Free Legal Clinic - HANA Center - Chicago Center

HANA Center's free legal clinic volunteer attorneys provide initial direction and advice in Spanish, Korean, and English. Immigrants have great difficulty in accessing or understanding the United States legal system. In addition to the significant monetary barrier for low-income families, immigrants also face difficulties in securing legal services that are linguistically and culturally competent. They are often left with no option but self-representation, despite having no legal training or support. This situation too often results in individuals being unable to communicate with court officers and being unable to read and interpret court documents/notices. To address this base language barrier, they often bring friends or their children to provide translation. Nevertheless, because these translators are also unfamiliar with legal terminology, interpretations are often fraught with errors. While low-income immigrants have a great need for legal services (particularly in the areas of immigration, housing, credit and finance, domestic violence, and employment law), they are unable to meet these challenges.

211 Metro Chicago