United Way Partner Program:
Legal Services:
Intake - Community members can apply for services by walking into one of our offices, calling, or visiting our website to apply online. LAWM staff will talk with them to determine whether they are eligible for our services and whether they have legal issues that LAWM can assist with. If they are not eligible or their legal issue is not the sort that handle (for example, we did not do criminal or immigration cases), we will refer them to appropriate resources.
Advice/Brief Service - After gathering the facts of their legal situation, LAWM attorneys will - at a minimum - provide eligible clients with personalized legal advice to help them make informed choices about their situation. This might include an assessment of their defenses to eviction or the amounts they can expect in child support.
Legal Representation - Wherever possible, LAWM provides an attorney to represent eligible clients in achieving justice. This is most often a LAWM staff attorney but could also be a pro bono attorney (a local attorney who volunteers their time). Legal representation may include but is not limited to filing a complaint or an answer in a lawsuit, performing discovery to determine evidence, counseling the client through mediation or other settlement negotiation, taking the case to trial if needed, and drafting the necessary orders and/or judgements.
About Legal Aid of West Michigan:
We are a nonprofit law firm serving low-income people and families in West Michigan. We meet with people in need to perform intake and triage their legal needs. At a minimum, eligible clients receive personalized legal advice to help them make informed choices with respect to their situation. Wherever possible, we assign an attorney to clients to provide full representation for their legal case. While we handle a variety of cases, we are most often helping tenants who are facing eviction and survivors of domestic abuse who are seeking a divorce and/or custody and support orders. Other major areas of practice for us include criminal record expungements, appeals of denials/termination of public benefits, consumer defense, and other housing issues (for both renters and homeowners).
