Strategic Plan

The problem

In New York family court, eighty percent of parents appear without a lawyer. Most lose on process, not on the facts — a missed deadline, a document the court expected, evidence in the wrong form. The rules are public, but no one has turned them into something a parent can follow.

What we build

Guides that explain, in plain language, how a case moves and what each stage asks for.
A case organizer that turns what a parent knows into a dated timeline and a set of deadlines.
A case binder that tracks the documents a case needs and flags what is missing.
A packet the parent can hand to a legal aid clinic, a mediator, or a court help desk.

Why it matters

When a parent arrives prepared, everyone in the room does better with the same amount of time. A thirty-minute legal aid appointment goes to the real question instead of sorting paper. An attorney can price a single hearing. A mediator can start from agreed facts. We have found more than twenty-five points in a family court case where this holds.

What's next

Cover more of the case. Document the stages past the first one — hearings, evidence, orders — in the same plain language.
Follow the demand. Write next what parents actually get stuck on, measured from how far they get.
Fit the packet to who receives it. Work with clinics and help desks so a packet can be read in two minutes.

How we will know

Organizer starts and completions. Binders built and packets exported. Referrals routed to legal aid and help desks. How much of the family court path we have documented.

Sustaining the work

Jethro Justice is a New York 501(c)(3). Support pays the writers and engineers who do this work.