“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

– Flannery O’Connor 

As we set out to design and build a new website for the Legal Aid Justice Center, I was often reminded of this quote by Flannery O’Connor. 

The process of building our new website become a chance to learn more about who we are as an organization: the why, the what, and the how we do what we do. 

You would think it would be easy for me to describe who we are—after all, I am in my 20th year of employment and 22nd year of learning at the organization, having first been introduced to the Legal Aid Justice Center as a law student in 2001. 

But it is not. 

It is not easy to describe us, and not just because we are complex, community-driven, and ever-evolving and adapting to meet the moment we are in. But also because we are inspired to build collectively a world that does not yet exist and is therefore hard to describe. 

In the coming weeks, I’ll release a series of emails aspiring to tell the LAJC story—a story with a rich history and a strong vision for the future, a story of our struggle to integrate multiple legal, organizing, and other advocacy tools in pursuit of ambitious community goals across multiple issue areas, a story grounded in our firm belief that the individual legal problems of our clients are symptoms of overarching systems of injustice and oppression. 

Meanwhile, I invite you to explore our new website and see for yourself the incredible work our teams do every day in support of the communities we work with. We hope you agree that the product of our collective web design process reveals the story of LAJC: an ambitious, effective, legal advocacy powerhouse fueled by a deep commitment to centering community goals and needs.