Welcome!

Welcome to Legal Aid – District 11’s blog and thank you for reading our first official blog post!  We would like to use this first post to introduce ourselves.  We are a non-profit legal services agency covering an eight county district in South Central Indiana.   The counties we cover include Bartholomew, Brown, Decatur, Jackson, Jennings, Johnson, Rush and Shelby.

What is legal aid?  Many people are not aware that while the U.S. Constitution guarantees an attorney to those who cannot afford one in their criminal case, this is not the situation in a civil case.  If you are facing a divorce, custody battle, legal issue with your landlord tenant, or collections matter, you are not entitled to an attorney.  So where does that leave you?  For many people, it leaves them walking into the court alone and unsure of what to do.

Legal Aid helps those who cannot afford an attorney for their civil case and are qualified per our income guidelines and case qualifications.  We do this through several different means.  Our main service is our lawyer referral program.  We have over one hundred attorneys throughout our eight counties who give of their time and effort to represent Legal Aid clients on a purely volunteer basis.  These attorneys do not receive any money for their work.  We also provide brief legal consultations, as well as assist individuals in preparing to file and handle their case on their own. 

The staff and board at Legal Aid is passionate about one thing and that is providing equal access to justice to all.  Our staff cares about your legal matter, as we understand it is important to you.  Therefore, it is important to us. 

We hope to use this site as a means of providing legal information to our clients and those who need it, as a way of recognizing our many volunteer attorneys and board members, and as means of shining the light on what exactly Legal Aid and other legal services providers do.  Please come back and visit us often!