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Part of Public Interest Law

Legal Aid & Poverty Law

Civil legal help for people with low incomes.

Find schools with programsAll areas of law

What this area covers

Legal aid lawyers help clients keep housing, income, health coverage and safety. They handle individual cases in volume and identify the patterns that call for broader advocacy.

Also called: Economic Justice, Legal Aid, Legal Services, Poverty Law, Public Benefits Law.

Typical legal work

  • Representing clients in housing, benefits and family matters
  • Staffing advice clinics and hotlines
  • Pursuing systemic advocacy

Where lawyers work

  • Legal aid and public-interest organizations
  • Nonprofit and advocacy organizations
  • Law school clinics

A setting is where you work; an area is what the work is about. The same area is practised in very different settings.

Schools with verified programs

A school is listed here only when its own website names a concentration, certificate, clinic, center or field placement in Legal Aid & Poverty Law. Schools are in alphabetical order. The list is not a ranking, and a school that is absent may still teach the subject.

29 schools · 27 clinics · 3 centers and institutes · 1 externship

Filter these schools in the directory

Program types counted as evidence: clinics, certificates, concentrations and specializations, centers and institutes, externships and field placements. Joint degrees and advanced degrees are described under Degrees & program types.

Sources

These references informed what the area covers. The description above is PreLaw Advisor’s own and does not reproduce their text.

  1. 1.American Bar Association. Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense (opens in a new tab) Retrieved Sep 2026.

Description reviewed Sep 2026. Each school program links to the page it was verified against.