NYLPI's community organizers and attorneys implement the "Community Lawyering" approach by working directly with neighborhood residents and community-based organizations to bridge boundaries among communities to build successful campaigns and foster leadership. NYLPI works with communities to define their problem (i.e. the root causes and possible solutions), as well as its scope. Through this analysis, potential allies usually emerge, and NYLPI helps impacted communities develop alliances with other impacted communities. The key to promoting cross-community alliances is identifying a mutuality of interests and values, while encouraging diversity among the stakeholders. NYLPI works with the different stakeholders to facilitate democratic and transparent processes and structures that allow everyone to have a voice, as well as a sense of ownership over the alliance and campaign. Eventually, a clear process, joint platform and accountable coalition are forged by the group. NYLPI's staff attorneys take the lead from the community groups in its representation, strategizing, and advocating. The community's ability to successfully advocate on their own behalf in their own voices is of paramont concern.

NYLPI's "Community Lawyering" model is meant to facilitate and organize the voices and ideas of separate community activists into broader collectives that reflect the values and priorities of the participants. NYLPI's intention is to coordinate and elevate these voices and ideas, neither supplanting nor diluting their power. Our goal in community campaigns is to provide effective structure and discipline to maximize our community partners' potential to influence local decision-making. Once a group hones its community organizing skills, they can participate in the ongoing civic life of their community as active participants and informed consumers, rather than powerless spectators.

NYLPI's "Community Lawyering" model was most broadly applied with the Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods (OWN) and Communities United for Responsible Energy (CURE). The key to OWN and CURE's successes lay in convincing impacted communities that their best chance for long-term success lay with each other. Communities savaged by multiple environmental attacks had to learn to trust activists in other neighborhoods not to sell them out. This philosophy led to two overarching themes for the coalitions: promoting equity (i.e.- maximizing the equitable use of existing infrastructure and eliminating the need for more polluting transfer stations and power plants) and sustainability (i.e. advocating waste and energy demand reduction, thereby reducing the overall need for polluting infrastructure). This newfound commitment to equity and sustainability has re-defined environmental justice organizing in NYC, making neighborhood solidarity for low-income communities of color the new maxim.

In October 2003, the Ford Foundation, Advocacy Institute and the NYU/Wagner School announced the 2003 winners of the Leadership for a Changing World awards, which included Eddie Bautista, NYLPI's Director of Community Plannning. The 17 awardees, selected from a pool of more than 1,300 nominations, represent individuals and leadership teams that are tackling some of the nation's most entrenched social problems. NYLPI's community lawyering approach was nationally recognized by the Leadership for a Changing World program for "providing effective legal and organizing assistance without supplanting the local leadership".