STANFORD, Calif. — In order to expand and improve delivery of legal services to low- and moderate-income populations, U.S. lawyers and educators ought to borrow and adopt more strategies that have proved successful in other industries.
This was a suggestion made repeatedly during an American Bar Association (ABA) gathering that convened 200 leaders in the legal profession to spur fresh thinking about how to more effectively serve these populations.
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“If you want to increase access to the law, you need to question the status quo,” Sanjuan said. “Interact with non-lawyers and be ready to ask questions. It seems as if 9 out of 10 lawyers are trying to preserve the status quo. Some of my most creative thinking has come from collaborating with colleagues outside the legal profession.”
Currently the U.S. manager of the access campaign for Doctors Without Borders, Sanjuan offered two examples of how her work crosses a variety of realms, including the law, even though the organization employs so few full-time lawyers that the head count might not even top double digits worldwide among its thousands of employees.
Because providing vaccines to impoverished children in developing countries requires convincing donors of their cost-effectiveness, Sanjuan and her colleagues team up with family health experts and pharmaceutical industry officials to make the case.
She and her co-workers also explore the opportunities and boundaries of copyright law to speed up the delivery of books to blind people and other individuals with special needs.
