take years to analyze fully. For example, clients who obtain legal help from CLS may require fewer public benefits and services from their communities the longer they remain employed.¹⁸

Based on the number of clients and legal matters resolved, the SROI analysis showed that for every dollar invested in CLS’s 2022 activities, the State of Colorado received $6.19 in immediate and long-term financial benefits, a 619 percent SROI. This percentage is an increase from CLS’s 2021 SROI of 431 percent. By continuing to hone its strategic litigation and direct services, CLS aims to increase its social return and benefit low-income Coloradans for years.

According to Baca, like many other LSC grantees, CLS’s biggest constraint is the lack of resources and funding. Even a legal aid organization five times larger than CLS would have to turn away cases due to resource constraints. This shortage of resources and funding makes it difficult for CLS to expand its strategic litigation efforts. Yet, CLS is prioritizing this work as well as it can within these constraints; CLS recently hired a deputy director to oversee strategic and impact litigation and advocacy. CLS will continue to leverage its communications program to publicize its work and attract more funding from stakeholders.

Another challenge CLS faces is that most legal aid attorneys have not received training to handle large, complex cases. Baca understands that CLS attorneys, who are exceptional in identifying client needs and where precedent may still be in development, are often eager for training to take on such cases and bolster their strategic litigation capacity. CLS is exploring options for the best ways to provide that training for its staff through collaboration with pro bono attorneys and other advocacy organizations.