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all right it is 1250 why don't we get started thanks for coming everyone we have a small group can you all hear me so small that you guys get to ask me individual questions you can ask me anything you want and I'll give you the answer we are recording today so I I might be somewhat censored on the answer I give you but I'll try to do my best and give you as much information as I can is everybody here for this program which is how to find a lawyer for free ok everybody knows why they're here good is anybody here actually looking for a lawyer ok so I will be able to talk to you about how you can access the legal system and where you can find help whether it's from attorneys or materials or forms and various methods but I won't necessarily be able to talk to you about your very specific legal problem so if you're here to get help with that legal problem I'm really gonna send you to places that can provide that help that's not what I'm gonna do so let's talk today a little bit about how you can find a lawyer for free so does everybody understand the difference between criminal law and civil law yes ok headshake so I can I can't see anyway I don't have my glasses so criminal law is obviously when you committed some kind of crime or at least have been alleged to commit a crime and the state has said you've done something you're not supposed to do and they assign prosecutors to that case to take you to court and try to prosecute you and to find you guilty or whatever crime that you've been charged with and you can have an attorney on your side to defend you as well but that is the criminal system and so what we're going to talk today about is the civil system in the criminal system if you need a lawyer for free there is the Cook County public defender at least here and there are public defenders in every jurisdiction in the United States and you have a right to get an attorney for a criminal defense case and that's not entirely true you don't have a right for some small misdemeanors and in other types of cases that don't involve major crimes but if you've been alleged to have committed a felony then you have a right to an attorney and if you can't afford one they will appoint you a public defender and so you don't find a lot of criminal defense in the pro bono legal world out there it's mostly because there is a public defender if you are within certain income levels then they will represent you for free some people aren't really that happy with the idea of using public defenders I don't know sometimes they have good reputations other times they have been reputations but because that system is in place you don't find a lot of other systems developing around it because it's it's good and and it handles all cases so that is the criminal system in the civil system you also may need a lawyer and it may be for things like you've been in the car accident or being sued or you're getting divorced or you've got a whole bunch of debt and you're considering bankruptcy maybe you're involved in a small business and you have some kind of small business problem maybe you're being evicted maybe you own a home and there's a foreclosure in the civil world there are all these different kinds of cases where you may be having a dispute with another person a company or somebody else that is not related to the government and that is a civil legal matter in the civil legal world there are lots of opportunities for three free lawyers one of those opportunities is by organizations that have staff another person having difficulty opening the door come on in and there are a lot of staff based legal service organizations in the city of Chicago in Cook County that provide attorneys on staff to represent clients and all these different types of civil legal matters Cook County and Chicago is blessed with a whole bunch of places we have probably 40 legal service organizations and so you can find a legal service organization that does say just housing just eviction just domestic violence just immigration there are all these different boutique legal service organizations that provide attorneys and most of those attorneys are on staff and those organizations and they will represent you for free and then there's another type of attorney out there that helps people for free and that's considered or called a pro bono attorney and so there are a lot of attorneys that work out of their own office whether it's a small firm or a big firm they do their own work and make money at that work but they volunteer with organizations like mine that we provide them clients and they come in and represent people free on their own time pro bono and so you find a lot of staff based legal service organizations and you find organizations that are staff based that also have volunteer programs and use private attorneys as those volunteers and that's kind of how the system is set up in Cook County I work for an organization called Chicago volunteer Legal Services my name is Phil war I'm the deputy director of C BLS whenever you get caught up in the legal service community in this town you will find that we all use acronyms and it confuses everyone and we apologize but that's the way it works so I'm at CBL s another few big organizations would be la F LA SC GLA an organization I'm going to talk to you a lot about today is called Illinois legal aid online but we called him Alejo so we all kind of truncate our names and use and use acronyms so you kind of have to get used to that but we all do a little bit different stuff but in the illegal area so we talked a little bit about criminal law and we talked about how in criminal law you have a right to an attorney in the civil world you do not have a right to counsel you do not have the right to a lawyer and it's one of the things to keep in mind that when you try to access the system and you do so in a way where you feel entitled to that lawyer know that no one is agreeing with you you do not have a right to an attorney now organizations like mine organizations like Alejo and the other 40 or so organizations in town are trying to do our best knowing that you should have an attorney that you are an extreme disadvantage if you're in a dispute especially if you're in a dispute against someone who does have an attorney and you are without an attorney so it's our goal to try to find attorneys for as many people as we can but you do not have a right to this so remember that when you're accessing the system remember when you're calling a legal service organization and you might be a little irritated or angry that they're not immediately wanting to help you it's because we all have these systems and we're all using the systems because we're we're overtaxed by clients there's always too many clients for not enough attorneys and so we have to find out what you make and what your income is and what your assets are to know that you should get a lawyer for free we want to meet with you and talk to you about your case and figure out what's going on so that we can determine that there's some merit to your case and all that may take days in a few weeks and and it may be slow and a bit frustrating but know that you don't have a right to this that we're trying to help you and we're asking that you work with us and so try not to get frustrated try to take your time and understand what the environment contains that there's all these places and that you're accessing these individual places because they are just an organization that's trying to help and and work with them now all of us in the pro bono and staff attorney legal service world has restrictions on when and how you can access us and so everybody's going to be a little different so know that in in almost all of our situations you're going to need to be under a certain income level for us to determine that you can get a free lawyer and everybody's income level is a bit different I kind of give you a little bit of sense of about what it is but an organization like mine is a hundred and seventy five percent of the federal poverty level some organizations are a little closer to the federal poverty level maybe one hundred and twenty five percent and some may be a little above us the 175 and then there's a couple organizations we're going to talk about that if you're over that have reduced fee situations where you will pay a lawyer but much less than you would in the private bar so everybody's got their income guidelines and then everybody will determine what kind of cases they want to handle so you find an organization like C BLS and we do just about anything we have volunteer attorneys those volunteer attorneys allow us to take cases in all different areas of law and so we do everything if you find an organization like the legal assistance foundation which is big and has a lot of staff attorneys and they take just about everything but they're a little restricted on what they can take because they're funded by the federal government and it keeps them out of certain case types and then you will find organizations that just do divorce or family law and domestic violence and immigration so you have to realize that there's a whole bunch of organizations out there that that have their niche in what they do and so we used to give out this book this big old book that would explain all these organizations and again there was probably 40 of them and I don't think anybody enjoyed reading that book and it took forever to get through and he would try to figure out who they were and what kind of work they did and if you meet their guidelines and then he would call them and then it'll take you another week to look through the book and find another one and it was a little complex so we've simplified it for you and there's a reason we simplified it for you so we've handed out this sheet today and it's just a simple document called finding free or low-cost legal help and there's a reason why these very few organizations are on here and we're going to talk about that a little bit so the first place you'll see is again another acronym Karpis which stands for and I always forget coordinated advice and advice referral and placement for legal services I think that's it carpals we call it and Karpis is a legal aid hotline and and so you're gonna have these two one-stop shops for you that are gonna tell you where to go for legal help and one is Karpis carpals is primarily done by phone it's a hotline you will call karpas and you will say hey I have a divorce I'm in Cook County and I would like an attorney and then carpals will get some information from you determine that you're eligible for various organizations and then they will do two things one they will say well here's some material that we have to help you it might be an explanation of divorce it might be you know it can go from as simple to a little summary of what divorce is all about to more complex and be documents and materials to help you file and handle the divorce so they they do pro se material and they would mail you that the other thing they would ask of you is do you want a lawyer and if you say yes I would prefer a lawyer then they will find them several organizations in the Chicago area that provide free attorneys for that service and rather than them telling you hey call C BLS in lef they will call C BLS in LA for you and refer you to us and so if you want a lawyer that can be a very efficient way rather than looking online and finding the eight different places that handle divorces you can just call carpals and calling carpals they will give you material and they will refer you out to these other organizations in town that handle that kind of work so it can be a little more efficient if you're looking for legal help or a lawyer another person they can get the door open yeah yeah come on and there's a sheep back there if you want to look at it on the chair and so carpals has been around for about ten or fifteen years and they're very good and they will refer you to where you need but there isn't always a place that's available for what you need so carpals may tell you we don't have an organization out there that's either open right now to take new cases or that handles that kind of case and then what you can ask for from carpals is materials well how would I handle this how could I do this pro se and carpals is able to do that carpals is your instant and efficient connection to legal help by phone they're very good then you have another organization and they're represented today by you and Illinois legal aid online and they are called Illinois legal aid online and we call them Alejo and they've been around for almost the same amount of time I would say eight to ten years it's more than I've just been around too long but it's probably about about ten years and they have evolved over time so Illinois legal aid online is primarily to provide you information online on legal matters and they do very similar work to carpals but online so they can provide forms and training materials and pro se help but then they can also help you access the legal service industry by going into their website telling them what your problem is and they can give you a various number of referrals to organizations that you can contact directly so to go to Illinois legal aid online you just simply go to Illinois legal aid org very simple name very simple website in their website they have a link at the top that says get legal help and you can navigate through this website there's stuff all over the place and if you want to goof around and see what you can find they've they've got a ton of stuff on their website but if you're really just looking for legal help they make it very simple just by having this big thing at the top that says get legal help and you click on that it takes you into this page and rather than you having to you know write a summary of what's going on or all this different information that some websites ask you to provide they pretty much ask you for two bits of information they try to have you identify your legal problem so maybe you write a fiction or foreclosure or bankruptcy or divorce they ask what your zip code is pop in your zip code click though all this stuff opens up to you and so if say you have a divorce problem and you're in Cook County you'll get a bunch of forms and training materials if you were to want to handle it yourself and then you'll get a bunch of organizations that handle divorces that you can contact and it's all right there for you and that's Illinois legal aid that's or anything else you think on that yeah so both those websites are both those organizations are somewhat similar but remember carpals is easily accessible by phone and and that their niche and that's what they do and Illinois legal aid online is is accessible on the Internet and that's what they do but the end result is that you make it pro se help if that's all they can provide or if that's maybe all you want or you can also get referrals and access to the legal service community so over time we have realized that we we have this legal service community out there and we're trying to represent as many people as possible but we know we cannot there's just too many there's too many people with civil legal problems that can't find attorneys and not enough attorneys to be able to take their cases whether they're staff based organizations or our volunteers that come in and do work pro bono and so it's hard to meet what is a substantial need and so over time other ways have evolved to try to address that and one of the ways is pro se material and that's why I've talked about bowls and carpals and at Illinois legal aid online that if they can't find you a lawyer that they're gonna try to at least get you some help about what your legal problem is whether it's just information or whether it's materials that could help you in court there used to be this notion that that sometimes you could do more damage than good when you provided materials to someone to get them into court and it's still somewhat true so so keep in mind that if you are deciding to file a lawsuit not defend a lawsuit but file a lawsuit you maybe afford a pro se materials but you have to make the decision about whether or not you think you can do that and
hether or not you think you can be productive so in our world when we design this information in these forms to people sometimes we'll sit back and we'll say you know if we help somebody file that lawsuit and the other side files and defends and then maybe files a counterclaim we're opening up this person to a lot more problems than maybe if they just didn't file at all and so we take a lot of care in trying not to create things that might get you too deep into a legal problem that maybe you don't belong in the answer to that is to keep trying to find a lawyer if you think you need a lawyer to keep trying to find a lawyer but you have to make the decision about whether or not filing something pro se on your own is going to be productive and if you think you can do it and you get all this help in these materials by all means but if you're a little worried and you think that the other side may have a good case and or a case against you then you got to be a little careful but then there's those cases where somebody files against you and so if you're in a marital situation and your spouse files divorce or your landlords trying to evict you or a bank is trying to foreclose on your property then then you're participating anyway you've been served and you've been brought into a legal matter so any help to people in that situation is good and so we all provide lots of help both in the pro saved forms and materials area as well as to try to find attorneys for you so if you get caught up in a situation where you're being sued you're being brought to court and you don't have a lawyer these are two great places carpals and Illinois legal aid online and you're better off armed with something than with nothing so if you access both those and they can't find you a lawyer they're going to be able to provide a lot of material for you to kind of explain what's going on and help you along in the process and so as we've evolved over time you know when I first started in this business it was all about trying to get lawyers to people in need and we all knew we weren't meeting the entire need it was clear and so you would try to find more funding to get more attorneys you would try to find more volunteers the goal was to get more lawyers so we could help more people and then over time there became a realization that maybe some people can help themselves and we can't find them a lawyer at least let's give them information and that's where we talked about a lot of these pro se materials and why they're out there and one of the new evolutions in legal services is people who might be just over guidelines and be able to access low-income attorneys or low fee attorneys I should say low-income attorneys low fee attorneys and so there's two organizations out there that provide services like that one is called the Justice entrepreneurs project JEP of course we had to give them an acronym to the JEP program the JEP program is an interesting program it started about four or five years ago and it was designed to create young solo practitioners young solo lawyers who also are very connected to the legal service industry and provide the opportunities for clients that are either sliding-scale or fixed or low hourly but to provide some kind of relief on what attorneys fees normally are for people who are just above the federal poverty levels and so they have attorneys in all sorts of areas and what they do is is they participate in this program for 18 months in the first six months the people who are involved in JEP embed in organizations like mine so every six months we will have two or three JEP attorneys working with us volunteering on cases taking cases for free and primarily so that we can train them so they can learn an area of law that they are then going to go out and practice it and so they do that for six months then the second six months they start trying to start a business and start a law firm and get their name out there and market to clients but all along on various unique fee arrangements and then the last six months of the 18 months they leave the JEP nest and they go out and rent space and they become a lawyer and their goal is that all these people that go through this program and there's about 10 every 6 months that you're building this small army of people who will take cases in the lower fees who feel connected to legal service industry so still volunteer and it has worked and so if you think you are at or above or very near the income guidelines for legal service organizations like mine and you're having a hard time getting in maybe they don't have a lot of resources at that given time it's a program that you can access and and they have a website - I think it's jep org JEP Chicago org and you go on there and you can click on their attorneys and you can see all these JEP attorneys and what they do and if one is relevant to the case type that you have you can contact them directly and you can remind them and they know and it will be one of the first discussions of what their unique fee arrangements can be for you and then you have another organization out there called the Chicago legal clinic and they are somewhat similar to my organization they they do a lot of free and and pro bono work and they have volunteers that work with them and do pro bono work but they also do a next level which is a sliding scale for people's income and a sliding scale on fees and so if you are a little above again what most people's feet guidelines are then you could always call Chicago legal clinic and and they will tell you what their sliding scale would be on fees and that's a civil legal service world out there and I'm gonna talk a little bit more and I didn't intend to immediately get into a long discussion I thought I would kind of get a sense of whether or not there was any questions out there but but if anybody has any questions let me know feel free to raise your hand we talked about this earlier before a couple people came in I can't answer your legal problem I can't help you with that but can kind of talk about that in the context of finding a legal service attorney or some help and send you on the right track so does anybody have any questions yeah there's so the question was where to go for a wrongful conviction there's there's potentially two meanings to that one is that you think the conviction was both wrongful and should be overturned and and I would say depending on when that happened that's most likely not going to be done that would be more of an appeal does everybody know what an appeal is so just kind of give you a brief idea of how lawsuits proceed within a court system so there is always a case that's filed it's criminal case then it's maybe a charge and complaint for robbery or a civil case maybe it's a petition for dissolution or a divorce so a case gets filed and then the other side is served or brought in to that case in some capacity and then they have the right to defend and so you have a plaintiff or a petitioner and you have a defendant or respondent and every case starts the same way with a criminal or civil and now you have this case but this case is at the trial level and that's where facts come out and so if that case proceeds it might proceed for several months and then both sides decide well this is what we should do and they reach a settlement and it's done but also maybe no one can agree on what should be done and so then the court case keeps proceeding and eventually you go to a trial and at that trial the one-size gives all their facts and say it says what happened on the other side then gives their facts and defends what happened and then either the judge decides at the end of that trial or a jury decides at the end of that trial but then that's the end of the trial and a decision has been made if it's been made at the criminal level and you were either convicted of a crime or you've been found not guilty of a crime if it's at the civil level then either the petitioner or plaintiff wins or the defendant of the respondent wins but a decision is made once that decision is made either side has 30 days to file another court case with the next level of court called the appellate court and you must if you think what's happened to you at that point in time is wrong that's the answer you have to file an appeal within 30 days anything after 30 days and that is a final trial decision and it can't be changed now that's not entirely true there are some ways to attack things but but generally speaking you have the right to defend yourself at a trial and once that right is over and if you've lost you have the right to appeal that decision over the next thirty days well within the next 30 days to the appellate court once it goes to the appellate court if that that appellate court can do one of three things the appellate court can say oh exactly what the trial court said is correct you're done you lost or what the trial court said is incorrect let's send it back it should be redone or once in a blue moon the appellate court will say well what the trial court did is entirely wrong and you win so the appellate court can change what has happened at that trial court and then if you all wonder what the supreme courts are both in the state of Illinois in the United States if you lose at the appellate level you then have the right to appeal to the Supreme Court of either Illinois or if it's a federal case the United States Supreme Court but they don't have to take it so they can but it's up to them so you have the right to defend yourself at a trial you have the right to appeal that decision if you think it's wrong and then you have the right to seek an appeal from the next level supreme court but you might not get it and that's how cases proceed when you're asking about overturning a wrongful conviction most often you're saying how do I say that that was and that would be an appeal you're still within 30 days of one that happened and that's what you would have to do if you're outside of those 30 days then then there really isn't a way to overturn it the other part of your question might be how to just get it off my record and that's called an expungement and people do that all the time and there's an organization in town called Cabrini Green legal aid CG LA and they run a help desk in the Daley center on the 10th or 11th floor do you know these I guess the 11th floor at the Daley center it's not the 11th is the 10th floor and they help people file petitions seeking to expunge criminal matters from their record now you can't expunge major felonies that's not doable but some lesser felonies and most misdemeanors can be expunged there still has to be a reason I don't do this kind of work so I don't really know what you have to be able to say but if people can do it so that's what you would do if you wanted to get it off your record is go get some help from them does anybody else have any other questions yeah absolutely so I would say that would be a good example because it's it's certainly something my organization does and it gives us a lot of opportunity to talk about different things within the legal service world in the community that we can use this for as an example so that's a good and and a lot of people would think well there's probably not much out there for stuff like that because if I want power of attorney or a will or various other estate planning techniques then usually that means I have money or I have stuff that I want to pass on to my heirs and therefore I'm sure a free attorney is not out there for me and and we know that's not true and a lot of times maybe it's just your stuff your personal property and it's not you know certainly it's it's got sentimental value and may even be worth some things but but it's not going to prevent you from getting a free lawyer maybe you just have a house and you've had this house for a long time and you want to make sure that it's protected and passed on to your heirs if you were to pass away maybe it has nothing to do with your stuff maybe it's really your health care and your decision your health care decision-making and so there's a lot of reasons why people that want to do wills and powers of attorney want to access the legal service community and we know that and so we are out there I would say that's the perfect example to go to either carpals or Illinois legal aid online because they not only will send you lists of organizations that do that kind of work they can provide you with a lot of information a lot of material so that if you do choose to go get a lawyer you're going to be very informed so you can read some things and powers of attorney and simple wills and small estates on their website carpals has material that they would mail you and then you can decide well is this what I want to do and if it is what I want to do do I need to get a lawyer and then both places like Alejo and car those can refer you to organizations like mine so I would say always go to one of these two first go to carpool started online leaving Illinois legally it online and find out what's out there and and if it's just information then it's going to arm you with knowledge and that knowledge is going to help you take the next step then you're going to potentially be referred to organizations like mine and so maybe you get this material from Illinois legal aid online and it tells you exactly what power of attorney over health care or living wills or various state planning techniques are used and you have a good sense of it but you just feel uncomfortable doing it yourself you'd like to sit down with a lawyer and have it explained and the paper go through the paperwork with them and know that you're signing it right next to cuting it right and that's where organizations like mine come in and so they may refer you to us you will call us and you will get an appointment with us and then hopefully we can represent you on a case like that it's also a good example because there's case types out there so so you have organizations like mine which work within the legal service community and that just makes us nice people right we're trying to do good or nice people we're trying to help people and then we have the other side of the bar which is the private attorneys making lots of money and working for corporations and they don't seem so good but that's not true there are a lot of really good caring attorneys out there and so if you're a private attorney and you're working for a large firm and you're saying you know this is getting a little dull I'd like to do something and give back to the community you try to look for an organization like ours and there's many others that use volunteers and we help train those attorneys who say do corporate work or immigration or something else and we train them on simple the state planning or divorce or something else and then they become volunteers for us and they take cases through us and that's the kind of case where you get lots of volunteer interests because it seems to be for a good purpose good cause there are some cases out there where you have a hard time finding volunteer attorneys and a good example of that might be a divorce because they are emotionally traumatic cases we're all involved and that includes the attorneys so you get someone on one side you know going to the end of their life making sure they never have to give something to the other side and they just become very contentious angry cases and attorneys get us sucked into problems like that as anything else and so you get attorneys that want to work in that area they want to volunteer and do good and represent clients in sympathetic divorce situations and they do that once and maybe they do that twice and then they think oh my god I can't do this again it's just draining and taxing and so you will get maybe less volunteers that will consistently stay in the pro bono world for more contentious case types but when you have a case type like that where you're really just working with a person trying to accomplish for them what they want you get lots of volunteer attorneys so a case type like that an organization like mine will probably take it and help you you're welcome any other questions yeah I don't know that I'd be able to answer questio
s like that for you I would tell you to go talk to the people at Cabrini Green legal aid on the 11th floor that not only are they knowledgeable about expungements but they probably are knowledgeable about the criminal system and trying to impact whatever conviction has been entered so I would go talk to them yep they could I don't know how so he referenced the Northwestern Center for wrongful convictions at the northwestern law school that's a possibility I don't know how they make their decisions and what they base them on but more typically it's for what you see kind of more serious life-threatening situations so often death row inmates or just long sentences for people who appear to have been wrongfully convicted so that that's always a possibility northwestern law schools I don't know I think University of Chicago also has a wrongful conviction group so you might check some of the law schools no no man there's a reason for that and I don't want to not just gonna answer it tersely and flippantly but the reason for that is that most of us don't handle cases where where our client is the claimant and the reason being is that most of those cases are providing some kind of financial relief and so if it's a whistleblower case if it's a employment discrimination case if it's if it's something where the person feels wronged then they're going to file the claim and in addition to ask you for whatever correction they may want to ask for they're probably also going to ask for money and be entitled to money and you won't see the legal service community involved in those kind of case types because they are feed generating so there's plenty of private attorneys out there that will take a case for free and they will collect their fees out of whatever award is won at the end of that case and those are called contingent fee cases and that's a good question because that was one of the things I was going to mention next and the question can often be well where do I go for an attorney that will take my case for free and take their their fees out of the winnings at the end of the case and you might want a private referral and the Chicago Bar Association runs a lawyer referral service from the CBA and they're at the bottom right on the sheet and to get for a lawyer to be put on the Chicago bar associations lawyer referral program they're vetted a little they're approved and have names for when you called them so that would be a great resource to go there you know I was talking a little bit before about the kind of cases that the legal service industry takes that's a good example of the one we don't so we we generally do just about anything civil we don't do criminal and then we don't do things where fees are generated by the lawsuit and that would be an example another would be you know you've gotten a car accident you were the one that was hurt and you want to suit the driver of the other car you're gonna find you know 2,000 attorneys out there that will do a case like that on a contingent fee basis and so the legal service industry does not have to get involved in those kind of cases any other questions so what I'll finish up on is is the idea of accessing these systems and and how to best do it and so just know that one of the things I mentioned earlier and I will mention again that there's there's not a there's not enough lawyers for the number of clients that need help it's just kind of the way it works and and so we all again try to increase our staff and increase our volunteer base but there's just not enough and so it can get somewhat frustrating so you can go to carpals and they'll refer you to two places and you go to an illinois legal aid online and they'll give you some self-help materials and refer you to two other places and you might contact these places directly and and they may say oh we might be able to help you but it'll take three weeks before we can get you in or maybe a month before we can get you in and then you come in and then we interview you and try to gather information and make sure that you're within our income guidelines and that it's a case type we can handle but then you got another two or three-week wait before we review your case and determine if it's appropriate for us and that can now be on a month and a half and after that month and a half we may review that case and we may determine well there's really not much we can do here and we might contact you and give you a little advice and say sorry we can't take your case and so that's kind of a worst case scenario you can get a little frustrated by accessing a system where there's not enough resources because you'll spend and invest maybe a month or two months and then find out at the end of that month or two months you're really no farther along than you would hope to be from the beginning so you have to be patient and you have to not be aggressive but you you have to keep it up you have to keep working at it and if you don't find an end through an organization like mine then maybe there's another organization you find it in with or maybe you keep going to Illinois illegally it online and finding other referral possibilities or maybe you start reading those self-help materials a little closer and longer and get a good sense of what they say but it but it can be at times a frustrating experience and also keep in mind that we are all privately funded organizations none of us are governmental agencies that's not what the civil legal service world is we're all privately funded organizations and we're all paying salaries to people and using volunteers to do as much work as we can but we're not always doing it doing everything and so try not to get frustrated and angry with the people you're dealing with because it's not going to get you farther along so try to be patient try to be considerate try to do everything an organization may ask of you so when we agree to see a client then we give them an appointment and then sometimes someone just won't show up and that's terrible I mean don't do that if you get an appointment they go and if you get an appointment and you can't go then call but do something to be normal consider a person as accessing services that are not maybe free for you but but not free we're all getting paid we're all doing as much work as we possibly can so be considerate as well and when we have someone in for an interview and and we get all their information it might be that we say oh you know what we can best help you if you get us this other document or we can best help you if you go over the courthouse and grab that order that was entered the other day and then be cooperative and go get it or send it in or do whatever and so the more you're patient the more you consider it and the more you're cooperative you will give yourself the best chance of getting an attorney to be able to assist you and so that's the legal service community in Cook County every state in the United States has some legal service community or organizational system County is unique we are unique primarily for how things are funded in this town and that we have this big metropolitan area with lots of money around it so there's been a lot of money coming into the legal service community through other large law firms donating our associations and bar foundations donating and so there's more money being put into civil legal services in Cook County and that created all these different organizations and some other states you might go and there might just be the one and they may be the one for the entire state and Indiana's like that they might have small little boutique places that utilize volunteers more but their civil legal system is legal service system is set up entirely through the state and so you would contact one place in Indiana and they'll try to do what they can Cook County is unique we have lots of places and so we have created organizations like Alejo and carpel to try to get you to where you need to go 15 years ago you would get a list of 40 places and then you would just start calling them and it was really inefficient ineffective and so we thought we got to make this better and so we started carpals and then we started a layoff and it's starting both those organizations what we've tried to give you as a starting point so if you have a problem called carpals if you have a problem go on to Illinois legal aid org and then they will try to narrow that path so you could be more successful in finding free legal services any other questions all right I think that does it for me if you have questions you didn't want to say out loud I'll be hanging around a little bit you can come up and ask me thank you
