Local Organizations

Boston Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service
16 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108
The Lawyer Referral Service will make referrals to lawyers through the Greater Boston area for both civil and criminal cases.

Massachusetts Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service
20 West Street
Boston, MA 02111
The Lawyer Referral Service will make referrals to lawyers throughout the state of Massachusetts for both criminal and civil cases.

Volunteer Lawyers Project (VLP)
99 Chauncy Street
Boston, MA 02111
Through the volunteer lawyers project, private attorneys contribute their services to eligible clients at no cost.

Greater Boston Legal Services
197 Friend Street
Boston, MA 02114
This legal service program provides free legal services to low income people in civil cases only.

Legal Advocacy and Resource Center
Telephone assistance only. (617) 742-9179

Prisoners’ Legal Services
8 Winter Street
Boston, MA 02108
Prisoners’ Legal Services provides civil legal services to individuals in Massachusetts prisons. The four areas they focus on are: health and mental health care, guard-on-prisoner violence, physical conditions of confinement, and segregation and isolation.

Committee for Public Counsel Services
44 Bromfield Street
Boston, MA 02108
A fifteen-member body established by Chapter 211D of the Massachusetts General Laws to oversee the provision of legal representation to indigent persons in the Commonwealth. Most of the legal representation in nearly 300,000 cases annually is provided by approximately 2,400 private attorneys appointed by various courts.

Shelter Legal Services
885 Centre Street
Newton, MA 02459
Shelter Legal Services provides legal advice and representation to homeless and low-income members of the Boston community.

National Organizations

American Bar Association’s Pro Bono and Public Service Committee
Legal Help for the Poor and state by state listing of Pro Bono Programs

Centurion Ministries (CM)
CM is a non-profit organization headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey with a full-time paid staff of five employees, including an investigator in Seattle. The primary mission of Centurion Ministries is to vindicate and free from prison those who are completely innocent of the crimes for which they have been unjustly convicted and imprisoned for life or death.

Death Penalty Information Center

Justice Denied
The magazine for the wrongly convicted.

National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
NIJ is the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice and is dedicated to researching crime control and justice issues. NIJ provides objective, independent, evidence-based knowledge and tools to meet the challenges of crime and justice, particularly at the State and local levels.

National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA)
NLADA is the nation’s leading advocate for front-line attorneys and other equal justice professionals – those who make a difference in the lives of low-income clients and their families and communities. Representing legal aid and defender programs, as well as individual advocates, NLADA is proud to be the oldest and largest national, nonprofit membership association devoting 100 percent of its resources to serving the broad equal justice community.

The Constitution Project
The Constitution Project is a bipartisan nonprofit organization that seeks consensus on controversial legal and constitutional issues through a unique combination of scholarship and activism.

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL)
The (NACDL) is the preeminent organization in the United States advancing the mission of the nation’s criminal defense lawyers to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or other misconduct. A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL’s more than 10,000 direct members — and 79 state and local affiliate organizations with another 28,000 members — include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, active U.S. military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness within America’s criminal justice system.

Truth In Justice Foundation
A non-profit organization working to free wholly innocent men and women convicted of crimes they did not commit, and to prevent wrongful convictions by educating the public regarding the vulnerabilities in the U. S. criminal justice system that make these miscarriages possible.