Give back to the community and gain valuable legal experience
Brooklyn Law School offers more than 20 student-run pro bono projects.
Participation in pro bono projects allows students to commit to public service, develop legal experience, and enhance their resume. BLS offers a wide range of projects, including nationwide programs like the National Lawyers Guild’s Legal Observation at Protests, citywide projects such as the Suspension Representation Project, and projects unique to Brooklyn Law School like the Foreclosure Legal Assistance Group.Pro bono projects span a range of practice areas and populations, including working with alleged debtors, domestic violence survivors, entrepreneurs, immigrants, public benefits recipients, students, and veterans. The Public Service Law Center also host alternative spring break and winter break trips where students engage in public service in locations across the country, including the U.S.-Mexico border and Puerto Rico. The PSLC is always open to students interested in starting new projects.
Appellate Advocates' Parole Advocacy Project (AAPA)
The Parole Advocacy Project partners student volunteers work over winter break with people incarcerated across New York State as they prepare to go before the parole board. Volunteers support applicants in preparing for parole interviews, preparing a packet to provide to the parole board, and in getting access to resources while they are incarcerated and if they are granted release.
Asylum Relief Project (ARP) – Winter Break Trip
Participants travel to Karnes City, Texas during the last week of winter break to provide legal support at the Karnes Residential Center. This facility is a center for women and children who are currently being detained by immigration authorities and are seeking asylum status. Participants conduct intake with the detainees, prepare the detainees for interviews with immigration officials, and sometimes prepare detainees to be released from the center.
Brooklyn Community Bail Fund
BCBF is committed to ending the unnecessary incarceration of indigent misdemeanor defendants due to the inability to pay small amounts of bail. Participating students will attend seminars in the fall semester and work as Pretrial Justice Fellows in BCBF’s office in the spring. The fellows will participate in determining client eligibility and paying bail; liaising between clients and public defenders, social workers, and third-party service providers; and assisting in the formulation and communication of policy recommendations.
Brooklyn Law Alternative Spring Break Trip
BLAST is a great opportunity for Brooklyn Law School students to spend their spring break working with legal services and other public interest organizations across the United States. Students work intensively in new communities to provide much-needed legal assistance for one week. Participants are responsible for assisting in fundraising for and planning the alternative spring break trips. In previous years, students worked at the Miami-Dade County Public Defender’s Office, Tennessee Fair Housing Council , Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, Gideon’s Promise in Atlanta, and #Cut50, Rebuild the Dream’s incarceration reform initiative in Oakland, CA.
Courtroom Advocates Project
CAP assists and advocates for victims of domestic violence seeking orders of protection in New York City family courts. Students help domestic violence survivors file petitions and maintain contact as necessary to ensure that the petitioner returns for his or her next court date. Students may also advocate for the petitioner before the judge on the return date. Students participating in CAP will gain court experience, exposure to New York civil procedure, client interaction and/or experience in domestic violence law.
Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE) Consultation Center
CCC participants travel to various New York City neighborhoods to participate in brief advice clinics aimed at providing both new and existing small businesses with pro bono assistance. CCC sets up consultation centers, staffed by students and BLS alum attorneys, to provide much-needed legal resources for small business owners and entrepreneurs. These events focus particularly on reaching start-ups and new businesses run by women and owners from immigrant and diverse backgrounds. During consultations, students assess the needs of the small business owners and entrepreneurs; provide brief advice and information related to contracts, entity formation, and leases; and, as needed, refer them to legal representation.
Civil Legal Advice and Resource Office
Through CLARO, student volunteers help address the critical legal needs of low-income Brooklyn residents and learn about debtor-creditor law, consumer protection, economic justice, direct services, and civil procedure. CLARO participants assist volunteer attorneys advising consumer debtors, including victims of identity theft and predatory lenders and collectors. Students help consumers through the daunting process of self-representation, learn New York civil procedure and consumer law, gain experience working with clients, and gain an understanding of financial justice issues affecting low-income Brooklyn residents. Students also get exposure to legal issues regarding banking and commercial paper.
Elder Law and Guardianship Project
Elder law is a rapidly expanding field concerned with all legal issues related to elderly individuals. ELG provides education, support, and aid to seniors and guardianship petitioners who face these issues from their unique perspectives. Working alongside attorneys with the Brooklyn Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project, students are trained to give presentations about types of guardianships, the guardianship process, and the responsibilities of guardians. Students also assist clients in drafting guardianship petitions.
Envision Freedom Fund — Pretrial Justice Fellowship (EFF)
The Envision Freedom Fund is an innovative nonprofit that seeks to eliminate pretrial detention and the money bail system. Throughout the fall semester, participating students will be encouraged to attend trainings and participate in Bail Fund projects covering a variety of topics related to criminal justice policy, bail reform, and the impact of monetary bail on incarcerated individuals and their loved ones. In the spring, students can commit to being Pretrial Justice Fellows, devoting a certain number of hours to commencing or continuing their work with current Bail Fund projects. Projects previously included investigating the practices of bail bond agencies and court watching in Manhattan and Brooklyn arraignment courts. The Pretrial Justice Fellowship is affiliated with Brooklyn Law School’s Criminal Justice Center.
Foreclosure Legal Assistance Group
FLAG is a partnership among Brooklyn Law School students, the PSLC, the Brooklyn Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project, and Kings County Supreme Court. FLAG provides Brooklyn homeowners entangled in foreclosure litigation with information about New York’s unique foreclosure process. Student volunteers provide assistance to community members, learn about foreclosure law, attend foreclosure settlement conferences, and gain direct exposure to the mandatory foreclosure litigation process.
If/When/How - Abortion Clinic Legal Observing
If/When/How is a student-led, student-driven national non-profit network of law students and lawyers committed to fostering the next wave of legal experts for the reproductive justice movement. Reproductive justice connotes collective efforts to address and overcome the roots of reproductive oppression, while constructing legally tenable, realistically accessible avenues for informed, consensual, unobstructed decision making about education, sex, contraception, sterilization, abortion, procreation, birth, and parenting.
Immigrant Visa Assistance Project
Students participating in IVAP assist immigrant victims of crime with U-visa and Violence Against Women Act applications. Students interview clients, draft affidavits, and learn practical lawyering skills related to immigration practice. Students are supervised by upper-class students and attorneys through Sanctuary for Families.
Motivating Youth Through Legal Education
BLS students coach high school students to prepare for constitutional law debates throughout the year. Coaches help the students read and understand Supreme Court decisions and craft an argument to be delivered to a panel of law students and attorneys who act as judges at the debates.
Name Change Workshop (NCW)
OUTLaw’s Name Change Workshop is focused on assisting transgender and gender non-conforming individuals with the name change process. The NCW takes place once a semester and targets indigent clients seeking a name change. Students will have the unique opportunity to assist community members by providing education on the name change process and by aiding participants with completing the necessary forms, all under the supervision of an attorney. Students should expect the first workshop to take place in November, during Transgender Awareness Month.
National Lawyers Guild: Legal Observation at Protests
The Legal Observer program is part of the comprehensive legal support coordinated by the NLG to ensure that people can express their political views without unconstitutional disruption or interference by the government. Legal Observers work with NLG attorneys who represent individual activists and political organizations and play a distinct role separate from that of participants at demonstrations and protests. They are trained to promote police accountability by witnessing and documenting police. Documentation includes arrests, abuse, or civil rights violations. The presence of Legal Observers helps discourage police abuse, and the information collected by Legal Observers is used in all stages of defending arrestees and in lawsuits against the police or other government agencies when a person’s rights are violated.
Parole Preparation Project
The Parole Preparation Project, a project of the National Lawyers Guild, collaborates with and advocates for parole-eligible people serving life sentences in New York State prisons. Volunteers are trained to work alongside parole applicants, many of whom have spent decades in prison and have been repeatedly denied parole, despite their eligibility for release.
Petey Greene Program (PGP)
PGP supports the academic goals of incarcerated and formally incarcerated students through high quality volunteer tutoring, while educating volunteers on the injustice manifest in our system. Before volunteers begin tutoring, they must attend a National Pre-Service Training and a Regional Orientation. Throughout the semester, volunteers may also participate in regional tutor development training focused on program specific tutoring practices. Current partner institutions and programs include: Close-To-Home Initiative, Manhattan Detention Center, Rikers Island, and Vernon C. Bain Center.
Puerto Rico Legal Brigade
Since 2017, a student-led BLS brigade has traveled to Puerto Rico every spring break and assisted lawyers in counseling low-income individuals appealing FEMA decisions that denied them food, shelter and other necessary financial resources in the wake of Hurricane Maria. In the past, students have traveled to the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico School of Law and the Inter American University of Puerto Rico where experienced lawyers and professors certified them to carry out legal check-ups and other relevant legal work related to FEMA appeals. In addition, the brigade carried out supplemental research to coordinate and spread other free legal information and aid efforts for persons affected by Hurricane María.
Suspension Representation Project
New York City public school students who receive long-term suspensions in elementary, middle and high school can end up in the "school-to-prison pipeline”. SRP’s goal is to advocate for students to keep them in school and on a path to graduation. SRP provides advocates with comprehensive training on interviewing and counseling, hearing procedures, direct and cross examination techniques, rules of evidence, burden of proof, and developing a “theory of the case” so that they can effectively represent students and their families in front of hearing officers at NYC Department of Education Superintendent Suspension Hearings.
Uncontested Divorce Project for Battered Women and Indigent Clients
UDP is a great opportunity for those interested in public interest work, family law, helping low-income members of our community, or working with victims of domestic violence. Following a training by a Sanctuary for Families attorney, students are assigned a client and then conduct interviews, prepare divorce petitions, file the court papers, and conduct follow-up meetings with the client. A separate training, conducted by an attorney with the Brooklyn Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project, will enable students to regularly assist clients in self-represented uncontested divorces. Students will aid their clients in initiating their uncontested divorce and through entry of judgment. Male and female volunteers are welcome.
Unemployment Action Center
UAC advocates represent unemployed workers in mini-trials concerning their rights to unemployment benefits. Advocates do everything lawyers do, including interviewing and advising clients, conducting direct and cross-examinations of witnesses, and delivering arguments to administrative law judges. UAC’s vital service doubles a worker’s chances of obtaining benefits, while also giving students meaningful and worthwhile experience in the art of advocacy. UAC may appeal to students interested in trial and appellate advocacy, labor and employment law, workers’ rights, and direct legal services.