Most of us have to deal with legal issues at some point in our lives. Whether its a minor traffic ticket or a divorce, we all need help from time to time. You may be surprised by how expensive attorneys or paralegals can be though.
Fortunately, there are many free legal resources available. This post will serve as a brief overview of what legal services are available for free, how to find pro bono attorneys, and other useful information.
How can you obtain free legal advice?
The first thing you should know is that there are many options and resources available. Most people contact a local nonprofit legal aid center, a community legal aid clinic, or a simple free consultation with a lawyer.
Many lawyers will grant you a free initial consultation to go over your basic legal rights in your situation, and offer you information on your options. You can use a site like FreeAdvice to find such lawyers, or research information for yourself.
After that initial consultation, most lawyers will start billing for further consultation and legal representation, based on your own personal financial circumstances. But still, you can obtain some valuable information just from those free consultations, and you can do your own research based on the information provided.
On the flip side, there are some specialized legal services available for free for certain situations. These are called public interest law clinics, civil legal clinics, and pro bono attorneys.
Here are some of the common legal services that are offered to the public:
1. Public Interest Law Clinics
These are private legal services provided by nonprofits and government agencies. They are usually the most readily available and most accessible type of free legal service. Usually, you can contact a public interest law clinic and arrange a full service free consultation within a few days of your request.
2. Community legal aid clinics
Community legal aid clinics are usually connected to a local, non-profit law office or government agency. The typical procedure is to contact the office directly, and ask to speak with a legal aid lawyer. They may also have staff attorneys available for specific cases. Many communities also have volunteer legal aid lawyers available for some situations.
Typically, a volunteer attorney will first speak with you, and then speak to a case worker or lawyer about your case. Theyll try to gather as much information as possible, and see what they can do for you. Most volunteers dont charge you anything, but they are usually still active with their private practice.
3. Civil Legal Aid
Civil legal aid clinics are a specialized type of legal aid that provides a lawyer to litigate cases. In some cases, civil legal aid attorneys may also be able to provide legal advice and representation in family court. These lawyers are typically the only ones who will argue in front of a judge in civil matters, but theyre not required to do so.
The typical procedure is to contact the office directly, and ask to speak with a lawyer. Theyll often ask a series of questions about your case, and determine how they can help.
How can I find a pro bono attorney?
Pro bono attorneys are a form of volunteer law service, and they do not take any sort of payment from their work. There are several benefits for attorneys to work pro bono, such as obtaining legal experience, boosting their professional reputation, and just giving back to their community.
However, attorneys are usually very selective in the cases they take on a pro bono basis. Usually they’ll do it for a case they feel strongly about from a sense of justice, and the client is unable to afford legal services. Or they might work with institutional pro bono clients, where they share a similar social agenda with the nonprofit.
In many law firms, lawyers are required to perform a mandatory minimum of billable hours per year – however, pro bono work counts towards this. As mentioned above though, lawyers are really quite selective about the pro bono cases they take, so it depends on your income level and how they personally feel about the cause, such as whether you’ve been a victim of gross systemic injustice, or some other very strong-handed injustice in your life.
Conclusion
If you can’t afford legal representation and your case involves very complex legal issues, you may consider looking into pro bono help. However, there are a lot of ways to get free legal advice without representation, so using the tools available at your fingertips is a great place to start.