The Atticus Project provides free legal advocacy to people living in the Greater Boston area with the specific purpose of reducing the impact of poverty on health and well-being.

The Atticus Project is named after the character of Atticus Finch in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. We believe that good legal work should create spaces for people to live their lives. We aspire to provide holistic representation for our clients.

We believe that access to legal services allows people to more readily meet their basic needs, such as income, housing, and access to medication. Our advocacy is grounded in the following principles:

• We use human rights as our lens.
• We work with harm reduction principles.
• We holistically incorporate legal assistance with the care provided by our clients’ healthcare and social service providers.
• We seek to impact the social determinants of health, eliminate barriers to healthcare, promote human dignity, and stabilize the lives of our clients.

We work through both direct representation and through referrals to other organizations. Our service areas include:

• HOUSING including eviction, landlord/tenant issues, housing conditions, and housing denials
• DISCRIMINATION in employment, housing, or public accommodation situations
• ESTATE PLANNING including wills, healthcare proxies, and powers of attorney
• FAMILY LAW including divorce, child support/custody issues, and guardianship
• SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS including appeals for denials of eligibility, termination of benefits, and overpayments
• IMMIGRATION limited assistance with some matters for those changing status
• Consumer Debt Issues including bankruptcy (by referral), debt collection, and student loans
• UNEMPLOYMENT appeals before the Dept. of Workforce Development

HUMAN RIGHTS LENS Human rights are different from civil rights. Civil rights are those that guarantee equal citizenship. They are the basic legal rights a person must possess in order to have equality in their citizenship status. Human rights are normatively broader in scope than civil rights. They are focused on preserving human dignity.

HARM REDUCTION PRINCIPLES Harm reduction is a set of practical strategies that reduce negative consequences of certain behaviors, incorporating a spectrum of strategies. For example, if the behavior is drug abuse, those strategies can range from safer use, to managed use to abstinence. In sum, harm reduction strategies values meeting people "where they're at”.

SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age. These circumstances are shaped by the access to and distribution of money, power and resources (one of which is legal advocacy) at global, national and local levels. The social determinants of health are mostly responsible for health inequities - the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between countries.

PHONE 617.450.1317

FAX 617.450.1311

EMAIL [email protected]