East Bay Community Law Center

The East Bay Community Law Center works to promote justice and build a community that is more secure, productive, healthy, and hopeful. 

Founded in 1988 as the Berkeley Community Law Center, by law students from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, EBCLC began with intentional attention to the intersection of significant trends in legal services and legal education.

True to its beginnings, the below highlights the two-pronged approach that the East Bay Community Law Center provides:

• Legal services and policy advocacy that are responsive to the needs of low-income communities, and
• Law training that prepares future attorneys to be skilled and principled advocates who are committed to addressing the causes and conditions of racial and economic injustice and poverty.

EBCLC follows a Social Indicators of Justice framework that seeks to address the underlying causes of poverty and economic and racial inequality in order to increase justice and improve opportunities in the areas of economic security, education, health and welfare, housing, and immigration.

EBCLC’s approach to this mission is multi-modal, collaborative and holistic:

• Multi-modal – employing multiple tactics to serve the mission, including community education, legal counseling and limited-scope representation, wrap-around legal and social services, and local, state, and federal policy advocacy;
• Collaborative – partnering with legal and social service organizations, as well as institutional stakeholders, to improve the safety net services, expand access and improve outcomes for clients and communities;
• Holistic – addressing the multitude of barriers to stability low-income people face through a client-centered, problem-solving methodology that increases impact and improves outcomes.

EBCLC’s hope is that through this multi-modal, collaborative, holistic approach to serving the mission we provide meaningful client services, impactful and grounded policy advocacy, and far-reaching training for tomorrow’s lawyers and leaders.