The Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem is a non-profit model public law office whose dedicated staff are committed to providing the highest quality legal representation to inner city residents in Upper Manhattan. We are known internationally as the lead innovator in public defense practice. We are committed to eliminating crime in our community by addressing the problems that bring our clients into court in the first place. This is made possible by an innovation created by NDS -- holistic team defense. We involve civil and criminal attorneys, social workers, investigators, paralegals, and college and law school interns in the aggressive defense of our clients. We are dedicated to our mission -- to make our constitutional promise of justice a reality for those farthest from its reach.



NDS is organized differently from traditional defender offices, which reflects its broadened role in the community it serves. Its services go beyond direct legal representation, to helping clients avoid future contact with the criminal justice system. The key factors that make NDS unique are:



Location. Public Defender offices are traditionally located near the courthouse, remote from the communities where their clients live and where arrests occur. This has a significant impact on both the investigation of the case and on the development of the client-attorney relationship. By contrast, NDS is located in the community it serves. Its neighborhood-based office is accessible and hospitable, which fosters building strong relationships with clients and their families and facilitates the investigation and preparation of a case.





Early intervention. Court-appointed attorneys generally begin their work at arraignment, when they are assigned to the case by a judge, many hours [or days] after arrest. This puts defendants who cannot afford a lawyer at a great disadvantage because the period between arrest and the first court appearance can have a large impact on the outcome of a criminal case. To address this unequal access to counsel, NDS’s neighborhood-based services are available upon request, and through a continuous publicity campaign we encourage community residents to call the office as soon as they have been arrested or they hear that the police are looking for them. Early entry allows us to interview our clients at the police precinct, conduct an initial investigation and prepare for a bail hearing before the client even gets to court.

Team Defense. Each NDS client is represented by a small team, rather than by an individual attorney. Team defense allows us to combine the tools of law and social work to provide the best services possible for our clients. NDS defense teams combine the skills provided by attorneys, social service providers, investigators and paralegals. Understanding that social and economic needs often motivate criminal behavior, we provide services for clients to help them become productive citizens, including advocacy for alternatives to incarceration, educational support, psychiatric and psychological referrals and drug treatment placements.





Civil representation. A criminal accusation often brings trouble beyond the criminal charge itself. Even if never convicted, a person can be fired, lose public benefits, forfeit property or even lose custody of a child as a result of being arrested. The NDS civil team represents clients in three principal areas related to their criminal cases: police brutality and misconduct; housing and eviction matters; and family court child protective proceedings. We are committed to representing clients in civil cases related to a criminal charge for several reasons. First, we can better protect the rights and interests of our clients if we are representing them in every matter where the substance of the criminal charge against them will be at issue. Second, it is more efficient for the government and taxpayers to have a single office represent a single client about a single incident when the facts must be litigated in two or three separate courts. Third, in civil cases where an indigent defendant has no right to free counsel, he or she can lose the case at the start by failing to file the proper papers or defend the case in court.



Education. In New York City there is a great gap in understanding and communication between young people and police. NDS on a daily basis witnesses the results of that divide. In 1999 we developed STATE [Students Taking Action Towards Empowerment] in an effort to bridge this gap. STATE provides a series of programs designed to give young people useful techniques in their dealings with police in order to reduce conflict in interactions with them, and to educate youth and the community about their rights and responsibilities under the law. We seek to arm young people for encounters with police by giving them information and helping them understand what motivates some police behavior.