SearchA Message from our Executive Director
MVLS was created in partnership, a group of dedicated individuals who, through their coordinated efforts, successfully launched our organization 45 years ago. Today partnerships remain central to MVLS’ work. The stories ahead reflect our continued dedication to our core legal services and our growing ability to meet new and emerging community needs.
Click each image to read the full story behind each annual report story.
Every day at MVLS, a volunteer steps up to take a case, to lend their knowledge and experience to a fellow Marylander who is trying to resolve a legal issue, frequently without the necessary tools to fully advocate for themselves. As you’ll see in Going the Extra Mile, volunteers (and staff) take extraordinary steps to ensure that MVLS clients have a fair shot at justice.
MVLS has taken intentional efforts to create strong and trusted community partnerships, breaking down barriers to accessing legal services, and developing long-sustaining relationships with programs serving the same communities that MVLS does. Expungement by the Numbers: Unlocking Second Chances highlights how significant barriers to employment are being tackled in partnership with workforce training sites, like Per Scholas, to improve economic outcomes for individual families and neighborhoods.
While staying true to the mission, MVLS has continually explored new strategies to expand critical legal services. MVLS’ Equal Justice Fellow has focused on community lawyering, deepening MVLS’ commitment to innovative, impactful work. In To Strengthen a Community, You Have to Put Down Roots, one of the best parts of our community lawyering work is witnessing the advocacy and commitment by community members who are determined to ensure that their neighbors and friends have the necessary tools to preserve their homes.
Our mission to remove barriers to justice through free civil legal help, community engagement, and advocacy for equitable laws is woven throughout each of the stories shared above. As this year’s numbers, highlights, and narratives demonstrate, we advance a fairer justice system by working together.
Volunteer attorneys have stood with MVLS for 45 years, closing the justice gap for over 115,000 individuals. MVLS staff, community partners, former clients, local advocates, our donors, and so many others continue to come together to build upon the vision of MVLS for a fair legal system that is free of injustice and equitably serves underrepresented Marylanders.
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