Grant Recipient Highlight – Indiana Legal Services

The Indiana Bar Foundation (Foundation) annually grants funding to organizations across Indiana to ensure they keep doing great work for Hoosiers in civil legal assistance. We want to highlight those organizations by spotlighting their hard work. For November, we are highlighting Indiana Legal Services (ILS).

Indiana Legal Services mission is to use the law to fight poverty and racism, empower clients, and increase access to justice.

ILS provides services to all of Indiana from regional offices in Merrillville, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Lafayette, Indianapolis, Bloomington, Evansville, and New Albany.

The Indiana Bar Foundation supports ILS by distributing Civil Legal Aid Fund money and with a grant from the Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) program amounting to more than $1.2 million in 2024. This funding is general operating support, which is invaluable because it allows them to spend the money where it’s most needed. The Foundation also provides direct funding for our eviction prevention work statewide, channeling federal funds likely to total more than $1.1 million in 2024. This money supports many ILS lawyers statewide who assist families and individuals who are facing eviction.

ILS is the only statewide organization providing free civil legal assistance to low-income Hoosiers. They provide legal advice and representation in civil matters including family law, housing (evictions), consumer law (including debt collection), public benefits and employment, elder law, expungements, and driver’s licenses.

ILS offers specialized services to vulnerable client populations through statewide projects. These include the Immigrants’ & Language Rights Center, the Workers’ Rights and Protection Project, the Military Assistance Project, the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic, the Medical-Legal Partnerships, the LGBTQ Project, the Senior Law Project (SLP) and the Legal Advocacy for Victimized Adults (LAVA) project. They support the consumer, housing, and domestic violence practices by providing specialized resource attorneys who provide education and backup statewide.

In 2023, they served households with more than 36,000 people, closing 15,591 cases. ILS collected outcome statistics for the 2,620 extended service cases closed in 2023; as examples, they avoided eviction in 838 cases, expunged or sealed criminal records in 454 cases, prevented homelessness in 207 cases, and obtained citizenship for 25 clients.

You can learn more about Pro Bono Indiana by heading over to their website: https://www.indianalegalservices.org/