Our Work

How we’re growing into our mission

We launched Beyond Binary Legal in late 2019.

We felt inspired by legislative efforts to affirm the rights of nonbinary people, yet we doubted that new policies could create material changes without gender-responsive lawyers available to support our communities. Our original vision was to create a legal services organization by-and-for nonbinary people that would help implement new policies.

However, we knew we would have to change our approach as we began to see the immeasurable damage of the COVID-19 pandemic. We realized that Beyond Binary Legal could only meet a small part of our communities’ direct advocacy needs.

At the same time, so many nonbinary people are already advocating for themselves in everyday life—-usually out of necessity. When we are visible, we are constantly educating allies and people in positions of power in our daily lives.

In mid-2020, we decided to transform Beyond Binary Legal’s strategy.

Instead of providing direct legal services, where lawyers maintain power over community members, we chose to support organizing within our communities.

Now, our goal is to make it easier and more effective for nonbinary folks to advocate for their own needs. We aggregate and create tools for our communities, including other nonbinary people working in the legal industry. Another aspect of our work is that we proactively educate allies. We aim to make it easier for potential allies to independently access the information that they need to be responsive to nonbinary folks.

Concretely, we’ve been assessing existing resources, communicating with community members and allies, and trying different projects for the past several months to see where we can fill in the gaps.

2021 Projects

Our work has continued to evolve in response to the needs of gender expansive people in our communities and where we believe our advocacy could have the greatest impact.

This year, Beyond Binary LEgal is…

• Continuing to compile an ever-expanding list of resources by and for our communities.

  In the coming months, we’ll post a shorter resource list on our website. Identifying existing resources will make it easier for community members and other advocates to find current, helpful information when they need it—-including a full spectrum of know-your-rights, “nonbinary 101” information, data, and citations for legal research.

• Creating space for the next generation of nonbinary lawyers.

  We’re building support systems for nonbinary law students and prospective law students through events and mentorship. Mark your calendars for our first event on March 31 at 4:30 PST/ 7:30 EST (on Zoom of course).

• writing training materials for workplaces in the legal industry.

  We’re collaborating with national legal industry groups and dozens of nonbinary attorneys to write training materials for ally attorneys. Our goal for this project is to explain the impacts of gendered professional norms and how allies can create more gender-inclusive workplaces in offices, courtrooms, law schools, and anywhere lawyers practice.

• Launching an online survey and needs assessment by mid-2021.

  We aim to have data available by late 2021. This information will help the legal community become more responsive to our priorities, and we hope it will inform local, state, and national advocacy.

• Collaborating with more community members on resources for navigating gendered spaces.

  This could take many forms. Our main idea is to gather tips from people who have made change in their local context—for example, successfully adding gender-neutral restrooms or convincing people in power to use their pronouns—to share information about strategies that have worked and why. Please let us know if you have a specific idea.

some of our successes from 2019-2020

• Joined an amicus brief on a successful nonbinary gender marker case.

• Advised on federal legislation for a nonbinary gender marker on passports.

• Informed LGBT groups, larger civil liberties organizations, and other allies of nonbinary people about how to expand their advocacy to encompass the needs of nonbinary communities.

• Piloted our knowledge sharing program, which aims to remove structural barriers by raising awareness and comprehension of the United States legal system.

• Guided community members to resources, such as connecting folks to affirming lawyers.

• Mentored community members of the next generation of attorneys, including advice on applying to law school and how to self-advocate within law schools.

• Built our online presence, including our website and social media accounts, which now reach thousands of community members and allies.

How you can help