Our Community Development Project seeks co-counsel to help provide training on employer obligations for approximately 50 daycare providers working in northwest Bronx. Topics of interest include best practices for interviewing, hiring, and terminating staff, and other basic legal requirements of employers. This training would need to be in both English and Spanish. The group of providers has requested that the training occur virtually on February 16th or in-person on March 20th, 2026.  

Three family members, who are all first-time business owners, need a pro bono volunteer to draft an LLC Operating Agreement. The clients have signed a license agreement and paid a deposit to rent a kitchen in a food hall in Astoria, Queens where they plan to serve pizza, salads, and soups. They expect to open their business in March 2026 and are looking to finalize the agreement as soon as possible.  

One client’s preferred language is Spanish, and we expect that pro bono co-counsel would assist with providing translation and interpretation as needed. 

Our Community Development Unit seeks pro bono help for a faith-based non-profit organization dedicated to serving underserved communities on Staten Island through health-focused initiatives. The organization’s mission focuses on improving health outcomes, education access, and overall community wellness. The non-profit is planning to start a health clinic that will also provide patients with access to transportation by ambulance to ensure the clinic is accessible and will be able to support all in need of these services. 

The health-focused non-profit seeks assistance from a pro bono team that ideally has experience supporting healthcare-related clients and could also offer formation support. More specifically, they seek assistance with:

• Applying for 501(c)(3) tax exemption status
• Determining the universe of federal, state, and local regulatory compliance for clinics that provide family medicine, minor urgent care, and chronic disease management such as blood glucose checks, blood pressure screenings, cholesterol, and weight management
• Identifying and applying for all requisite licenses, permits, and authorizations
• Drafting contracts, service agreements, volunteer waivers and necessary other legal templates

The Community Development Project represents a nonprofit organization seeking representation in its mortgage refinancing closing.  

Founded in 1963, the nonprofit provides religious services and operates a Christian school. The non-profit also serves as a hub for community religious activities and programing. Recent renovations, including expanding classrooms and a new gymnasium, have significantly enhanced its capacity to support the educational needs of its congregation and the surrounding community. 

The non-profit has submitted a petition to the Attorney General’s Office for approval of the transaction which is currently pending. The parties anticipate that the closing will take place during the first week of January. Our client received an extension from the credit union financing their mortgage until the end of January. 

The Legal Aid Society’s Family Law/Domestic Violence Unit seeks representation for a survivor client on her husband’s Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which would impact her ability to maintain her marital assets.  

Our Family Law/Domestic Violence Unit represents survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking in Family Court and in divorce proceedings. After suffering horrific abuse at the hands of her husband, we began representing one of our clients in a divorce proceeding in 2023. During the course of the proceedings, the husband stopped participating and also ceased paying for child and spousal support. He owes more than $18,000 to date.  

The only quantifiable resource the parties have is a house, which our staff believe is worth approximately $700,000. The deed is solely in the husband’s name, but the Court has found that the house is marital property, not solely the property of the husband. Our client has a judgment lien on the property reflecting the unpaid child and spousal support totals. However, the husband has not been making the mortgage payments on the house, and the bank has initiated foreclosure proceedings.   

Recently, the husband has tried to sell the house without our client’s consent, contrary to well-established case law that any property must be preserved for the end of the case. This attempt failed, and the Court has now appointed a receiver to manage the sale of the property and divide the proceeds as the divorce court directed in its final order. The receiver was just notified that the husband has filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Our client seeks representation in the bankruptcy matter to preserve her existing lien and marital interest in the house. 

The Legal Aid Society’s Foreclosure Unit represents a disabled elder with no income who is living in his deceased sister’s home where the mortgage is currently in default.  However, we are unable to advocate to preserve the family home until Letters of Administration are issued.  

Upon his sister’s death, our client’s residence passed intestate to his 48-year-old niece, who has a diagnosis of severe autism and needs life-long care. The maternal grandmother, herself in poor health, is the court-appointed guardian for the niece.  

The family needs advice and assistance on administering the estate and further protecting the 48-year-old niece’s ongoing Medicaid/means-tested benefits. 

Legal Aid’s client is an elderly, disabled single woman who lived in her apartment in Brooklyn since she was a child. This building was owned by her mother who passed away in 2015 and the last recorded deed is still in the mother’s name. After the mother’s death, a bank started foreclosure proceedings on the building. 

In 2023, Legal Aid staff found a court filing in the foreclosure case which appears to contain our client’s mother’s will. Most notably, the will leaves all property, including the building where our client still lives, to all of the mother’s children, including our client, in equal shares as joint tenants with rights of survivorship. Until our staff showed this to our client, she did not know it existed. 

The family member who is acting as executor to the mother’s estate has been harassing our client and other family members by illegally locking them out and refusing to ensure they have access to utilities. They may have also taken property from the building illegally and engaging in other behaviors to push the remaining family members out of their home. 

The case is currently in the midst of discovery, most recently responding to the Plaintiff lender’s discovery requests and interrogatories. The client is still trying to gather the relevant documents showing that her mother was not mentally sound when she signed the reverse mortgage. Plaintiff’s counsel proposed October 31 as a deadline to produce documents, and wants to depose the client in early November, but the client’s current counsel has not yet agreed to either. 

A law firm pro bono team has served as counsel of record for the past two years but recently learned of a conflict that did not exist when they took on the matter. The team now needs to withdraw but will assist in transitioning the matter to a new firm. 

Legal Aid represents a group of long-term rent stabilized tenants who live in Inwood, Manhattan. The tenants filed a group housing part (“HP”) action in New York County Housing Court to obtain repairs and to address ongoing harassment. The building has been abandoned for approximately two years.  Rent has not been collected, repairs are not being made and landlord debt has been accumulating for the property tax and utility bills. On several occasions, Con Edison has threatened to terminate utility service for failure to pay. 

Legal Aid commenced the HP action in July 2025, and subsequently learned that the landlord had passed away. On November 18, 2025, the Housing Court issued a $22,000 judgment and a finding of harassment against the landlord. The team discovered that the landlord had an estate and their daughter commenced an action in Surrogate Court and was ultimately assigned Temporary Administrator.  

Legal Aid’s team continues to work on obtaining the necessary repairs for the tenants. Currently, the City’s Housing Preservation & Development agency is slowly making repairs although many outstanding violations remain.  

Our Housing Justice Practice’s Group Advocacy Unit seeks guidance and/or representation for the tenants in an action to collect on the judgment against the landlord’s estate.