Lawyer Referral Service

For Lawyers Only*

On behalf of the Staff and Board of Housing Rights, Inc. I am proud to announce the certification of our ‘Housing Rights Lawyer Referral Service’ (#0120). We are very proud and excited to be able to provide this service to our clients. You may want to apply to join one or more of our attorney panels. The application and related documents are available from this site:

It is the goal of the Housing Rights Lawyer Referral Service (a project of Housing Rights, Inc.) to provide free and low cost legal services to low and lower income households who would not otherwise have access to quality legal representation, taking into consideration the economic needs of the client so that no one is denied services due to inability to pay. You can play an important part in the realization of that goal.

There are no fees for renters seeking legal advice. And the fees to the attorneys are minimal. They include: $75 registration fee and $75 administration fee for every case that you accept. These fees cover our costs in-house. In addition, we are requiring a percentage of attorney fees. Please review the above listed documents for more details.

All applications are reviewed by our Governing Committee. In addition to the general panel of attorneys, there are two subpanels: fair housing and personal injury.

We will screen all calls. And we will be referring individuals who have a housing rights related complaint. We will be referring pro bono cases on occasion. However, currently, most of our referrals are from our case load and involve our clients with whom we have been working and collecting evidence to support their complaint. We believe that most of our referrals will be ‘contingency fee’ cases and almost all low and lower income individuals.

We will be working in collaboration with other local Lawyer Referral Services including the Alameda County Bar Association and the Contra Costa County Bar Association. We will be providing training and as important part of recruiting and maintaining a high quality panel of attorneys. We will be referring clients/callers from Alameda and Contra Costa County. We are able to accept attorneys on our panel who practice in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Mateo Counties.

We are accepting calls from the public through our main number: 1800-261-2298, our Special Projects line: 1877-474-2584 or through our website: www.housingrights.com (Ask HRI).

*If you are a renter or homeowner seeking to be referred to an attorney please go to our Ask HRI page.