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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.
The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is a federal program described by HUD as the most important resource for creating affordable housing in the United States today. However, thousands of tenants in a Bronx development created through LIHTC are facing eviction because the building management company has failed to provide tenants with a reliable way to process required recertification documents. Instead, management has initiated hundreds of frivolous holdover cases in the Bronx Housing Court based on tenants’ alleged failure to comply.
Tenants are frequently not notified in advance of the requirements. When tenants attempt to go directly to the management office, they are regularly turned away and told that there are no staff available to see them. Those who do submit the recertification documents find that management has not processed them or simply lost them. There are over 1,600 apartments in this development, and each one is potentially impacted by the landlord’s practices. Without a comprehensive workable system in place for tenants to recertify their incomes, tenants are subject to possible judgments against them, eviction, stress, missing work for court, and possible improper calculation of tenant rent shares.
The Housing Justice Unit is seeking pro bono co-counsel to file a complaint in NYS Supreme Court seeking a stay of all pending recertification holdovers in Housing Court and an injunction preventing the landlord from filing new recertification holdovers until they create a functional recertification process for the tenants.
Our client is a New York-based clinical practice providing culturally responsive, trauma-informed psychotherapy and professional coaching. Through a secure telehealth platform, the practice serves a diverse clientele with specialized expertise in supporting LGBTQ+ and BIPOC individuals.
The applicant seeks pro bono assistance with federal trademark registration to protect its brand identity in the fields of mental health and professional development.
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.
Our client is a print and digital magazine published through a mix of mediums and creative styles, including reported articles, features, graphic stories, poetry, speculative and science fiction, and visual essays. The client represents that its work is intended to benefit the public through accessible educational and cultural programming in addition to its publication of diverse perspectives that are often underrepresented and unexplored in mainstream media. The organization also engages and collaborates with academics, writers, artists, and researchers.
The client organization has historically operated in affiliation with the Columbia University Incite Institute and is currently transitioning to a fiscal sponsorship arrangement with another nonprofit entity. As the client makes this transition, they seek guidance regarding nonprofit compliance and intellectual property issues arising from this unique structure and its publishing activities. More specifically, the client seeks the following:
Nonprofit / Tax-Exemption Research Memorandum: The client seeks a legal memorandum analyzing whether their subscription-based magazine and related publishing activities raise concerns regarding maintenance of 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, including potential commerciality, unrelated business income, public support, and fiscal sponsorship considerations.
Intellectual Property / Licensing Advice: The client seeks limited-scope advice regarding their current contributor and author licensing agreements, including review of existing template agreements and advice concerning publication rights, licensing structure, and ownership of intellectual property in connection with the fiscal sponsorship arrangement. No drafting is currently requested beyond comments and recommendations on existing documents.
We are open to placing each portion of the pro bono request with different firms if that would allow the client to obtain assistance as quickly as possible.
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.
Our Housing Justice Unit represents three clients in illegal lockout proceedings in housing court. In February of 2026, our clients were removed from their homes by US marshals who were executing an order of the Southern District Bankruptcy Court. Our clients did not receive notice of this proceeding as they were named as John/Jane Doe(s). The proceeding alleged that they were squatters, however, our clients rented rooms/apartments by the management company, to whom they paid rent. Legal Aid is trying to challenge the lockout in housing court, but we need assistance with filing a motion in bankruptcy court to vacate the order that was issued on default that provided for their removal. Ideally we would like any pro bono volunteers to pursue any further litigation as necessary in the bankruptcy proceeding to assert their defenses and preserve their housing.