Representing your self on the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles may be daunting, whether or not or not it’s submitting paperwork or presenting a case in Small Claims Court docket.
You would go to or name the self-help heart within the courthouse if in case you have questions on submitting paperwork on your case or understanding authorized jargon. However you may need to attend some time in line or on maintain to get the solutions you want.
To seek out one other supply of free assist, simply stand on the courthouse steps, look throughout Hill Road and there it will likely be: the Los Angeles County Regulation Library.
The regulation library, second in measurement solely to the Library of Congress in the US, is stocked with authorized data primarily targeted on California, though you’ll find supplies there from all 50 states and greater than 250 international international locations.
It’s house to authorized encyclopedias, appellate briefs, legislative historical past data, regulation evaluations and authorized magazines and newspapers.
Librarians on the reference desk can direct you to the books that would make it easier to perceive the authorized points concerned in your case and assist your analysis.
What makes the library distinctive is its wall itemizing lessons and workshops — both in individual, over the telephone or on-line — that the general public can join without charge.
Its choices embody lessons on civil lawsuit fundamentals, landlord and tenant points, similar to illegal detainer lawsuits, and a fundamental course on widespread areas of regulation and find out how to take the following step in your case.
Not like different free authorized sources or organizations, all of the providers supplied by the L.A. Regulation Library can be found to anybody who desires them, mentioned Katherine Chew, government director of the library.
Organizations and packages that present free authorized help usually have income-eligibility necessities, usually reserving their assist for low- or very low-income residents.
“There’s this enormous a part of the inhabitants [who makes] a bit of an excessive amount of cash and don’t qualify for authorized help and don’t have the funds for to rent an legal professional,” Chew mentioned.
“These are the individuals within the justice hole,” she mentioned. “They’ve nowhere else to go, and so the library is mostly a form of security web for them.”
Most individuals don’t understand that the library is obtainable to them, Chew mentioned — they mistakenly imagine the library is just for attorneys.
Sometimes, individuals attempting to characterize themselves in court docket uncover the library popping out of the courthouse or they’re directed to the library by courthouse employees.
“And we meet them the place they’re,” Chew mentioned.
Within the listing of 600 lessons and workshops the library gives, one stands out: “Attorneys within the Library.” This service affords free authorized recommendation from volunteer attorneys.
Library volunteers will assist match you with one of many library’s 17 volunteer attorneys for a session in individual or over the telephone; their numerous specialties embody civil litigation, household regulation and private harm. Anybody can join the one-on-one time, however solely twice a month.
Within the consultations, that are restricted to about 20 minutes, the lawyer can reply your questions, present data and talk about your authorized choices. What the volunteers can’t do, although, is present the type of authorized recommendation you’d get from a lawyer you employed. They’ll solely assist clarify the problems in your case and assist decide in case you ought to retain a lawyer as a substitute of representing your self.
Throughout these periods, attorneys usually clarify find out how to navigate limitations inside the court docket system, in addition to the paperwork that needs to be filed, mentioned Maria Corridor, a Lengthy Seashore-based legal professional and director of the Los Angeles Incubator Consortium.
“The library is seeing the questions individuals include have gotten rather more sophisticated as a result of individuals’s authorized instances are rather more sophisticated,” Chew mentioned.
Throughout this course of, a lawyer may level you to a Group Connections social employee on website for an additional layer of help.
Corridor, who has been volunteering with the Attorneys within the Library program since 2015, mentioned it has developed and grown from its early days, when it had about eight attorneys assembly with individuals as soon as a month. Now, she mentioned, small groups of attorneys from totally different areas of experience will usually work collectively to supply one individual with solutions.
“To see that many authorized minds in a single place, in a single time, all dedicated to serving to individuals is absolutely magic, and we’ve some unbelievable outcomes,” she mentioned.
Corridor mentioned the volunteers won’t be capable of clear up everybody’s issues, however “we will a minimum of offer you a greater highway map of what your choices are, what the method could be and look over your paperwork.”
