Ellen Lawton, Esq.
Executive Director, National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership
Summer ostensibly brings the opportunity to slow down, reflect a bit, maybe enjoy a popsicle or two....and in an academic setting, churn out some papers. So we have been hard at work with some of our colleagues in the Network developing a range of academic papers describing the MLP model and its components.
Some reflections on that process include the fact that the difference between medical and legal articles is a metaphor for the difference between the professions. My medical colleagues are amused (and sometimes irritated) by lawyers' propensity to explain the world in a gigantic footnote, or dignify a minor point with a lengthy explication. From the legal partners, myself included, we sometimes wish they would pay less attention to the percentages and p values i.e. the numbers, and more attention to defining terms and massaging the message -- i.e. the words.
Which brings us to, as Stephen Colbert would say, "The Word": how do we understand, define and use words that have different meanings depending on your discipline. We have struggled mightily to describe the connection between "social determinants" and unmet legal needs. And who knew that legal needs are distinguishable from legal problems? Here's a classically unhelpful definition courtesy of the ABA in their 1994 Comprehensive Legal Needs Study:
"Legal need"...refers to specific situations members of households were dealing with that raised legal issues -- whether or not they were recognized as 'legal' or taken to some part of the justice system.
Hmm. My medical partners routinely talk about social, psychosocial and material needs, and ask me how those relate to legal needs. I know they do, and I promise to tell you how, but first I am going to step out for a popsicle.....
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