The Legal Development Network Member Organizations Pilot a New Approach to Managing Citizens’ Legal Requests

Publication date: June 17, 2025

Author: Yuliia Bilyk, Communications Manager at the Legal Development Network

Member organizations receiving flexible funding from GlobalGiving in 2025 have been introduced to a new legal request management tool. The Legal Development Network is expanding the humanitarian response platform Link, developed in partnership with the Czech humanitarian organization People in Need and funded by the Government of the United Kingdom, to cover a wider geographic area across Ukraine.

Link Capabilities Now Available Throughout Ukraine

In 2023–2024, Link proved to be an effective tool for collecting, verifying, and addressing humanitarian and legal needs in southern Ukraine (de-occupied hromadas in Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts). The legal component team of Link brought together partner organizations that respond to current legal requests in local communities and meet them effectively. 

“The Link mechanism ensures that unmet needs reach legal aid providers, as the providers themselves may face certain restrictions due to security policies, particularly in de-occupied hromadas located near active combat zones and subjected to constant shelling. Together with our partner organizations, we ensure access to justice for residents of the most remote communities,” says Dariia Kovalchuk, Director of Legal Services Development at the Legal Development Network. 

In the photo: Dariia Kovalchuk, Director of Legal Services Development at the Legal Development Network

Granting access to the Link platform’s CRM system to the Network’s member organizations operating in nearly 18 oblasts of Ukraine will allow local-level processes of free legal aid provision in hromadas to be organized more efficiently.

In addition to recording, verifying, and tracking the status of legal requests, the Link system enables member organizations to collect, aggregate, and utilize analytical data regarding the outcomes of their work.

“The ability to register requests allows us to consolidate existing information, gain extended analytics, and identify legal trends. The case management system is logical, user-friendly, and secure. In the future, this is expected to demonstrate the high capacity of the organizations, enabling them to better present their work to partners and attract additional resources,” says Dariia Kovalchuk.

Unified Platform to Consolidate All Legal Services of the Legal Development Network

To ensure equal access to legal services, the Network continues to maintain its online chat, which has been operating since 2017 and provides over 1,000 consultations annually. This year, within the framework of cooperation with GlobalGiving, the Legal Development Network plans to integrate the online chat and chatbot into a new legal aid platform with extended functionality.

“Against the backdrop of the global reduction in funding for civil society organizations in 2025, the Legal Development Network has expanded opportunities for its member organizations by attracting funding from the international crowdfunding platform GlobalGiving.  The funding is directed toward the development of legal services, the provision of social and legal assistance for internally displaced people, veterans, and other people affected by the war, as well as legal awareness activities. We are moving towards integrating all our legal services into a single platform, which will enable us to build a system of comprehensive remote services. The chatbot, online chat, and connection of lawyers to IP telephony to provide consultations are an appropriate response to the challenges posed by the war,” emphasizes Executive Director of the Legal Development Network, Olha Nastina.

“The platform will become a single entry point for all requests received by the Legal Development Network— whether by email, through the online chat, or via the chatbot. All future tools developed by the Network will also be integrated here. This will be an important step in improving the quality of services provided by our member organizations. In the future, access to these tools will also be granted to the Legal Development Network’s partner organizations,” explains Dariia Kovalchuk.

Core Standards to Streamline Legal Aid in the Non-Governmental Sector

Another ambitious goal of the Legal Development Network for the coming years is to develop unified core standards for providing legal aid among civil society non-governmental organizations. The Legal Development Network will engage large legal aid providers and international organizations in this process to analyze existing practices, systematize them, and adapt them to varying levels of organizational capacity.

“We aim to create unified standards that will be relevant both for large organizations providing 10,000 consultations per month and for small organizations with a single lawyer, which nonetheless contribute to closing the justice gap in communities,” says Dariia Kovalchuk.

Involving the Network’s member organizations in the use of the Link humanitarian response mechanism is an effort to scale the positive experience previously gained in southern Ukraine to other regions of the country. This could potentially uncover local particularities of various communities, such as types of legal needs and the most common topics of citizen requests. The Legal Development Network will take these specificities into account when improving the functionality of the Link platform and in the subsequent development of its legal aid tools.

Related materials:

• The Legal Development Network Expands Legal Services to Meet the Needs of Vulnerable Groups with Support from GlobalGiving

This material was prepared by the Legal Development Network, Public Union, with support from the international charitable platform GlobalGiving. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the Legal Development Network.

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