Our Work

The projects we've built, and the actions behind them.

Every project below started as a pattern we saw across our cases — a system that was breaking people instead of helping them. Every action is a piece of that work: a brief filed, a rule changed, a coalition built.

Featured Projects

Our core projects — the standing infrastructure we've built to serve people the system was never designed for.

Shelter Direct

Holistic, concierge-style legal services for shelter residents who are suffering from poverty.

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Street Outreach Court Detroit

A program that allows homeless folks to "pay off" their tickets with efforts to improve their lives.

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Ending Michigan's Pay-to-Play Court Funding Law

Three cases, one unconstitutional statute, and courts that keep dodging the merits.

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Eviction Due Process Benchmarks

An investigation of inequitable housing law enforcement and creation of a due process scorecard.

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Most Recent Actions

A sample of the individual actions — filings, rule changes, coalitions, and wins — that make up the day-to-day of our projects.

May 2026
Filed Amicus Brief in People v Ormsbee Challenging Court-Funding Statute

Pending before the Michigan Supreme Court as of 2026.

May 2026
We Flagged a Friend of the Court Error and Got It Fixed Before It Could Slow Other Attorneys Down

A county FOC office corrected a clerk's mistaken policy after we escalated it.

April 2026
Created Root Cause Analysis Tools for the Commission on Fairness and Public Trust's Court Leaders Meeting

Courts statewide used our worksheets to diagnose and fix their own broken processes.

December 2025
SOCD Shattered Its Own Record in 2025—322 Graduates and 3,776 Cases Closed

New provider partnerships, better internal systems, and court referrals drove the program's biggest year yet.

December 2025
Shelter Direct - 2025

August 2025
Street Democracy Calls for Free Court Interpreters in All Cases, Not Just Criminal Ones

A proposed rule change would end fee reimbursement for interpreters in criminal cases — we argued it should cover every case, because equal access to courts is the court's job, not the litigant's.