Every year more than 1,500 volunteer attorneys, law students, law school graduates, paralegals, undergraduate students, social workers, translators, and dedicated community members play a vital role in expanding LAFLA’s free legal services to vulnerable members of the community. LAFLA is committed to both providing quality services to the community while ensuring that volunteers gain meaningful experience.
Volunteers are accepted on a rolling basis, depending on each legal teams’ needs. If interested, we encourage you to visit our homepage and see the ‘Get Legal Help’ section to see our areas of law, an our Mission Statement to get familiar with our foundation. Opportunities are unpaid and can be part-time or full-time.
Join LAFLA and make a difference today
Attorneys & Law Firms
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles offers a variety of pro bono opportunities for law firms and individual attorneys, including staffing legal clinics, providing limited advice on cases, conducting educational outreach and trainings, and handling short-term or major-impact litigation cases. For all pro bono opportunities, LAFLA will work directly with the pro bono attorney to ensure that adequate support on the project or case is provided.
Support includes:
- Pre-screened cases: LAFLA carefully screens potential pro bono cases to ensure they are impactful and have strong legal merit.
- Fee waivers: LAFLA’s clients are all low-income and qualify for court fee waivers. There is usually little to no out-of-pocket costs to the volunteer.
- Support on cases: When volunteer attorneys take on individual cases, LAFLA provides substantive, procedural, and strategic support by serving as a resource to pro bono attorneys until final disposition of the case.
- Malpractice insurance: All volunteers handling LAFLA cases are covered by LAFLA’s malpractice insurance as the primary coverage.
- Training: LAFLA will provide substantive trainings to volunteers.
If you are interested in volunteering for any of our projects, please fill out the online application.
LAFLA welcomes and will support provisionally licensed lawyers under California Rule of Court, Rule 9.49.
Interested law graduates are encouraged to apply as volunteers through LAFLA. Please contact probono@lafla.org with any questions or for more information see the State Bar’s information page here.
Community Volunteers
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles offers a variety of volunteer opportunities that support the delivery of legal services to clients in Los Angeles County. These opportunities are extended to interpreters, undergraduate students, paralegals, paralegal and social work students, and other community members as needs arise. In particular, the following projects welcome community volunteer applications year-round, with ongoing needs for bilingual/multilingual staffing:
- Client Intake
- Self-Help (See where our Self-Help Centers are located.)
- Legal Clinics and Projects
Some of our opportunities are offered during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m.- 5:00 p.m. We generally do not offer community volunteer opportunities on evenings or weekends. Bilingual Spanish, Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Khmer speakers are strongly encouraged to apply.
If you are interested in volunteering, please fill out the application here.
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LAFLA is an Equal Opportunity Employer
LAFLA is committed to equal opportunity and providing reasonable accommodations to volunteers pursuant to applicable law. We value and encourage diversity and solicit applications from all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, gender, sex, age, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, medical condition, military and veteran status, gender identity or expression, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. Selection will be based solely on merit and will be without discrimination. If you require reasonable accommodation as part of the application process or expect to require an accommodation if offered placement, please contact humanresources@lafla.org.
