Pro Bono and Volunteer Service
To apply as a pro bono attorney or volunteer, please send a
cover letter, resume, writing sample and official or unofficial transcript to volunteer@LS-NYC.org.
At Legal Services NYC, we seek to increase the education and participation of the pro bono bar in serving low-income clients.
The work we perform is critically needed by New York City’s poor. Each year, we leverage our resources with thousands of hours of pro bono assistance from private law firms, pro bono attorneys and other volunteers!
Pro bono services provide professional growth and personal satisfaction; respect and recognition from colleagues and community; opportunities to learn new areas of the law and gain valuable hands-on experience; and, most importantly, opportunities to change lives.
Our programs handle cases in the full range of civil legal matters that affect the lives of low-income people in New York City. Pro bono volunteers will receive close supervision and will also have opportunities to attend court proceedings and interact with clients.
Ongoing pro bono projects include:
Fulfill Your CLE Requirement at Legal Services NYC
CLE is now mandatory for practicing attorneys admitted to the bar of
the State of New York. Attorneys may now fulfill this requirement
through pro bono work performed at any of Legal Services NYC’s offices
under the guidelines summarized below. The Legal Services NYC Legal
Support Unit is an accredited CLE pro bono provider and will provide
credit and maintain records for attorneys providing pro bono services
for any of the Legal Services NYC offices:
- Attorneys can earn CLE credit for performing uncompensated work for
clients unable to afford counsel as part of either an assignment by a
court or an Approved Pro Bono CLE Provider’s pro bono CLE program.
- They
can earn up to 6 hours of pro bono CLE credit over two years. Six (6)
50-minute hours of pro bono work count as 1 hour for CLE pro bono
credit.
- Newly-admitted attorneys cannot get credit for pro bono work to satisfy
their “Bridge the Gap” CLE requirements, but can carry over up to 6
credit hours for work done during this period to their next reporting
cycle.
- Attorneys must maintain their record of participation for four years.
For further questions about Pro Bono CLE, please contact Tanya Wong at twong@legalservicesnyc.org.
Click here to print a CLE pro bono affirmation form.
Externships:
Private attorneys work in our offices pro bono for four to six months at a time through our externships. These innovative programs
provide major benefits to both clients and firms. Legal Services NYC programs are able to help
more people, and associates get hands-on litigation experience that is not
always easy for them to acquire in a large firm. Currently, Dewey
& LeBoeuf LLP, and Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel LLP contribute to South
Brooklyn Legal Services by filling attorney positions in its Housing Law
Unit. Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
sends associates to Legal Services NYC- Brooklyn Branch
to do Family Law. new externship opportunities include participating in settlement conferences as part of the South Brooklyn Legal Services' Foreclosure Unit.
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Pro Bono Matters
The NYC Bankruptcy Assistance Project at Legal Services NYC: The Project connects pro bono
attorneys with low-income families needing bankruptcy assistance.
Through petition workshops, attorneys meet with debtors who need to
file a bankruptcy petition. The attorneys then prepare the petitions,
and advise the debtors how to file and represent themselves pro se.
We use a paperless file system, combined with a “remote access capability” that enables pro bono
attorneys to access case files and bankruptcy software any place that
has an internet connection. This lets the attorney spend their time
helping the needy — instead of sitting in a cab coming to our office,
or hunting for files and documents. Moreover, creditor data is imported
directly from the three main credit reporting agencies into our
bankruptcy petitions for complete, thorough and error-free listing of
the debtor’s obligations.
The Project also finds attorneys for debtors with filed petitions who
need representation in some matter before the Bankruptcy Courts. Here,
the pro bono
attorney may assist a debtor with a five-minute “relief from stay”
hearing that saves their home from foreclosure, or a full-blown student
loan adversary action case with discovery, witnesses, and a short
trial.
All pro bono work is supervised and supported by knowledgeable Legal Services NYC bankruptcy attorneys.
The “typical” amount of time spent on a first bankruptcy petition is 6 hours.
Pension Counseling: Since 2003 the Mid-Atlantic Pension Counseling Project (MAPCP) at Legal Services NYC has cut a trailblazing path as the only legal services organization in New York State providing free legal assistance to individuals who have been unable to obtain the pension benefits they are entitled to. MAPCP began in 2003 through a grant by the federal Administration on Aging of the Department of Health and Human Services and has provided pension counseling and advocacy to hundreds of clients since its inception.
This project needs the help of pro bono attorneys and paralegals to: conduct client interviews; investigate, review and/or find relevant documents and witnesses; research the law and prepare internal memoranda; take part in internal strategy discussions; draft complaints for federal court and petitions for state court; argue cases in federal court and administrative tribunals; and prepare appellate briefs.
The “typical” amount of time spent on a pension counseling case can range from 6 hours for a simple matter to over 50 hours for a complex matter.
Foreclosure Prevention: Foreclosure prevention cases, either defense of foreclosure cases in Supreme Court or affirmative actions in federal court, typically involve a great deal of discovery (including depositions). Paralegal assistance can be useful in conducting initial client intake, handling all loss mitigation workout negotiations with lenders, providing litigation support, and advising clients on non-litigation alternatives to foreclosure.
The “typical” amount of time spent on a foreclosure prevention matter can range from 6 hours (for a research project) to well over 100 hours for a complex matter. The majority of these cases are through our Staten Island and South Brooklyn Legal Services offices.
Disability/HIV Advocacy: Through this project, associates would represent persons from the South Brooklyn Legal Services HIV Project who have been denied benefits.
The typical amount of time spent on these matters is 20 hours.
Family/Domestic Violence: Through this project, associates would handle matrimonial actions with South Brooklyn Legal Services through the Family Justice Center (FJC). We have been directed by the Mayor's Office (our FJC funder) that we are prohibited from representing clients in divorce actions under our current FJC funding. Some divorces would be uncontested but the majority would be contested including orders of protection, custody and distribution of assets and debts.
The “typical” amount of time spent on these cases can range from 10 hours for a simple uncontested divorce to over 50 hours for a contested matter.
Consumer - Student Loans: Advice and representation can have a major impact on the lives of student loan debtors — and in our experience can stop abusive practices.
The student loan cases we currently see mainly involve people who attended questionable trade schools in the 1980's and 1990's. Many of the cases can be resolved by obtaining various kinds of administrative discharges under the federal Education Act. Other clients need advice on refinancing and collection problems. Individual cases are usually modest in scope, although an occasional case might need litigation. The number of cases referred could be controlled at any level, but the current demand is around 3 or 4 a month. The cases could be handled by new associates or even conceivably paralegals, but they are satisfying because clients can often discharge large loans acquired at fraudulent schools and requalify themselves to get loans to go to community colleges.
The “typical” amount of time spent on these matters can range from 4 hours for a simple matter to 20 hours for a complex matter (most are relatively simple, however). We are currently doing this work in our South Brooklyn Legal Services office.
Consumer – Debt Collection Defense: A project of our Manhattan Legal Services office, this project would involve representing clients in Civil Court to defend against cases brought by debt collectors to lift restrictions on their accounts, negotiate a payment plan, and generally advise clients on how to restore their credit.
Unemployment Insurance Advocacy: Through this project associates would represent people who were initially denied UI to get their benefits on appeal.
The typical amount of time spent on these cases is 20 hours.
Appellate Advocacy: We have been involved in a number of appeals to the Appellate Term and Appellate Division. These cases do not come up regularly but we would like to have a list of firms that would be interested in working on appeals. The cases from our unit areas but are primarily housing related.
Child Support: When the non-custodial parent is a W-2 wage earner and the children have no special needs, many clients can handle initial petitions for support pro se (non-litigation attorneys might enjoy an opportunity to provide guidance to pro se litigants in this kind of non-adversarial setting). If the non-custodial parent’s income is murky (because, for instance, s/he is self-employed, works in a family business or off-the-books), representation is essential. The body of law related to child support is fairly easy to master, and family law attorneys at Legal Services NYC would provide initial trainings and ongoing supervisory support.
The “typical” amount of time spent on a child support case can range from 4 hours for a simple matter to over 100 hours for a complex matter.
Wills: Currently, Katten Muchin Rosenman attorneys and paralegals staff a regular wills clinic in the South Brooklyn Legal Services’ HIV Unit. They meet with clients at South Brooklyn Legal Services, but prepare the legal documents, such as wills, advance directives and powers of attorneys back at their offices. Katten also consults with attorneys from the HIV Unit about trusts and estates matters. This model could be replicated by other firms in other areas of the City, such as in Harlem.
The “typical” amount of time spent on these matters can range from 4 to 10 hours.
Senior Centers: Our Bronx office receives a grant from the Department for the Aging to provide free legal assistance services to Bronx elderly residents (over the age of 60) in the areas of: guardianships; Medicaid and Medicare; nursing home eligibility; disability; public benefits, employment/unemployment; pensions; debt collection; consumer law; housing; foreclosure; family; elder abuse; tax challenges; and more. Seniors make appointments to be interviewed at a designated outreach center. Our elder law attorneys are available to train pro bono attorneys on site and assist with the screening the first time; cases that need representation can be given to our staff for follow-up.
The “typical” amount of time spent on this clinic is 4 to 6 hours.
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