Volunteer Opportunities for Non-Lawyers
Non-Attorney Volunteer Program
The goal of the program is the recruit volunteers to donate their time helping around our offices so that we may offer legal service to a low-income person more efficiently.
What is Prairie State Legal Services?
Prairie State Legal Services, Inc. is a not-for-profit law firm that provides civil legal services at no fee to the poor, elderly, and people with disabilities.
Prairie State focuses on helping clients who have legal problems that affect their basic human needs—like housing, basic income, and safety. Some typical cases for us include preventing eviction or mortgage foreclosure, helping victims of domestic violence get orders of protection to help ensure their safety, and helping persons with disabilities get public benefits like medical assistance and Supplemental Security Income.
Who does Prairie State Legal Services Help?
Prairie State provides legal services to the most vulnerable persons in our society, including the poor, people with disabilities, and people age 60 and over. We screen clients to ensure that they are eligible for services and that their problems fall within Prairie State’s case priorities targeting basic human needs.
In the past year Prairie State has helped over 20,000 clients, benefiting 30,000+ adults and children. The legal aid rendered has dealt with issues such as family law, housing, protection from abuse and exploitation, and protection of social service benefits among many others.
Why donate your time?
You can invest in your community. Every hour spent doing legal aid work benefits many. Legal Aid enables low income people to work towards self sufficiency and that helps reduce the costs to our economy, legal system, and communities while raising a low income person’s ability to contribute to our economy and community in ways they were not able to before.
You can build your skills. Whether it be answering phones or helping out attorneys develop their cases, if you have a particular skill set and/or would like to gain experience, Prairie State Legal Services can help you and use your help. We aim to keep volunteers engaged and challenged so that they can gain the most out of their volunteer experience.