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What is Civil Legal Aid?
Civil legal aid provides free legal assistance to those facing urgent civil legal problems with nowhere else to turn.
The Alliance for Equal Justice
The Alliance for Equal Justice is a statewide network of organizations providing legal aid --information, advice and representation--to those in our community with nowhere else to turn. The Alliance is nationally recognized for its efficient and well-coordinated delivery of civil legal aid services that ensures poor and vulnerable people have equal access to the justice system when they face urgent civil legal problems.
What Does Civil Legal Aid Entail?
Civil legal aid is often as basic as informing clients about their rights and responsibilities, helping low-income families navigate government agencies, writing letters or making phone calls to seek resolution. In many cases, civil legal help can be provided over the phone or in clinics with volunteer lawyers. Some problems are more complex and require more attention from an advocate skilled in a particular area of the law.
Who Benefits from Civil Legal Aid?
For families and individuals, receiving civil legal aid can mean the difference between shelter and homelessness, productive work and unemployment, food on the table and hunger, or economic stability and bankruptcy. Legal aid makes our communities safer, fairer places to live. Legal aid clients are:
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Parents who seek personal safety and custody of their children to protect them from a household with domestic violence and/or child abuse.
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Elderly people who are fraudulently swindled out of their homes by predatory lenders
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Families who are denied essential support services (e.g., health insurance for their children) to which they are legally entitled |
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Developmentally disabled people who are evicted from their housing |
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Many other people facing urgent civil legal problems that often mean the difference between shelter and homelessness, employment and unemployment, food stamps and hunger, or economic stability and bankruptcy |
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Foster children and teens being shuttled from household to household and school to school. |
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