WHAT WE DO
L.E.A.H grows justice from the inside out, working alongside jailhouse lawyers, advocates, and communities who have been navigating these systems their entire lives. follow along to learn more.
L.E.A.H's programs are born from a simple belief: that the people most impacted by injustice are best positioned to transform it. Through the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative, Flashlights, and Feminist Circles, we build the spaces, relationships, and tools that make legal power accessible, community-led, and lasting. Each program is a different entry point into the same collective work. Explore them below.
Transformation begins from within
OUR FRAMEWORK
Every program at L.E.A.H is held together by the Internal Legal Empowerment Framework. Rooted in legal empowerment, peacebuilding, participatory action methods, and Black feminist praxis, the framework recognizes that systems transformation begins with people, not just laws. The framework is anchored in L.E.A.H's Internal Legal Empowerment Cycle:
Know Self → Use Self → Transform Self and Spaces
“Becoming a jailhouse lawyer has given my life purpose and direction, and I have devoted myself to using my knowledge to help others”
— Brandon Tieuel, TexasThe Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI)
OUR PROGRAMS
The Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI) is L.E.A.H's flagship program and home to more than 1,300 incarcerated members across the United States. JLI recognizes jailhouse lawyers as essential legal workers, educators, advocates, and human rights defenders who help incarcerated communities understand, use, and shape the law.
A jailhouse lawyer is someone who studies and uses the law while incarcerated to support themselves and others. Beyond legal assistance, jailhouse lawyers serve as mentors, educators, peer leaders, and trusted community resources inside prisons and jails. L.E.A.H believes jailhouse lawyers are community paralegals and a critical entry point to legal empowerment. Their impact extends far beyond prison walls, strengthening the legal knowledge, leadership, and resilience of both incarcerated communities and the neighborhoods to which they return.
Through JLI, L.E.A.H partners with law schools, prison law libraries, and incarcerated leaders to co-create legal education, leadership development opportunities, and pathways for jailhouse lawyers to return home as community paralegals and community leaders. JLI is also a founding member of the International Incarcerated Paralegals Congress (IIPC).
OUR PROGRAMS
Flashlights
Flashlights is a living digital public archive created by Zealous in partnership with the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative (JLI) at L.E.A.H's.It houses the first known public timeline documenting the lives, impact, and work of jailhouse lawyers since the establishment of prisons in the United States.
The archive includes more than 300 handwritten letters, artwork, and reflections collected from JLI members across the country on topics including legal empowerment, incarceration, healing, resistance, identity, and systems change. It also includes a dedicated section amplifying the voices and experiences of incarcerated women. The archive is updated annually with new contributions from jailhouse lawyers nationwide.
The first exhibition launched in 2024 at NYU School of Law. Since then, exhibitions have been hosted in New York and Chicago. L.E.A.H is taking Flashlights on the road through public exhibitions and community conversations designed to bring the stories and lived experiences of jailhouse lawyers into communities, institutions, and public spaces.
OUR PROGRAMS
Feminist Circles
Feminist Circles are intentional gathering spaces created by JLI at L.E.A.H for justice-impacted women, incarcerated women, formerly incarcerated women, gender-expansive communities, and allies. Rooted in feminist participatory approaches, legal empowerment, and healing justice, the circles create opportunities for women to organize, reflect, heal, learn, and lead together across prison walls and communities.
Through monthly virtual gatherings, participants explore topics including exercising rights, healing justice, legal empowerment, relationships and identity, collective care, and leadership and systems change. Rather than focusing on representation alone, Feminist Circles create intentional spaces where women can engage in justice work on their own terms, in their own language, and in ways that reflect their lived experiences and community realities.
Feminist Circle zines are collaborative publications created from reflections, artwork, and conversations shared throughout the circles, to preserve collective wisdom, lived experience, healing practices, and legal empowerment knowledge from justice-impacted women across communities and prison walls.
get involved:
There Is a Place for You in This Work.
Now is the time to invest in a movement that centers community wisdom, honors lived experience, and builds the collective power and infrastructure for lasting systemic change. Together, we can ensure that those most impacted by injustice become the architects of a more just world.