For communities — start here
You have an environmental concern — the creek smells, the air near a facility is bad, an agency seems to have stopped responding — and you don’t know where to begin. OSED is for exactly that gap: it turns the instruments environmental lawyers use into something you can prepare a first draft of and bring to a lawyer.
The one promise
OSED prepares a first draft; a licensed attorney decides.
OSED does not decide whether you have a case, whether to file anything, or whether anyone broke the law. It helps you describe your situation, see which legal pathways might fit, and produce a flagged draft to take to counsel. Every judgment is left to a lawyer — that is the design, not a limitation to work around.
Read the disclaimer before you go further. Using OSED creates no attorney-client relationship, and nothing it produces is legal advice.
Where to go next
- Is there a pathway? — how to describe your situation and see which legal pathways it might travel.
- What each pathway is — each instrument in plain terms, with a worked example.
- What you can and can’t do — the line between preparing a draft and the decisions only a lawyer makes.
- Find a lawyer — where to take your draft.
Seeing a pathway here does not mean you have a case. It means there may be a place to start, and a draft you can bring to someone who can tell you what it’s worth.