Pro Bono
Legal Aid of North Carolina has volunteer opportunities for lawyers, law students, paralegals and non-legal personnel who want to donate their time and talents to serve North Carolinians in need.
Learn more about our immediate needs and specific programs below.
We need your help!
Hear from our current and immediate-past board chairs about our need for pro bono volunteers and learn how easy it is to make a difference.
Immediate needs
Expunction volunteers
North Carolinians need your help to access basic needs like housing and employment opportunities through criminal record expunctions. We have a high volume of expunction requests and would love to have your help making a meaningful impact on the lives of our clients. Expunction matters can be done remotely and take between one and four hours to serve the client fully.
Legal Aid has many resources available to help volunteers such as recorded trainings, a process document, and a mentor attorney who has done thousands of expunctions.
Eviction volunteers
The CDC's nationwide eviction moratorium is likely to end soon. Without this protection in place, hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians are at risk of eviction and homelessness. You can help provide housing stability to vulnerable communities in the Triangle and Triad by representing tenants in eviction hearings. You can accept the referrals that you want, and our referrals are customized to your availability.
Legal Aid has training materials available for volunteers to review and mentors available to answer questions to ensure that we work together to provide the best possible assistance to our clients.
Our programs
Advice and brief service
Our advice and brief service program is a partnership of the North Carolina Bar Foundation and Legal Aid of North Carolina. It gives private attorneys an easy and rewarding way to provide basic legal advice and service to Legal Aid clients. These volunteers serve thousands of clients every year who have nowhere else to turn.
Facts about Advice and Brief Service
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Volunteers provide one-hour telephone interviews with Legal Aid clients in need. Calls are made from the comfort of the volunteer's office.
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Volunteers can choose consumer and private landlord-tenant cases for advice, and can also sign up for other legal issues if they want.
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Clients are pre-screened for eligibility and need brief advice in one of the following areas of law: consumer, landlord-tenant, child custody, employment, criminal record expunction, foreclosure, government benefits, government housing, and unemployment.
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Training opportunities, malpractice insurance and mentoring support services are available.
Extended service and litigation
Our Extended Service program is a statewide pro bono program for volunteers who want to provide extended representation and litigation services to Legal Aid clients. Volunteers receive training for CLE credit, mentoring support throughout the duration of a case, and malpractice insurance. You can choose how often to take cases.
We need your help in these areas of law:
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Consumer
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Domestic violence
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Expunctions
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Immigration (experience required)
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Private landlord-tenant
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Medicaid Mediation and Hearings
You can make a real difference in someone's life! Necesitamos abogados que hablen español.
Legal information webinars
We host live, monthly self-help legal clinics virtually throughout the state via Zoom and Facebook Live. At the clinics, participant receive relevant legal material and watch a live presentation from volunteer attorneys. Following the presentation, volunteer attorneys answer general questions from the audience moderated by a Legal Aid coordinator. No legal advice is given during the informative webinars. The webinar topics include criminal record expungement, child custody, employee rights, simple divorce, tenant rights, and wills and health care powers of attorney.
Other Volunteer Opportunities
We are always working on more volunteer opportunities for lawyers, paralegals, law students and non-legal personnel who want to donate their time and talents to serve North Carolinians in need. Fill out our sign-up form and we will follow up with you.
Volunteer spotlight
Rochelle Bellamy Mayfield
Hedrick Gardner Kincheloe & Garofalo, LLP
Charlotte
Our client's identity was stolen and a fraudulent credit card account was opened in her name. She could not convince the credit card company that she was a victim of identity theft, so they sued her when she refused to pay the charges on the account. Facing an upcoming court date, our client called us for help. Legal Aid volunteer Rochelle Bellamy Mayfield took the case and contacted the company's lawyers on behalf of the client. Thanks to Rochelle, the credit card company accepted the fraud claim and dismissed the lawsuit. When Rochelle contacted her client with the good news, her client responded, "You have made my day, my week, heck my entire year!" Learn more about Rochelle.