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There is a famous line from the movie “Field of Dreams” that viewers often remember as, “If you build it, they will come.”
For those of us working at the Indianapolis Legal Aid Society, the experience has always been a little different.
In our case, they came first.
Over the past several years, something became increasingly clear to us: The need for civil legal aid was never confined to one county or one city. Communities across Indiana were asking for more help, more hope and more presence.
So today the Indianapolis Legal Aid Society is expanding our services statewide. But that decision did not begin with a strategic plan sitting on a conference room table. It did not start with a discussion about what we wanted to build.
It began with conversations.
It began with judges, community leaders and families telling us they needed help. It began with hearing the same quiet question from places far outside Marion County: Is anyone able to help us with this?
These conversations, these questions reminded us of that oath taken by every attorney in Indiana:
“I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed, or those who cannot afford adequate legal assistance.”
It reminded us, Indianapolis Legal Aid Society, that the oath does not stop at the borders of Marion County.
So, we started building.
Along the way, we also learned something important. Courts, policymakers, and legal organizations across the country have invested heavily in online tools, websites and digital forms to expand access to justice. Those innovations matter. Technology has made legal information more available than ever before.
But as we began working in rural communities and smaller towns across Indiana, we saw something technology alone cannot solve.
A website can provide information about the law. A lawyer can solve the problem.
For generations, small-town attorneys were far more than document preparers. They were community leaders, practical problem solvers and trusted advisers who helped neighbors navigate some of the hardest moments in their lives. In many communities today, that local legal infrastructure has thinned or in some places disappeared altogether.
And when those lawyers disappeared, something important went with them.
Or as Abraham Lincoln once put it: “A lawyer’s time and advice are his stock in trade.”
Lincoln was not talking about billable hours or the act of filing a pleading. He was speaking to something deeper: the value of time spent listening, learning and offering thoughtful guidance grounded in experience.
So, when the local lawyer disappears, so does their time. So does their advice.
This is what we need for our legal community to recognize. That our clients need more than a warm body to fill out a form. They need the opportunity to create new bonds. The type of bonds that have long defined our profession.
Thus, our attorneys begin the same way small town lawyers always have — by listening.
We listen carefully to each client’s situation. We learn what is really happening beneath the legal issue, what pressures a family is facing, what barriers stand in their way and what practical solutions might work. Only then do we offer guidance, identifying realistic legal options and working collaboratively with courts, opposing counsel and community partners to stabilize families and communities.
Technology can help people find the door.
Advice helps them walk through it.
As our work continues across Indiana, we are learning from the communities we serve how different regions experience the justice system, the challenges they face, the creativity they bring and the ways local relationships make legal solutions possible.
Because sometimes access to justice does not begin with building something new.
Sometimes it begins with hearing the need and responding to that call.•
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Floreancig is general counsel and CEO of Indianapolis Legal Aid Society, and Stewart is senior litigation partner.
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