Our criminal defense team at Lamano Law Office is deeply committed to serving the Bay Area when it comes to social justice, fair chances, equal rights, and a restorative approach over mass incarceration.

Our approach to community involvement mirrors our team’s personalized compassionate approach to client representation. Oftentimes, when clients walk through our doors, they express that they want prosecutors, judges, and juries to hear their story. They want to make sure that they are viewed as “whole people,” not simply the limited and uncontextualized sum of their alleged misdeeds. We craft mitigation packets to help our clients achieve the critically important goal of telling their stories and honoring their broader humanity within the context of their criminal cases.

Just as we respect, honor, and advocate for our clients as whole people, we give back to community organizations throughout the Bay Area that emphasize access to justice, equity and inclusion, and dignity throughout the criminal justice process.

Promoting Social Justice, Equitable Access to Legal Counsel, Opportunity, and Healing

Before founding Lamano Law Office, Givelle started her own non-profit organization, the Three Strikes Justice Center, aimed to alleviate the overcrowding of prisons through social justice. Below are some community organizations our firm volunteers with and supports to fight for change in our legal system. By learning more about their values, you’ll learn more about our team’s values. Lamano Law Office is proud to champion the missions and efforts of these organizations because their work uplifts Bay Area communities in many of the same ways that we strive to uplift our clients.

  • Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
    LSPC serves four primary missions. In addition to facilitating community organizing efforts targeting those impacted by the criminal justice system, it also helps to reunify families and communities post-incarceration, advocates for the release of the incarcerated and broadly strives to restore human and civil rights. Both racial and gender justice are core principles of LSPC’s efforts.
  • Open Door Legal
    Open Door Legal believes that “The law belongs to all of us.” This nonprofit organization combats poverty by facilitating open and equal legal access. To achieve this end, Open Door is pioneering the first system of universal access to legal assistance in the U.S.
  • Alameda County Bar Association
    Promoting excellence in the legal profession and facilitating equal access to justice.
    Legal Access Alameda is the Alameda County Bar Association’s community outreach arm. Through Legal Access Alameda, one of the county’s largest legal aid providers, the Alameda County Bar Association provides free legal services to low-income residents.
  • Bay Area Legal Incubator
    BALI is a project facilitated by the Alameda County Bar Association and the Volunteer Legal Services Corporation. Self-described as a “community of solo attorneys dedicated to providing affordable legal services and promoting social justice,” BALI serves as a social-mission community for California attorneys committed to serving individuals and communities of modest economic means.
  • Defy Ventures
    Defy provides entrepreneurial programs to enable “America’s largest forgotten communities to defy the odds.” Facilitating entrepreneurial opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals, the organization promotes connections, skill-building, purpose, and success. One recent program graduate observed, “Defy didn’t impact my life; it saved my life.”
  • Strively
    Like Defy Ventures aims to reduce recidivism through entrepreneurship, Strively facilitates this mission by training formerly incarcerated individuals to thrive in the tech sales trade. The organization partners with Bay Area technology companies to foster opportunity and alter how formerly incarcerated people are perceived professionally.
  • Insight Prison Project
    Insight Prison Project’s programs reach thousands of incarcerated Californians in state prisons, county jails, reentry facilities, and juvenile institutions. The organization’s mission of restorative justice aids in healing in the wake of violent behavior. Through the assistance of trained facilitators, these programs create a space that allows incarcerated people and crime victims an opportunity to work together and, ultimately, to heal.

By contributing to the efforts of these dedicated organizations, Lamano Law Office fosters our mission of supporting the communities that we serve beyond the courtroom.