Blog

Normally, if you can’t afford an attorney for a civil court case, you can get an attorney at your local legal aid office. In the past few years, more people have become financially eligible for legal aid, but legal aid offices nationally have shrunk due to lack of funding. This is where A2J programs come in!To help meet the need, A2J programs were designed to help litigants in housing, divorce, paternity, small estates, probates, name changes, and on and on, when these litigants do not have an attorney to help them with their case. The program’s beauty is in its simplicity.

The National Council of la Raza reports that 10. 2 million Latinos are eligible for the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Yet, there are still many questions regarding what types of immigration statuses are eligible and which are not.In a nutshell, under ACA only "lawfully present" immigrants can qualify to either buy private health insurance through either their state or federal Marketplace or get it through employer-sponsored coverage. The term “lawfully present” are those immigrants who have any of the following:“Qualified non-citizen” immigration status without a waiting period.

An infographic developed by Center for American Progress shows how much time immigrants can expect to spend in detention. On average immigrants with no serious offenses can expect to spend an average of one month in detention. However, those that are fighting deportation can be detained three times longer, in some cases even years.With this discrepancy, it’s unclear how the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is able to meet the congressional mandate which requires them to maintain enough bed space to detain 34,000 immigrants per day.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Toolkit for Community Partners to help groups understand the DACA process.  The new DACA toolkit includes:

The average American spends 23 hours online.  This is ten times more than what the average American spends exercising or participating in sports or fitness activities!Much of this time online is spent sharing pictures or other information or news about our lives, looking at pictures, visiting websites, and just generally surfing the web.Cyber crimes come in a variety of forms, including identity theft, fraud, and viruses.  But there simple steps you can take to reduce your chances of becoming a victim.  Simply take a minute to read and implement these important steps online: Set st

Faced with the persistent housing crisis in New York State, our Attorney General has begun to take steps in the right direction. New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has announced his new plan, the New York State Mortgage Assistance Program (NYS MAP). This program is designed to make small loans available to families in order to prevent the foreclosure of their homes. Loans can be used for paying off mortgage payments or unpaid interests and fees, paying down second or third mortgages, satisfying tax liens, and many other anti-foreclosure measures.

Home to over 1,000,000 veterans, New Yorkers lead the way in service to our country.  80,000 New York veterans have served or are currently serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including more than 7,000 members of the New York Army National Guard. Many of our Veterans have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan more than once, which in turn has taken its toll on them and their families.Because the variety of benefits and services available to Veterans and their families is vast and spans local, state and federal governments, accessing them can be difficult and confusing.

Our neighbors, our friends and our family members face an epidemic of lawsuits from predatory debt collectors—and they face them alone and uninformed. In 2011, less than 2% of civil suit defendants obtained legal counsel, which reveals two striking facts: debt collection agencies and law firms enjoy an immense advantage over self-represented litigants and free legal resources are scarce.

Well, maybe never if you’re under 50, but as you get older, it does become a concern.  Alexander H Ryley, Director of the Elderly Project at Volunteers of Legal Service (VOLS) in New York City decided to explain “Probate” in response to questions from seniors who had recently lost a spouse, and we decided to publish what he wrote. Let us know if you have any questions and we’ll try to answer them.

In partnership with the CUNY Immigration Working Group, we're releasing a new video and accompanying lesson plan to get nonprofit staff acquainted with emerging tech-driven initiatives.  If you would like one of our staff to go over the video and lesson plan with your organization, contact Wilneida Negron at: wnegron@nylawhelp.org to request a free in-house training.  Thanks to Mark O'Brien from Pro Bono Net, Matthew Burnett from Immigration Advocates Network, and Emma Murphy from Cabrini Immigrant Services of NYC for their interview time!