Provides reduced cost legal help program for income-eligible individuals needing legal assistance in select areas of law. Legal help may be available with adult guardianship, bankruptcy, consumer/finance, criminal misdemeanors, employment, family, housing (foreclosure and landlord/tenant), immigration, juvenile guardianship, and wills/trusts.

Modest Means Project | Modest Means Project

Programs that provide assistance for people who are in favor of or want to oppose the appointment of a guardian to care for and/or manage the affairs of a child or adolescent during minority. The court may appoint a guardian of the person in situations where there is no parent to meet the child's needs due to death, incapacity, abandonment, military service or other reasons; and/or a guardian of the child's estate. In the latter situation, the guardian is given responsibility for managing the child's funds, collecting and making an inventory of the child's assets, keeping accurate financial records, and regularly filing financial accountings with the court.

Child Guardianship Assistance

Programs that provide legal counseling and/or representation for low-income individuals who need assistance in routine legal matters, usually in the area of bankruptcy, housing, public benefits, family law, elder law or immigration/naturalization.

General Legal Aid

Programs that provide assistance which helps to ensure that parents fulfill their mutual obligation to financially support and provide health care for their children. Included are services for people who want to locate an absent parent; establish paternity; establish a child support order; request that the non-custodial parent provide health insurance for a child in conjunction with a child support order; change the amount of a child support award; dispute a child support award; or enforce payment of child support monies in cases where the supporting parent is delinquent in paying or refuses to pay or make health insurance arrangements altogether. Child support is money paid by one parent to another for the maintenance, including the education, of their children following the dissolution of their marriage or other relationship. Non-custodial parents enrolled in an insurance plan at work may be required to include the child under this coverage while those not covered by any insurance plan may be required to obtain medical coverage, if available at a reasonable cost. Child support assistance/enforcement may be provided by private attorneys, legal clinics, family law facilitators' offices or child support enforcement programs which are available in all states, often as a component of the district attorney's office.

Child Support Assistance/Enforcement

Programs that provide legal assistance for people who want to establish employment practices for their organization that will minimize or eliminate problems in the employment area or who need to resolve a dispute or initiate or respond to litigation which relates to their role as employers or employees, their rights and obligations. Labor and employment law deals with a variety of issues including ADA compliance, wage and hour compliance, workplace health and safety, interview and hiring practices, employee contracts, employee benefits, maternity/paternity leaves, medical leaves, supervision and discipline, workplace privacy, workplace violence, sexual harassment, wrongful termination, and worker's compensation cases as well as protection from a range of employer-committed crimes including wage theft, deliberate worker misclassification, evasion of unemployment and workers' compensation laws, labor trafficking, defamation including false statements by an employer during or after the firing process, violation of state laws related to whistleblower protections or other relevant statutes.

Labor and Employment Law

Programs that help tenants and landlords resolve disputes regarding security and other rental deposits, unsanitary conditions, failure to make repairs, privacy, notice requirements, excessive rent increases, nonpayment of rent, neglect or damage to property, overcrowding or other grievances.

Landlord/Tenant Dispute Resolution

Programs that provide assistance for people who are initiating or responding to a suit for an annulment of their marriage, which establishes that a marital status never existed; a legal separation, which suspends the marriage so far as concerns the cohabitation of the two parties; or a divorce, which totally dissolves the marriage relationship. These programs may also discuss and represent the individual's interests regarding distribution of property assets and parenting issues regarding any children.

Divorce Assistance

Organizations that are actively seeking licensed attorneys who are qualified in a particular area of law (e.g., family law, bankruptcy law, consumer law, landlord/tenant law, intellectual property law) to provide pro bono legal services to low income clients or nonprofit organizations referred for this purpose. Volunteer attorneys may be asked to provide legal information, advocacy or referrals; prepare wills, guardianship/conservatorship papers, advance medical directives and durable powers of attorney; or represent clients in court.

Pro Bono Legal Aid Volunteer Opportunities

Programs that maintain lists of private attorneys and link people who need legal assistance with lawyers who specialize in the required area of law.

Lawyer Referral Services

Programs that provide assistance for people who are in favor of or want to oppose the appointment of a guardian to protect adults from physical danger and improper treatment and/or to protect their estate from exploitation or waste when they have been found by the courts to be incapable of managing their own affairs due to Alzheimer's disease, alcoholism, mental illness or other incapacitating conditions. Adult guardianship programs are involuntary and are generally only available in states which have no arrangements for conservatorships, whose conservatorships are voluntary covering powers and property designated by the conservatee or whose conservatorships address only the individual's estate.

Adult Guardianship Assistance

Programs that provide mediation services in which a neutral third party meets face-to-face with the parties to the dispute and helps them come to a resolution which is formalized in a written document that is signed by all parties.

In Person Mediation

Programs that provide assistance for people who are being evicted from their apartments or other rental property either wrongfully or with reason, e.g. nonpayment of rent. Included are programs that provide legal support in the form of information on tenants' rights, help to navigate the eviction process, and/or mediation services to negotiate a compromise between the individual and the landlord. Eviction prevention programs can also provide a Housing First approach and include various strategies designed to maintain individuals and families in their current housing, such as rent payment assistance, financial assistance with the cost of utilities, assistance securing other types of income support, third-party money management programs, and referrals to other types of community support.

Eviction Prevention Assistance

Programs that provide assistance for people who want to obtain custody of their children as a part of a divorce or separation action, who want to appeal all or a portion of the terms of a previous child custody decision, or in the case of a noncustodial parent, who want to establish or appeal the terms of a visitation award or a court-ordered visitation schedule. Included are programs that provide child custody/visitation assistance for people who are not legally married but have children together.

Child Custody/Visitation Assistance

Programs that provide assistance for people who want to request spousal support, change the amount of a spousal support award, dispute the award of spousal support or enforce payment of spousal support monies in cases where the supporting spouse is delinquent in paying or refuses to pay altogether. Spousal support payments are allowances which husbands or wives pay, by court order, for the maintenance of the other spouse while they are separated, pending divorce, or divorced.

Alimony Assistance

Programs that provide assistance for people who want to prepare a living trust which transfers all or some of their assets to a trustee who manages those assets during their lifetime according to written instructions, names someone to take responsibility for the assets should the individual become disabled, and distributes the assets according to the individual's wishes without the need for probate at the time of his or her death.  Most people serve as the trustees of their own living trusts, naming a successor should they become disabled, and most living trusts are revocable.

Living Trust Preparation Assistance

Programs that provide assistance for people who want to establish a trust for a chronically and severely disabled beneficiary which supplements government benefits such as SSI and Medicaid rather than supplanting them and which provides an income for the person with a disability within allowable limits. Special needs trusts are generally established using the assets of a third party but may, under certain specified conditions, be established with the disabled person's own funds, and are managed by a trustee on behalf of the individual with a disability. Trusts established with the disabled person's funds may have "pay back" requirements which enable the state to collect funds at the end of the trust as reimbursement for medical care expenditures.  Special needs trusts may be revocable or irrevocable, and may be established and utilized on behalf of the person with a disability while the parents or others funding the trust are still living (an intervivos or living special needs trust) or following the death of the parents (a testamentary special needs trust).

Special Needs Trust Preparation Assistance

Programs that provide assistance on an individual or group basis for people who want to draft a Last Will and Testament which leaves instructions for the disposition of their property following their death and need assistance in ensuring that the document is properly written. Also included are programs that provide copies of the Last Will and Testament form that is valid in their jurisdiction.

Will Preparation Assistance

Programs that provide legal assistance (generally advice and representation in criminal investigations, plea negotiations, trials and appeals) for people who have been charged with an offense made criminal by federal or state laws or municipal or local ordinances and punishable by death, imprisonment, fines, restitution or other specified sanctions; individuals released on probation as an alternative to incarceration; or people who have been released on parole following a period of incarceration and remain in the legal custody of the correctional system which has the authority to suspend and revoke the parole of any parolee for violations of the law or parole rules.

Criminal Law

Programs that provide assistance for people who have cases involving violations of federal and state statutes governing sales and credit practices involving consumer goods, in situations where appeals to consumer complaints organizations have not resolved the issue. Consumer law cases involve deceptive or unconscionable advertising and sales practices, product quality, credit financing and reporting, debt collection, leases, and other aspects of consumer transactions.