Northwestern Legal Services provides free legal aid in civil cases to low-income residents of northwestern Pennsylvania. Clients who come to us for help live near or below the poverty level, and they cannot afford to hire an attorney when confronted with a serious legal problem. Our mission, simply put, is to respond to the civil legal needs of these people and to help them attain justice.
We answer this call by offering legal aid in areas that directly impact our clients in their daily lives -- areas such as government benefits, family law, housing, medical care, education and consumer/finance. We also strive to empower individuals with the knowledge they need about their rights and responsibilities under the law through community education, media (TV) programming, Internet connectivity, and pro se (self-help) clinics.
Our service area encompasses ten counties in northwestern Pennsylvania: Erie, Mercer, Crawford, Venango, Forest, Warren, McKean, Potter, Elk and Cameron Counties. This geographic area is roughly the size of the state of New Jersey. We have staffed legal services offices in Erie, Farrell, Meadville, Franklin, Warren and Bradford, Pennsylvania. In addition to the staffed offices, our law workers do "circuit riding" and outreach to rural communities throughout our service area.
A telephone intake unit, housed in Erie, provides for the central administration of policies and procedures for all potential clients who call us for help, including determination of income and asset eligibility, case-acceptance, and scheduling. The central intake unit also has two staff attorneys who offer brief service and counsel to clients with legal problems that do not require protracted (lengthy) representation.
In addition to the array of civil legal services that we provide with staff law workers (attorneys and paralegals), we also work throughout our service area with private attorneys who offer pro bono (free) legal assistance to eligible clients.
As Judge Learned Hand observed many years ago, "If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice." For over three decades, our mission has been to further the cause of justice by providing free legal aid in civil cases to those in need.
