Legal Entrepreneurs for Justice (LEJ) is a small business incubator for lawyers to establish socially conscious law practices.  These lawyers will develop market-based solutions to serve low and moderate-income Coloradans who cannot afford legal services at traditional firms.  Central to the project is developing innovative service models that maximize technology, leverage existing referral networks, and feature attorney-client collaboration and à la carte service offerings.

Lawyers participating in LEJ are committed to establishing successful law practices that:

1. 1. Focus on serving the legal needs of low and moderate-income clients who typically have too much income to qualify for free legal aid but do not have the means to afford legal assistance in the traditional legal market*.
   2. Concentrate on areas of law where the legal market does not provide sufficient access to legal assistance for low and moderate-income people.
   3. Seek to make legal assistance more approachable by placing deliberate emphasis on understanding clients’ perspectives and adapting to their needs, and by working with clients in a collaborative effort to address their legal issues and achieve their goals.
   4. Utilize innovative methods to make legal assistance more accessible and affordable for clients in the target market and to reach those clients, including:
      1. Exclusively using fixed fees and other alternatives to the billable hour in order to provide greater fairness, flexibility, transparency, and certainty to clients;
      2. Offering limited scope representation, when appropriate, to provide clients with additional options for representation; and
      3. Maximizing the use of technology to create efficiencies in practice that benefit the client and the law practice.

Lawyers participating in LEJ are also committed to:

1. Collaborating with fellow LEJ participants and other LEJ partner entities.
2. Actively participating in efforts to improve the profession, the practice of law and the larger justice system.
3. Developing economically sustainable and replicable delivery models for meeting the legal needs of the LEJ target market.

*LEJ’s target market is generally defined as people earning between 150% and 400% of the federal poverty level or the HUD Poverty Guideline Adjusted Extremely Low-Income Limits. The federal poverty guidelines are available here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/01/18/2018-00814/annual-update-of-the-hhs-poverty-guidelines http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/tools-for-advocates/guides/federal-poverty-guidelines.html. The HUD guidelines are available here: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/il/il2018/select_Geography.odn.