Doing right by families: Presenting dynamic performance metrics for legal excellence in child welfare law

Abstract

To meet the challenge of advancing child welfare law, a field affecting millions of families a year, practicing attorneys have developed a wealth of guidance for best practices. The Judicial, Court, and Attorney Measures of Performance (JCAMP) provide a way to determine whether legal programs are following these recommended practices and to assess the strength of attorney–client relationships. After providing context around challenges to high quality legal representation, best practice guidance, and evaluation research findings, this article reviews the JCAMP measures of attorney practice. JCAMP may be used by legal programs to both assess their own practice and to elicit feedback from affected families to ensure consistent high quality representation. Boldly assessing attorney interactions, and the experiences of clients in the court process, is critical to guiding and empowering lawyers to achieve excellence.