In 1981, after severe budget cuts at Legal Aid Los Angeles and other government funded family law service providers, three grandmothers, Ethel Levitt, Grace Quinn and Ziva Naumann envisioned a means to address the enormous family law needs of working poor families living in Los Angeles County. Ethel and Grace were attorneys and Ziva was a paralegal. These three women used their own money to open a storefront office in a poor Los Angeles neighborhood. Their goal was to provide family law legal services for people who otherwise had nowhere else to go. Many of these families came to L&Q at a time of crisis, needing immediate legal representation to address urgent issues relating to the safety of their children.