Because few legal organizations in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area have attorneys or staff who speak Asian languages, the APALRC launched LIP in the fall of 2001 to supplement its hotline project. Through LIP, the APALRC recruits and trains community members in conducting legal interpretation. Once a client is referred from the hotline to a legal services organization, the APALRC then matches the client with a trained legal interpreter, thereby ensuring that language does not continue to present a barrier to services. Since the fall of 2001, the APALRC has held seven two-day interpreter training sessions, and currently has a pool of 33 trained/qualified interpreters whose skills span 10 different Asian languages. The APALRC’s legal interpreters have assisted at on-site interpretations for attorney/client meetings, phone interpretations, and translations of affidavits and other documents.
LIP has also become a national model. In March of 2004, the APALRC published a handbook entitled, Ensuring Meaningful Access to Legal Services: A Model for a Legal Interpreter Project, which documents materials on the interpreter training, screening and testing methods developed by the APALRC. Since its release, nearly 100 legal services and community-based organizations from across the country, including Canada, have purchased the manual. To receive a hardcopy of the handbook, please place your order using this Order form.
