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Browse the latest Pro Bono Opportunities at The Legal Aid Society.
NOTE: These opportunities are only available to attorneys affiliated with firms that have an established pro bono relationship with The Legal Aid Society.
If you are interested in working on one of these matters, please contact the Pro Bono Counsel at your law firm to receive authorization and check conflicts.
Our Community Development Project seeks pro bono assistance for an immigrant-owned, husband-and-wife-operated home-based daycare. The owners are first-time business operators who recently established a corporation. The daycare is in the early operational phase and currently serving two enrolled children. The owners plan to expand enrollment capacity and hire employees once foundational business and legal documents are finalized.
The clients seek a general review of their corporate documents and those pertaining to the operation of the daycare. More specifically, the owners wish for assistance with reviewing enrollment agreements, parent handbooks, general policies and procedures, liability waivers, emergency contact and medical authorization forms, tuition and payment policies, and termination and withdrawal provisions. The client may also need advice pertaining to best practices when hiring employees.
These owners took out a business loan to realize their dream of starting their own business and hope to establish a strong foundation from which to grow.
Our client is an environmental technology startup dedicated to building a circular economy within New York City. By collecting plastic waste directly from NYC streets, schools, and businesses, our client diverts thousands of pounds of debris from landfills. The business utilizes specialized machinery to shred and transform this urban waste into high-value raw materials and finished products, ranging from artistic furniture to durable building stock.
After five years of dedicated bootstrapping, the founder has successfully scaled the operation, personally funding $40,000 in essential startup expenses through personal credit lines and loans. As they prepare for its next stage of growth, the entity must transition from a founder-led project to a professionalized corporation. We are seeking pro bono counsel to formalize the company’s financial and intellectual property foundation.
More specifically, the founder seeks assistance with the following:
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 as soon as possible in the Spring.
During the course of a nonpayment representation, our Housing Justice client suffered a stroke and lost the capacity to act on his own behalf. Our client’s son is taking care of his father but does not currently have a properly executed Power of Attorney or other authority to address our client’s legal needs. Our client’s son seeks pro bono advice about possible next steps and/or representation on an Article 81 guardianship petition on behalf of his father.
As Legal Aid does not have expertise with Article 81 guardianships, we will not be able to co-counsel or mentor this matter. We are able to assist with connecting volunteers with the client and his family.
Pro bono representation is needed for The Legal Aid Society on an Article 78 alleging failure of the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) to comply with a FOIL request originally sent on October 8, 2024.
The FOIL request seeks consumer judgement data necessary for Legal Aid to determine whether there has been compliance with New York State’s Fair Consumer Judgment Interest Act (FCJIA). Passed in 2022, the FCJIA lowered pre-and post-judgment interest from 9% to 2% for all consumer debt actions, including rental/use and occupancy judgements in Housing Court. Despite an effective date of April 22, 2022, the NYS Office of Court Administration was unable to correct the form judgements utilized by the court until September 17, 2024. Therefore, judgements issued during that period incorrectly stated the interest rate which could be collected. Since OCA was unable to provide data for the number of erroneous judgments issues, The Legal Aid Society filed this FOIL request with the DOI seeking information from the NYC Marshalls, the administrative agency responsible for enforcing the judgements.
DOI acknowledged LAS’ FOIL and provided a response date of March 13, 2025. However, since March 13, 2025, DOI has been unilaterally extending its time to respond four different times (on March 13, 2025, March 17, 2025, November 20, 2025, and March 19, 2026). The new response date is May 12, 2026.
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.
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.