How We Work

Our team provides free direct legal services and support or matches clients with pro bono advocates, ensuring they have a partner standing with them, their families,  and our communities as they pursue justice.

For over 50 years, Public Counsel has fought alongside our clients to advance equal justice under law by delivering free and direct legal services to thousands of families, children, and individuals annually. We collaborate with the nation’s top law firms and companies to ensure that our clients are provided the resources they need to receive fair and just representation.

With seven projects that cover a breadth of legal issues – children’s rights, education rights, immigration, consumer protection and economic justice, veterans’ issues, community development, women and girls’ rights, and homelessness prevention – Public Counsel provides legal support to address the most pressing needs in our communities. Our legal interventions are strengthened by our unique approach to incorporate social work services that prioritize trauma-informed, and healing-centered support. Public Counsel’s diverse staff of lawyers, organizers, social workers, and administrative staff, collaborate to offer wide-ranging expertise, access to holistic services, and innovative problem solving that allows us to comprehensively serve our clients and their communities across multiple issue areas.  

Click here to learn more about how social work strengthens our organization. 

We address the root causes of inequities in our society by advocating for inclusive policy solutions in collaboration with grassroots coalitions and the communities most impacted by systemic oppression. 

Many of the issues our clients face are caused by antiquated or unjust laws and policies. By addressing these laws and policies at the local, regional and national levels, we support the improved quality of life not just for our clients, but for entire communities and regions. Our diverse staff’s expertise spans across sectors and issue areas, allowing our attorneys to identify strategic policy solutions at the intersection of systemic barriers that negatively affect our clients, and coordinate with state and locally based organizations to advance systems change. 

We partner with grassroots organizations to ensure that the community members directly impacted by an issue are at the forefront of efforts to create change. Our staff provide critical capacity-building training and offer research analysis and technical assistance to community organizations and their members to advance community-driven advocacy campaigns for human and civil rights. 

We pursue groundbreaking legal strategies that promote economic and social justice for low-income communities and communities of color across the nation. 
Opportunity should not be afforded to just the privileged, or dependent on race, class, gender, national origin or immigration status, sexual orientation, or whether an individual is housed. We all deserve the chance to thrive. Our staff work with clients and partners to identify patterns of injustice that the communities we serve endure every day. We then take action by litigating cases with the goal of effecting large-scale change and systems reform. 

Impact litigation work has been a part of the organization’s work for decades; however, in 2009 we launched Public Counsel’s first dedicated impact litigation unit. In 2013, the project was expanded in both size and scope and renamed Opportunity Under Law. With a mighty team of organizers and attorneys,Opportunity Under Law was designed to bring large-scale civil rights cases while working closely with affected communities and advancing public discourse. 

Click here to see our current litigation. 

Since its inception, Public Counsel has relied upon the generous donation of pro bono services from lawyers, legal professionals, and law students as the keystone for our model of delivering free legal services to low-income communities. With the support of thousands of volunteers – expertly trained and mentored by our staff – Public Counsel is able to provide legal representation to more than twenty thousand low-income individuals, families, nonprofits, and small businesses each year.  The breadth of our practice, which includes seven separate law projects, uniquely allows Public Counsel to offer a wide range of pro bono opportunities, both discrete and more in-depth, and for both transactional specialists as well as litigators.  

The legal profession is unique in its expectation that “every lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay.” The American Bar Association recommends that every lawyer “should aspire to render at least (50) hours of pro bono publico legal services per year.” Recognizing this incredible professional responsibility, Public Counsel invites members of the legal profession to partner with us in ensuring access to justice for all.

For more information on our available pro bono matters and to sign up to volunteer, click here.