About the Medical-Legal Partnership Model
How It Works
Medical-legal partnerships integrate legal services and expertise into healthcare settings to help healthcare providers and systems address the root causes of poor health outcomes.
At medical-legal partnerships, lawyers become an important part of the healthcare workforce, embedding in various care settings just like any other specialist. When some of the most complex and intractable problems—like an illegal eviction—are detected, clinical staff can refer patients directly for legal services. And like other members of the healthcare team, legal staff are available to consult with clinical and non-clinical staff about system and policy barriers to care. A number of these partnerships go further, leveraging their considerable knowledge and expertise to advance local and state policies that lead to safer and healthier environments.
Improving Health & Health Care
Legal services and expertise can help address many of the most complex social needs that contribute to poor health and often drive people to seek health care.
Delivering the Right “Dosage” of Legal Care
There are a number of ways a lawyer can help a patient with a housing or other legal issue. It’s about finding the right dose of legal care.
Representing a patient in court is like surgery. It’s expensive and time consuming. It’s necessary when the problem is acute, a legal “disease” is advanced, and lower intensity strategies won’t work.
Lower intensity interventions are common and preventative. They keep patients housed, prevent stressful escalation of legal problems, and are cheaper.
One of the benefits of the MLP model is that legal problems are typically detected earlier. Individuals don’t usually seek out a lawyer until they are already in a legal crises, such as when they have lost critical public benefits or been evicted from their home. When healthcare staff screen for common “symptoms” of legal problems, they can refer an individual to an MLP lawyer while there is an opportunity to prevent the loss of benefits or the eviction.
A study of the Kaiser Permanente Medical-Legal Partnership Initiative found that the MLP legal team was able to resolve over 80% of cases referred to them with less than 5 hours of attorney time.
Moving from Patients-to-Policy
Working together, people with lived experience, healthcare staff, and legal teams identify patterns in social and legal needs and find systemic solutions. Medical-legal partnership teams address policies at the clinical, city, state, and federal levels to improve the health, well-being, and rights of people in their communities. They have embarked on many different types of policy projects, including:
Clinical: A workflow or policy in the clinic, hospital, or health center has to change.
Regulatory: An agency must change the rules for how a benefit or service can be administered.
Administrative: A company, organization, or agency needs to change how it operates.
Legislative: A local, state, or federal law has to change or be written.
Impact of Aligning Services
Medical-legal partnerships improve individual health and well-being, strengthen the healthcare workforce, and save healthcare systems money. Studies show that leveraging legal expertise and services in healthcare settings leads to:
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Reduced Hospitalizations
People with chronic illnesses are healthier & admitted to the hospital less often, saving healthcare costs.
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More Stable Housing and Utilities
People are more stably housed and their utilities are less likely to be shut off.
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Better Adherence to Treatment
People more commonly follow their medical treatment plans and take their medications as prescribed
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Increased Financial Resources
More healthcare costs are covered by insurance and people have greater access to public benefits.
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Improved Mental Health
People report reduced stress and experience improvements in mental health.
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Increased Reimbursements
Clinical services are more frequently reimbursed by public and private payers.
25 Years of MLP Milestones
An increasing number of organizations and agencies embrace medical-legal partnerships as a critical healthcare intervention. The timeline below highlights MLP field, policy, and media milestones from the past 25 years.
2001
May
The New York Times article about Boston Medical Center MLP sparked interest from other healthcare organizations.
September
MLP practitioners from around the country gathered in Boston, MA for the first MLP Meeting.
2006
April
The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership launched at Boston Medical Center with support from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The U.S. MLP field included 31 medical-legal partnerships.
2007
August
The American Bar Association passed a resolution calling on members to engage in MLP activities.
December
The American Academy of Pediatrics passed a resolution calling on members to engage in MLP activities.
2009
The U.S. MLP field grew to 100 medical-legal partnerships.
2010
June
The American Medical Association Board of Trustees released a report calling on members to engage in MLP activities.
September
Healthy Start, a federal program of HRSA’s Maternal & Child Health Bureau,funded a pilot to integrate MLP services in Healthy Start home visiting programs in three cities.
2011
May
More than 60 leaders from across the MLP field contributed to the textbook, Poverty, Health and Law: Readings and Cases for Medical-Legal Partnership.
September
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs issued VHA Directive 2011-034, allowing VA medical facilities to provide community legal services agencies free space to deliver on-site civil legal assistance to Veterans.
2013
January
New York was the first state to create a process to certify medical-legal partnership programs.
The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership moved to The George Washington University.
July
The National Nurse-Led Care Consortium received a grant from The Kresge Foundation to help member sites develop MLPs.
2014
January
The Better Team for Child Health MLP learning network kicked off in Arkansas.
March
The Where Health Meets Justice fellowship launched to build healthcare expertise in the civil legal aid community.
April
The U.S. MLP field grew to 250 medical-legal partnerships.
May
Georgia was the second state to codify MLPs into law (SB 352).
Partnering for Native Health brought together leaders representing dozens of Native American tribes to discuss the role legal care can play in addressing barriers to health care.
July
The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership received funding from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to serve as a National Training and Technical Assistance Partner for health centers. This funding was continually renewed through 2026.
October
HRSA designated legal services as an “enabling service,” meaning that health centers can use federal dollars to pay for on-site legal assistance for patients.
2015
April
The Association of American Medical Colleges began a three-year study of the impact of MLPs on health equity and develop a suite of tools to evaluate MLPs.
September
PBS NewsHour aired a story about how a Nebraska MLP improves patient health and the hospital’s bottom line.
2016
September
The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership partnered with 19 other HRSA-funded national training and technical assistance partners to launch The Social Determinants of Health Academy.
October
AmeriCorps made a six-state investment in MLPs serving tribal communities.
2017
September
A multi-agency meeting focused on the ongoing opioid crisis and how medical-legal partnerships can play a role in alleviating its effects. Read the follow-up issue brief.
2018
January
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services included “screening for health-harming legal needs” as a recognized Improvement Activity (IA) under Medicare’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System.
April
Essentials of Health Justice textbook published.
June
Federal agencies met to explore ways that healthcare organizations can partner with local legal services to advance the health of people in rural communities.
July
Temple University received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the impact of MLPs on outcomes for HIV-positive individuals.
August
Medical-legal partnership was profiled in the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program.
October
As part of North Carolina’s Section 1115 waiver, Medicaid managed care organizations in the state became eligible to reimburse legal services agencies for providing some services.
2019
May
The U.S. MLP field grew to 350 medical-legal partnerships.
June
The Bob Woodruff Foundation convened a day-long meeting about how to better coordinate care across sectors for our nation’s Veterans. They also gave a grant to the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership to further integrate legal services as part of comprehensive care at VA medical centers.
September
400+ people gathered at the largest MLP Summit to date.
2021
July
Kaiser Permanente, a large, private integrated health system strategically invested systemwide in MLPs to address housing stability and eviction prevention in their communities. Read findings from KP’s 2-year MLP evaluation.
2023
October
The Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provided $1.6 million in funding to 8 existing MLPs. The Medical-Legal Partnerships Plus (MLP+) program increases the programs’ capacity to serve vulnerable families by providing comprehensive legal services and wrap-around social services.
2024
December
The U.S. MLP field grew 500 medical-legal partnerships.
2026
April
The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership celebrated its 20th anniversary.
May
The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership was recognized by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association with the 2026 Nan Heald Innovations in Equal Justice Award.