Our clients usually come to us when their legal issue has reached or surpassed a critical stage.
What if we could get to people ahead of time and provide some much needed information and guidance before they faced a legal issue?
That is what our COLLABS study, led by Dr. Arjun Gupta at the University of Minnesota, aimed to find out by providing advanced colorectal patients a "Legal Care Checkup" with a CLC attorney as part of their overall cancer treatment.
The successful findings were published in this month's Journal of Oncology Practice.
The study was designed to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of providing free, proactive legal care services to patients with advanced colorectal cancer facilitated through their oncology care team to screen for and proactively address health-harming legal needs.
During the study, patients met with their attorney three times over the course of six months. Highlights include:
- 61% of the patients came to the first meeting with a defined legal concern, with additional legal needs being discovered during the first check up for 72% of the patients. A median of three health-harming legal needs were identified.
- The study met predefined feasibility (90% of participants completed initial screening visit, 90% remained engaged, 80% completed the study) and acceptability (81% of participants recommended the intervention to others) benchmarks.
- After the 6-month study period, participants expressed greater comfort with tasks such as addressing unexplained bills, guardianship planning, and ensuring insurance coverage compared with baseline, and noted very high satisfaction with the interpersonal relationships with CLC.
Some participant comments:
“I avoided a lot of dead ends I would've hit trying to do my own research.”
"Every time I spoke with someone from CLC, I felt empowered and important. They truly made me feel cared for.’’
“There were more [legal] needs uncovered during consultation than I had expected. That was an eye-opener.’’
“I was kind of mad that I didn't know about [CLC] from my care team before this study. It feels like it should be in your welcome packet.”
What's next?
The success of COLLABS has led to the LEGACY CARE study (LEgal Guidance and AdvocaCY for CAREgivers), working together with a newly diagnosed colon cancer patient and their caregiver as pair to learn more about the issues caregivers are facing and support them as they support their loved one. This work began in late September 2025 and will continue through the early part of 2026.
Big thanks to Dr. Gupta and his team for being such incredible champions for their patients, and to the Colon Cancer Coalition for funding the COLLABS study.
