Community Agreements

All staff agree to the following principles regarding our work together and how we engage with each other. In the event of conflicts or disagreements among staff, these community agreements can offer guidance as to a path forward.

1. Commit to  working through issues with all co-workers at the Law Center, meaning:  

• Review your co-worker’s communication profile prior to addressing a concern with them

• Address interpersonal tensions early and directly (using partner coaching tools when needed). 

• Engage in repair of relationships

• Stay engaged in conflict resolution processes even when it’s really hard. 

2. Practice understanding and make room for difference:

• Approach others with curiosity rather than judgment or assumptions.  Consider people's lived experiences, cultural influences and tendencies, capacity, access needs, communication styles, and ‘ways of being’ rooted in these experiences.

• Help create internal spaces where all staff feel welcome,valued and able to participate.

• Slow down and try to make sure everyone understands before moving on

3. Communicate with others respectfully and honestly:

• Respectfully name hard things and stay in conversation

• Listen carefully without interrupting, fixing or forming a rebuttal. Focus on understanding how you impacted the other person, not litigating the facts of what happened.

• Share your own experience, context, or intention without using it to dismiss, override, or argue away someone else’s harm or perspective

• Practice reflecting back

• Approach differences and conflict with curiosity rather than judgement

• Try to explicitly name any assumptions you are making (e.g., “I’m assuming you will take the lead on this decision because you know more about this topic”).

• Don’t assume prior knowledge, but assume infinite intelligence. 

4. Prioritize relationships or needs of the community over default practices, beliefs, or positions:

• Be willing to change your mind, don’t get too attached to being right

• Be willing to propose policy changes to meet the needs of the relationships in the community.

5. Practice personal work and self-reflection to: 

• Work towards feeling safe to take risks, contribute, ask for help, and make mistakes without fear.

• Encourage others to take risks, contribute, ask for help, or make mistakes—refrain from personal attacks and other actions meant to humiliate or make someone feel “less-than”.

• Understand your patterns and reactions and recognize when you are projecting them or acting them out

• Practice noticing shame and moving through it in ways that make accountability, learning, and repair possible 

• Name harm and impact, that you see around you and your own

• Identify for yourself what you need, and share that with the group  

6. Practice “Loving Accountability”, which includes:

• Choosing to take on responsibilities (roles, tasks, commitments, etc.) you are confident you can hold

• Asking for support when you are aware you cannot fulfil your responsibilities

• Asking someone what support they need when you feel impacted by their inability to fulfill their responsibilities

• Creatively brainstorming ways to ensure that support to others is provided if you are unable to offer it yourself

7. Cultivate a culture of inclusive collective decision-making:

• Determine when open discussions are needed for decisions that will impact the whole team (invite dialogue and feedback)

• Be willing to explain decisions and answer questions in good faith

• Take space and make space - if you find yourself speaking a lot, let others speak; if you find yourself not speaking a lot and you have something to say, speak up.

• Direct opposing feedback to the policy or proposal, not toward a person

• Honor the collective—take responsibility for and prioritize co-stewarding the organization and respect our decision making processes 

8. Practice humility: 

• Honor the history, labor, and care that shaped this organization, while remaining open to what needs to evolve. 

• Don’t assume no thought or process existed before you arrived, but also don’t assume new processes will always have the same results as previous ones.

9. Acknowledge systemic and interpersonal power dynamics and actively work to promote equity:

• For example, if you notice that a policy or practice is impacting co-workers differently based on race, class, education or ability privilege, bring a proposal to change the policy or practice, especially if you are a person with more privilege in the situation. 

Adopted May 12, 2026