List of Legal Aid Organizations in the United States

Millions of Americans cannot access the civil justice system because they cannot afford a lawyer. Some low-income Americans seek protection from an abusive spouse, or are fighting for custody of an abused or orphaned child. Others face homelessness because of a wrongful eviction or foreclosure.

The Legal Services Corporation (LSC)

LSC grantees help individuals who live in households with annual incomes at or below 125% of the federal poverty guidelines—$14,713 for an individual, $30,313 for a family of four in 2015. Clients span every demographic and live in rural, suburban, and urban areas.

The Legal Services Corporation grantees provide quality legal counsel at no cost to low-income constituents who could not otherwise afford an attorney. They employ experienced legal professionals who are experts in civil legal matters and help many of these low-income Americans with a wide variety of legal challenges. They include veterans and military families, homeowners and renters, families with children, farmers, the disabled, and the elderly.

List of State Organizations

ALABAMA
Legal Services Alabama

ALASKA
Alaska Legal Services Corporation

ARIZONA
Community Legal Services
DNA-Peoples Legal Services
Southern Arizona Legal Aid

ARKANSAS
Center for Arkansas Legal Services
Legal Aid of Arkansas

CALIFORNIA
Bay Area Legal Aid
California Indian Legal Services
California Rural Legal Assistance
Central California Legal Services
Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance
Inland Counties Legal Services
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles
Legal Aid Society of Orange County
Legal Aid Society of San Diego
Legal Services of Northern California
Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

COLORADO
Colorado Legal Services

CONNECTICUT
Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut

DELAWARE
Legal Services Corporation of Delaware

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Neighborhood Legal Services Program

FLORIDA
Bay Area Legal Services
Coast to Coast Legal Aid of South Florida
Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida
Florida Rural Legal Services
Legal Services of Greater Miami
Legal Services of North Florida
Three Rivers Legal Services

GEORGIA
Atlanta Legal Aid Society
Georgia Legal Services Program

HAWAII
Legal Aid Society of Hawaii

IDAHO
Idaho Legal Aid Services

ILLINOIS
Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation
Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan of Chicago
Prairie State Legal Services

INDIANA
Indiana Legal Services

IOWA
Iowa Legal Aid

KANSAS
Kansas Legal Services

KENTUCKY
Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky
Kentucky Legal Aid
Legal Aid of the Blue Grass
Legal Aid Society

LOUISIANA
Acadiana Legal Service Corporation
Legal Services of North Louisiana
Southeast Louisiana Legal Services Corporation

MAINE
Pine Tree Legal Assistance

MARYLAND
Legal Aid Bureau

MASSACHUSETTS
Community Legal Aid
Merrimack Valley Legal Services
South Coastal Counties Legal Services
Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association

MICHIGAN
Legal Aid and Defender Association
Legal Aid of Western Michigan
Legal Services of Eastern Michigan
Legal Services of Northern Michigan
Legal Services of South Central Michigan
Michigan Indian Legal Services

MINNESOTA
Anishinabe Legal Services
Central Minnesota Legal Services
Legal Aid Service of Northeastern Minnesota
Legal Services of Northwest Minnesota Corporation
Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services

MISSISSIPPI
Mississippi Center for Legal Services
North Mississippi Rural Legal Services

MISSOURI
Legal Aid of Western Missouri
Legal Services of Eastern Missouri
Legal Services of Southern Missouri
Mid-Missouri Legal Services Corporation

MONTANA
Montana Legal Services Association

NEBRASKA
Legal Aid of Nebraska

NEVADA
Nevada Legal Services

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Legal Advice & Referral Center

NEW JERSEY
Central Jersey Legal Services
Essex-Newark Legal Services Project
Legal Services of Northwest Jersey
Northeast New Jersey Legal Services Corporation
Ocean-Monmouth Legal Services
South Jersey Legal Services

NEW MEXICO
New Mexico Legal Aid

NEW YORK
Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York
Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York
Legal Assistance of Western New York
Legal Services NYC
Legal Services of the Hudson Valley
Nassau/Suffolk Law Services Committee
Neighborhood Legal Services

NORTH CAROLINA
Legal Aid of North Carolina

NORTH DAKOTA
Legal Services of North Dakota

OHIO
Community Legal Aid Services
Legal Aid of Western Ohio
Legal Aid Society of Cleveland
Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati
Ohio State Legal Services

OKLAHOMA
Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma
Oklahoma Indian Legal Services

OREGON
Legal Aid Services of Oregon

PENNSYLVANIA
Laurel Legal Services
Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania
MidPenn Legal Services
Neighborhood Legal Services Association
Northwestern Legal Services
North Penn Legal Services
Philadelphia Legal Assistance Center
Southwestern Pennsylvania Legal Services

RHODE ISLAND
Rhode Island Legal Services

SOUTH CAROLINA
South Carolina Legal Services

SOUTH DAKOTA
Dakota Plains Legal Services
East River Legal Services

TENNESSEE
Legal Aid of East Tennessee
Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands
Memphis Area Legal Services
West Tennessee Legal Services

TEXAS
Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas
Lone Star Legal Aid
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid

UTAH
Utah Legal Services

VERMONT
Legal Services Law Line of Vermont

VIRGINIA
Blue Ridge Legal Services
Central Virginia Legal Aid Society
Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia
Legal Services of Northern Virginia
Southwest Virginia Legal Aid Society
Virginia Legal Aid Society

WASHINGTON
Northwest Justice Project

WEST VIRGINIA
Legal Aid of West Virginia

WISCONSIN
Legal Action of Wisconsin
Wisconsin Judicare

WYOMING
Legal Aid of Wyoming

U.S. Territories
AMERICAN SAMOA
American Samoa Legal Aid

GUAM
Guam Legal Services Corporation

MICRONESIA
Micronesian Legal Services

PUERTO RICO
Community Law Office
Puerto Rico Legal Services

VIRGIN ISLANDS
Legal Services of the Virgin Islands

Legal Aid Statewide Websites

The Legal Services Corporation has funded statewide legal aid information websites in 54 states and territories. These websites try to provide accurate, easy-to-understand information in the legal areas most affecting low-income and vulnerable people. These websites also provide information on free legal aid offices (also called legal services) in each state.

Each website is kept up-to-date by one or more local not-for-profit legal services programs. Often the sites are managed by several groups working together to share and post resources statewide.

The information available on each state site varies. However, statewide legal aid websites generally cover civil legal issues that most impact low-income people such as:

• Family law
• Housing issues
• Domestic violence and protection from abuse
• Consumer issues
• Public Benefits
• Citizenship and Immigration
• Employment and unemployment
• Disability
• Senior
• Health Care

Example of Projects

Some projects of legal aid organizations in 2015:

• Alaska Legal Services Corporation creates a Pro Bono Training Academy for private attorneys to assist low- income Alaskans, particularly Alaska Natives, who live in extremely remote locations throughout the state. With no law school in Alaska, the organization will partner with the University of Washington School of Law, which recently opened an extension office in Anchorage. The project will also create additional online resources for volunteers, including forms, manuals, pleadings, and brief banks.
• Bay Area Legal Aid develops specialized pro bono opportunities for law firm partners that involve complex litigation and will benefit a larger number of low-income people. This will build broader and deeper relationships with law firm partners and meet their expressed desire to work on more complex and far- reaching issues for low-income communities.
• Georgia Legal Services Program creates a “pro bono learning lab” within a nonprofit legal incubator. “Lawyers for Equal Justice” is a new, freestanding incubator program established by the State Bar of Georgia, the Georgia Access to Justice Commission, and the five Georgia law schools. The incubator is designed to support recent law graduates in establishing practices that use technology, alternative fee arrangements, new models of practice, and enhanced pro bono to serve the large population of underserved low-income clients.
• Idaho Legal Aid Services, in partnership with the Idaho Volunteers Lawyers Program, creates a pro bono website to assist private attorneys find statewide volunteer opportunities. The project will make pro bono services a more robust part of Idaho’s low-income legal service delivery system by increasing the number of low-income Idahoans who receive legal representation, expanding the cases and services for which attorneys can volunteer.
• LAF, formerly Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago, partners with the Center for Disability and Elder Law to adapt a successful pro bono workshop model into LAF’s intake and scheduling system to enable trained volunteer lawyers to provide assistance to low-income seniors. Documents will be automated and integrated into LAF’s case management system to simplify and streamline the work of the volunteer attorneys. In collaboration with Illinois Legal Aid Online, the project will also create eLearning curriculum that will be available to any volunteer attorney statewide.
• Legal Aid Society (Louisville), in partnership with the three other LSC-funded programs in Kentucky, creates a statewide pro bono program for eligible military veterans to receive legal assistance. The project will coordinate recruitment and training of volunteer lawyers between the four legal aid organizations and create uniform and streamlined intake protocols and case acceptance policies. It will also create a statewide hotline to connect any veteran to trained legal aid staff who will triage their legal issue to volunteers, and enhance the KY Justice Online system to create more content for veterans and to allow volunteer lawyers to provide assistance to clients on their legal questions through a pro bono portal on the website.
• Southeast Louisiana Legal Services Corporation, in partnership with the New Orleans Pro Bono Project and the Daughters of Charity Services, launchs a medical-legal partnership to integrate legal aid as part of healthcare in eight community-based health clinics. The project will provide services on critical disability, Medicaid, and housing issues and seek to measure improved health and legal outcomes of clients served through the project.
• Community Legal Aid (Worcester) develops a Medical-Legal Partnership to provide legal help to patients participating in a new primary care model at the UMass Memorial Medical Center (UMMMC), the fourth largest safety net health provider in the state. In partnership with the UMMMC General Counsel’s Office and Office of Community Benefits, this project will recruit private attorneys in Central Massachusetts to conduct full assessments of patients’ legal needs and partner with a CLA attorney to integrate legal services into the new primary care model. The project will include a rigorous evaluation to measure the impact of the medical-legal partnership intervention on the new primary care model.
• Legal Services of Eastern Missouri will leverage the resources and skills of volunteer business attorneys to provide free business legal assistance and education to low-income entrepreneurs starting or expanding community businesses with an emphasis on minority and women entrepreneurs. The project will also conduct a national survey of existing transactional pro bono projects for micro-entrepreneurs and will develop a manual of best practices that can be shared with other legal aid programs interested in launching similar efforts.
• The Adopt-a-Neighborhood project seeks to expand Legal Aid of Western Missouri’s efforts to bring large law firm resources to the urban core of Kansas City to improve neighborhood conditions. Based on a successful six-year partnership between a major law firm and the Marlborough neighborhood in Kansas City, the project will expand opportunities for large- and mid-sized firms to form long-term pro bono partnerships and will conduct need and asset assessments in five urban core neighborhoods to determine the best role for law firm and pro bono volunteers.
• New Mexico Legal Aid (NMLA) will create a web-linked statewide coalition of pro bono attorneys, law students, and paralegals to assist low-income families in communities with some of the highest poverty rates in the state. The project will connect pro bono lawyers in urban areas to rural clients via videoconferencing and train law students and paralegals to use the DirectLaw system to provide remote research and other support for pro bono attorneys. In partnership with the Southwest Women’s Law Center and the New Mexico Women’s Bar Association, NMLA will create a statewide “One Woman, One Case” campaign to expand the number of attorneys who can handle family law matters and other legal issues that address persistent poverty.
• Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York, in partnership with Legal Assistance of Western New York and the Volunteer Legal Services Project of Monroe County, will create a virtual platform to connect rural clients to urban volunteer lawyers on housing and consumer law matters. The project includes an active campaign to recruit, support, and sustain volunteers and clients in using the new system. The project will create a scalable technology infrastructure that creates efficiencies, expands services, and lowers the cost of serving rural areas.
• Legal Services NYC will engage pro bono attorneys to assist low-income people who are targeted by predatory, for-profit trade schools that make misleading promises about the training offered and job prospects post-graduation. The project will enlist volunteers who are transactional lawyers at large firms and corporations, as well as law students and others. Volunteers will secure debt discharges, consolidation, and income-related relief for low-income people. The project will also create a national database of FOIA materials on predatory for-profit schools in partnership with probono.net, and create training manuals and videos for volunteers that will be available on probono.net for other legal aid programs.
• Legal Aid Society of Cleveland will create a program to engage late-career and retired attorneys to serve more low-income clients. The project will provide space, administrative, paralegal, and other support for the volunteers. It will also match senior lawyers with law students and new lawyers so these early-career lawyers can be mentored and introduced to pro bono by their more experienced colleagues.
• Blue Ridge Legal Services seeks universal pro bono participation by attorneys in the 25th Judicial Circuit by working with the circuit’s 12 judges and bar association leaders to pilot a project of the Virginia Access to Justice Commission. This project will test the effectiveness of engaging the judiciary in encouraging the private bar to undertake pro bono to meet the civil legal needs of the region’s low-income clients. It will create a pro bono planning committee to expand pro bono participation among the circuit’s rural bar associations. The project will also seek to engage the only law school in the circuit, Washington & Lee Law School, to identify the best ways to incorporate law students into the new pro bono efforts.