Beyond Chicago
Building a National Legal Empowerment Movement
For more than a decade, Beyond has reimagined what legal services can look like when they are rooted in community power. What began as a Chicago-based model—embedding legal aid in trusted grassroots spaces—has grown into something far larger: a national movement to transform how people across the United States access, use, and shape the law.
Today, Beyond is a cornerstone convener of the US Legal Empowerment Network (LEN)—a growing coalition of community organizations, legal aid providers, organizers, researchers, and directly impacted leaders across the country who are advancing a shared mission: to democratize the law and build community-driven justice.
Beyond Chicago: A National Footprint
Legal empowerment is not confined to one city. Through the US Legal Empowerment Network, Beyond is helping build a connected national landscape of legal empowerment partners—from the West Coast to the Deep South to Appalachia.
Beyond’s National Legal Empowerment Network
Explore the growing network of legal empowerment partners across the United States. Click on a state to see organizations working there.
The US Legal Empowerment Network, convened by Beyond in partnership with the Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at NYU Law, the Grassroots Justice Network, and the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative, amplifies the legal empowerment movement nationwide. Together, we have brought practitioners from more than a dozen states and Washington, DC into one shared space of learning, solidarity, and strategy.
This coalition is revolutionizing legal empowerment in the United States—and it is doing so by drawing on lessons learned from Beyond’s model, practice, and community partnerships. By co-creating this network, Beyond helps:
Bridge legal support and grassroots organizing
Strengthen national alliances between community paralegals, attorneys, organizers, and directly impacted leaders
Share Chicago-grown tools—like community-driven clinics, accompaniment models, and participatory legal strategies—with partners nationwide
Build an ecosystem of learning rooted in global and U.S. legal empowerment traditions
Our team continues to serve as a core convener—facilitating gatherings, contributing to national strategy, and ensuring the movement grows with intention and community leadership at its center.
The US Legal Empowerment Network
Across the United States, tens of millions confront civil and criminal legal problems—from deportation and eviction to incarceration and discrimination. At the same time, attacks on democratic institutions and the erosion
of legal norms have intensified the vulnerability of marginalized communities.
Why Legal Empowerment, and Why Now?
Legal empowerment offers a transformative response.
By democratizing access to legal understanding and pairing it with community organizing, legal empowerment equips people to:
Understand the laws that impact their lives
Navigate systems that often exclude them
Assert their rights collectively
Shape and reform the institutions around them
This approach has deep roots in global movements—from South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle to grassroots human rights campaigns in the Philippines. Beyond and LEN bring those lessons home, adapting them to meet the needs of communities across the U.S.
Participatory litigation
Community paralegals
Community-based data collection
Accompaniment and collaborative
lawyering
Trauma-informed practice and wellbeing
Global learning exchanges
Movement safety and resilience
Convenings: Learning, Strategy, and Solidarity
Each year, Beyond co-hosts a national convening that brings together legal empowerment practitioners from across the country. The choice to host this historic gathering in Chicago is intentional: our city’s legacy of worker power, community resistance, and multiracial organizing creates fertile ground for collective learning.
The convening is structured to be accessible and inclusive—featuring modest registration fees, travel scholarships for grassroots groups, Spanish interpretation, wellness programming, and childcare.
These gatherings strengthen the backbone of the national movement, allowing organizations to sustain their work, learn from one another, and grow together.
Over the course of 3 days, participants engage in sessions on:
Over the course of 3 days, participants engage in sessions on:
Participatory litigation
Community paralegals
Community-based data collection
Accompaniment & collaborative
lawyeringTrauma-informed practice and wellbeing
Global learning exchanges
Movement safety and resilience
Apply to join us in Chicago from February 3-5, 2026
