Medical-Legal Partnerships: A scan of the landscape and a look forward

The Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) model is a promising innovation that delivers free legal services to low-income patient populations of hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities. The MLP model recognizes that legal issues can manifest as social needs that affect health and integrates the MLP attorneys into the healthcare system. This approach involves education of healthcare professionals regarding the nexus between legal issues and health, development and use of screening tools to identify health-harming legal needs, referral of patients to MLP attorneys on-site at the healthcare facility who can provide legal advice and representation, and close collaboration between legal and health professionals to address patient needs.