LIFT Legal Resource Guides

LIFT is the only organization in New York City dedicated to empowering unrepresented families with legal information and emotional support so that they may advocate for themselves in the complex Family Courts. Because there is no legal right to a free lawyer in Family Court, and the majority of litigants cannot afford to hire a lawyer, the need for an organization like LIFT is immense. Without LIFT, families trying to address critical issues such as custody, visitation, child support, abuse, and neglect have nowhere to turn and remain adrift in a complex and confusing system, often with poor outcomes. But with LIFT’s help, these same families use information and knowledge to overcome challenges in the Courts and achieve positive solutions to their problems by advocating for themselves.

A guiding principle for LIFT is that social change can be created through information and knowledge. The self-advocacy LIFT promotes has a ripple effect, enabling social change in many facets of the lives of those we serve – they move through court more efficiently, and strengthen their families and communities. We employ a number of direct-service strategies which provide easily-accessible information to empower families to self-advocate in Court, however, the key tool is our Adobe InDesign created original Legal Resource Guides, a sample of which is submitted. The guides, 26 in all, are the only source of information about family law and court procedure available in the Family Courthouses of New York City – easy-to-understand “know your rights” materials on a wide-range of family law topics that respond to the needs we identify among court-users (and available in six languages).

By using Adobe InDesign, we are able to design guides with clean layouts and clear graphics that not only make them more appealing to readers, but also improve their readability (vitally important because our average user has a fifth grade reading level). Therefore, with simple design and graphics, LIFT is able to increase the range of people we serve, ensuring they are accessible to all who need them. Last year we distributed over 130,000 hardcopy guides across our programs.

We also use Adobe PDF software to create and distribute electronic versions of these guides – they are emailed to callers to our Legal Information Hotline as follow-up resources and are made available on our website. Adobe software ensures security and accuracy of this information by protecting the guides from unwanted modifications. This security enhances both the quality and the impact of our services – without PDF format, false information could easily be disseminated, which would not only negatively affect LIFT’s reputation, but could also have drastic repercussions for any person who used the inaccurate information for guidance. During the past year, we distributed nearly 43,000 guides electronically.

Adobe technology greatly boosts LIFT’s capacity to reach tens of thousands of families each year through the distribution of readable, accurate, and secure information, thereby addressing a critical need for information about rights and procedures regarding family law, and empowering those we serve to make change on behalf of themselves, their families, and their communities.