Michele Mirto: Stepping up A2J while cutting cost
Photograph of Michele Mirto by Bob Torrez Photography. Michele Mirto’s commitment to access to justice started as a little girl. Her parents drove home the importance of community involvement by leading their kids to donate to the food bank and homeless shelter. Working for a legal aid provider out of college showed Mirto, 54, that her destiny was a public interest law career. She’s worked in legal aid ever since, earning her degree from the University of Dayton School of Law in 1991. But it wasn’t until 2017 that she learned she’d end up turning the legal aid business model on its head—for the better. As executive director of Step Up to Justice , a Tucson, Arizona-based privately funded legal aid nonprofit, Mirto wields a shoestring budget and just three staff members armed with legal technology. They lead an army of volunteer lawyers in resolving low-income clients’ civil matters—mostly family law but also guardianship, consumer law, bankruptcy, and wills and probate. You can...
Comments
Post a Comment