How do you get your co-workers to support your projects with their input and support? In a worker self-directed organization, where workers have the freedom to choose which projects they dedicate their time and energy towards, this question can be trickier than you might expect. We all have different methods to rally colleagues around our individual work. But over the years we’ve learned, if you make the work a party, people will show up! Hence, Research Explosion Days! (If you want to see a peek into how we did it over 8 years ago, check out this fun video.)

As a worker self-directed organization, we created REDs to dedicate our individual attention to one of our many programs or projects at a time. We’ve used REDs as an excuse to take field trips to local law libraries, invite friends within our community to share their knowledge and expertise, and asked our wider community to join in the collective research fun. Collectively researching pressing and unanswered questions and sharing what we’ve learned with each other is also a great way to grow together.

Research Explosion Days increase the resilience of our organization by bringing together our collective energy and brainpower to learn more than we could individually about each of our programs. REDs are one strategy to democratize legal knowledge by making sure it’s community-driven.

[Image description: Two smiling young women, Itzel and Maya, stand next to each other with one arm around around each other and the other arm raised up in a joyful expression. Behind them is wall with a website map of Co-opLaw.org made from colorful index cards and tape. In front of them, a mish mash of office chairs and a table.]

A dedicated circle of Law Center staff and our intern-turned-project lead Maya Miracle, have been steadily working with a cooperatively run web development and tech organization called Colab to redesign the information architecture of Co-opLaw.org. We’re working to make the site info more accessible through searchability, re-organization, and content re-writes. In the photo above you can see Itzel and Maya proudly displaying our newly configured site map made huge on the Law Center office wall. 

Next month, we’ll host co-op law practitioners to join us for a Research Explosion Day, where we’ll collectively review large chunks of content we’ve reworked. Stay tuned for more exciting Co-oplaw.org updates in 2023!

The Law Center is closed for a collective week of rest

Law Center staff will be offline and unresponsive March 20th - 24th. The Law Center recognizes the wisdom inherent in the cyclical turn of seasons – hibernations and migrations, periods of wild abundance and of decomposition, moments to attune to transition. To adapt to these rhythms as a collective, and as a practice of radical care for one another, the Law Center schedules four quarterly weeks of rest each year. This is one of those weeks. Thanks for your patience and understanding.