The Legal Hand Call-In Center serving Westchester County operated by the Elisabeth Haub School of Law

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The law school has partnered with not-for-profit Legal Hand Inc. to create a one-year pilot all-virtual Legal Hand Call-In Center serving Westchester County. The Center launched/opened with an initial cohort of all-law-student Volunteers on January 30, 2023.

In the Legal Hand Call-In Center serving Westchester County, trained Volunteers, consisting of Haub Law students and community members who are not lawyers, Through the all-virtual Legal Hand Call-In Center, highly trained non-lawyer Volunteers and law students provide free legal information, resources, assistance, and referrals (not legal advice) to virtual Visitors who lives, works, or goes to school in Westchester County.  Volunteers work to help Visitors resolve important issues impacting their life in areas such as housing, immigration, family, domestic violence, public benefits, employment, and many more (the Center does not assist with criminal matters). The Legal Hand Call-In Center is an all-virtual resource center for community members, with office space on the third floor of Aloysia Hall at the Law School. Legal Hand works to prevent and resolve problems before they become legal actions and to empower neighbors to help neighbors.

Law student and community Volunteers must complete a significant formal training process before participating. Law students handle shifts during the Center hours either as Volunteers or through a guided externship for credit, and members of the broader community must complete the Volunteer training as well and are asked to commit to serving a minimum of 3 hours per week for 6 months. The virtual Legal Hand Call-In Center serving Westchester is open to Visitor outreach several hours during the work week, as well as one evening to 7:00pm and on most Saturday mornings.

The virtual help is language accessible with a language line available for callers who require translations, and the Center’s Manager, Diego Gomez, a 2022 Haub Law graduate, is fluent in Spanish and French as well as English. In the first two and a half months of Center operation, over 200 Visitors were assisted, and as many as 20% or more Visitors in some months identified Spanish as their native or preferred language.

Read the 2023 Alumni magazine article "Haub Law Opens Region's First Legal-Hand Call-In Center - Student-led Legal Helpline Closes Gaps in Community Access to Justice".

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