2026 MIE National Conference for Legal Aid Managers

Today's legal aid supervisors face a wide range of challenges. Alongside supporting diverse teams and managing performance and accountability, they are adapting to emerging technologies like AI, navigating complex union environments, and working to strengthen engagement and retention amid ongoing uncertainty and change. The need for Trauma-Informed Leadership (TIL) has never been greater. In this session, participants will be introduced to the five Principles of Trauma-Informed Leadership—a practical framework for preventing and addressing common supervision challenges in the workplace. Leaders will learn to recognize issues such as conflict, resistance, and disengagement through a trauma-informed lens and explore how to apply the five principles to real-world management situations. Participants will leave with practical strategies to build trust, strengthen engagement, and foster an inclusive, high-performing workplace, even in today's challenging environment.

As younger generations enter the workforce, legal aid leaders are tasked with developing skilled, resilient attorneys in an increasingly digital environment shaped by virtual courts, electronic communication, and remote advocacy. Meeting the demands of this new landscape requires leaders to rethink how they train, supervise, and support early-career attorneys. This session explores the performance management and wellness challenges managers face when developing new legal aid attorneys and offers practical strategies for assessing, coaching, and strengthening the skills needed to help them become—and remain—empathetic, effective, and human-centered advocates in a digital world.

Managing up is an essential leadership skill that helps you get what you need to do your work well, advocate effectively for yourself and your team, and build a productive working relationship with your manager and other organizational leaders. This interactive session will introduce a practical set of skills and approaches that participants can apply to manage up more effectively.

Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) can be an important supervisory tool in a manager’s toolbelt to help a struggling staff member, but they are often not used as frequently or effectively as they should be. In this session, we explore what a PIP is, when it should be used, and best practices for drafting not only the PIP itself, but progress reports during the period of the PIP. You will hear from both a local manager and an HR representative on best practices, potential downfalls, and other key considerations to keep in mind when considering and implementing a PIP. We will use real life examples to illustrate the difference between a successful and unsuccessful PIP and discuss how to work in collaboration with struggling staff members to help them succeed–during the period of the PIP itself and long after it’s ended.

Legal aid managers are frequently required to lead through uncertainty, including mergers, leadership transitions, funding changes, restructuring, and evolving community needs. In these moments, communication is one of the most critical management tools, but also one of the most difficult to execute effectively.

This session provides a practical, skills-based framework for communicating during organizational change in ways that build and sustain trust. Drawing on real-world experience from a multi-organization legal aid merger in a rural, multi-office system, presenters will focus on specific communication decisions managers must make, including what to communicate, when to communicate it, and how to tailor messaging across roles and audiences.

The session will address concrete management challenges such as communicating when decisions are still in progress, responding to staff questions without complete information, managing rumors and uncertainty, and aligning messaging across leadership roles. Participants will be introduced to a simple decision-making framework for structuring communication during change, along with examples of messaging strategies used in real organizational scenarios.

Attendees will leave with practical tools they can apply immediately in supervision and organizational leadership, including approaches for managing uncertainty, strengthening credibility during change, and maintaining alignment across leadership teams.

The session guides leaders to move their programs beyond tactical decisions and move forward strategic and visionary change. This session begins with an overview of prevalent theories of change at legal aid organizations, followed by an interactive discussion of a case study in which staff leadership, board, and funders of an organization are not fully aligned on program priorities. Through the case study grounded in real-world scenarios, participants will identify how they can become more effective catalysts for change.