Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services

Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services was incorporated in April 2013 for the purposes of providing education in legal services entrepreneurship, fostering equal access to environmental justice, and supporting community empowerment as follows:

• Promote the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies;

• Provide legal representation to allow equal access to the environmental decision-making process and to foster equal protection under the law for the health, preservation and restoration of natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values of the environment;

• Educate young attorneys in legal services entrepreneurship and incubate start-up legal services organizations to serve the environmental legal needs of underserved low- and middle-income clients; and

• Empower communities and stimulate economies in the Appalachian Basin region by providing environmental legal services and counseling to allow the underserved to make decisions about practical and innovative solutions to complex environmental challenges across the region.

Fair Shake advances local, community decision-making about community health, environmental protection and cleanup, and development by providing access to justice for individuals and groups that are currently underserved. And we teach our Resident Attorneys to do the same through educational programming in business planning, client development, case management, environmental law, and legal areas in which Residents may diversify their practice.