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About Us

Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston is an interdisciplinary team of health care staff, attorneys, and paralegals who integrate legal assistance into the medical setting as a vital component of patient care.

By combining the strengths of law and medicine, MLP | Boston addresses the complex social determinants of patients’ health and ensures that low-income patients are able to meet their basic needs for food, housing and utilities, education and employment, health care, and personal and family stability and safety.

Our legal team collaborates with healthcare providers in three key activities that promise to transform the delivery of health care and legal services and improve health for vulnerable individuals and families.

  1. Legal Assistance in the Healthcare Setting: MLP | Boston’s legal professionals become members of healthcare teams to assist patients with unmet legal needs, such as unhealthy housing conditions.
  2. Health and Legal Institutions and Practice Transformation: MLP | Boston reorients health care and legal services to early detection and preventive care through training and education. Our teams improve institutional practices to address legal needs, such as establishing a hospital policy regarding the role of health care staff in connecting low-income patients with critical utility service protections.
  3. Policy Change: MLP | Boston leverages health and legal expertise to improve local, state, and federal laws and regulations that impact the health and wellbeing of vulnerable populations.

You can read more about our activities related to Legal Assistance, Health and Legal Institutions and Practice Transformation, Policy Change, and MLP Technical Assistance by navigating the menu to the left.

MLP | Boston is also the Founding Site of a nationwide network of over 80 medical-legal partnerships. Please read about our mission and history at Boston Medical Center, the leading hospital provider of medical care and services to Boston’s low-income families and the largest safety net health care provider in New England.