About Our Legal Clinic

Welcome to Niagara Community Legal Clinic.

We are a non-profit community legal clinic that has been serving the communities of the Niagara Region since 1978.

Vision

NCLC’s Vision is aspirational; the result of a successfully executed Mission. NCLC’s Vision is of a Niagara Region free of injustice; a place of hope, equity, and inclusion through access to legal services.

Access to justice. Hope.

Mission

NCLC’s Mission clearly identifies who we serve, the nature of the services provided, and where in the province we care for those seeking hope and justice.

The Niagara Community Legal Clinic works with partners to improve the lives of people who live in Niagara through the provision of advice and legal representation to eligible, poverty-affected clients, and through law reform, advocacy, community development, and public legal education to the community at large.

Values

As NCLC strives to realize its Vision and carry out its Mission, NCLC will stay true to these core Values which inform the clinic’s organizational culture – its DNA. The Clinic’s values arise from our commitment to poverty mitigation, anti-racism, anti-oppression, and decolonization (ARAO-D). As stated within our ARAO-D Action Plan, we are particularly committed to applying a racial trauma lens to our work, and thus to trauma-informed legal services overall. NCLC Board Directors, management, staff, clients, etc., are expected to act in accordance with these values:

RISE

• Respect: NCLC values the human dignity of each individual and builds relationships of integrity and mutuality, fostering trust, safety, and wellbeing.

We thus honour the fact that many of our clients are living with multiple/overlapping traumas, including racial trauma – and that vicarious trauma is thus a reality, within our team. Niagara Community Legal Clinic (NCLC) Strategic Plan 2023 – 2026 14

• Inclusion: NCLC values the unique characteristics of all individuals and believes in their full engagement and contribution to NCLC’s vision and mission.

We thus strive to be particularly sensitive to the fact that a significant number of our clients and colleagues live with mental health disabilities.

• Self-determination: NCLC values people’s right to self-determination by fostering individual capacity and recognizing individuals’ abilities to make their own choices.

We thus recognize that fostering autonomy in decision-making (to whatever possible extent), is one key to traumainformed professionalism.

• Empowerment: NCLC values and fosters the process of persons becoming stronger and more confident in controlling their lives and claiming their rights

We are thus committed to anti-racism, anti-oppression, and decolonization. Further, we seek to neutralize the potential for our services and work environment to exacerbate trauma.