Florida Free Legal Answers empowers lawyers to give back
During National Pro Bono Week, lawyers can easily offer virtual legal guidance to low-income Floridians facing pressing civil issues
As civil legal needs soar across Florida, The Florida Bar is urging attorneys to take five minutes to make a difference — by signing up for Florida Free Legal Answers during National Pro Bono Week, October 19-25.
The online platform, modeled after a virtual walk-in clinic, connects volunteer lawyers with low-income Floridians who need brief legal advice on civil matters like housing, family law, and debt.
“Florida Free Legal Answers is a great way for lawyers, especially new lawyers who may not have the capacity for a lot of time in their firms, to log in and answer questions to assist the public, while meeting the aspirational goal of 20 hours of pro bono work mentioned in Rule 4-6.1,” says Florida Bar Programs Division Assistant Director Diana Kellogg.
Florida lawyers reported providing more than 1.7 million hours of pro bono services and contributing more than $9.7 million to legal aid programs between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, according to figures from The Florida Bar.
Free Legal Answers is a project of the ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service and is now in 42 states, including Florida, and territories.
How it Works
Getting started is easy and fast.
Read and agree to the Attorney Agreement
Fill out and submit the required registration information, then click the email link to activate your account (Be sure to check your spam folder)
Approval notification arrives via email and usually takes between two and five business days.
Clients, referred to as website users, are low-income adults and cannot be incarcerated.
Lawyers choose a question they want to respond to, typically on topics such as family, divorce, and custody; housing, eviction, and homelessness; consumer rights; debt; work, employment and unemployment; health and disability; civil rights; juvenile diversion and dependency; and education. Criminal matters are not eligible.
The process is easy and convenient for volunteers, says Judy Perry Martinez, past president of the ABA in a video.
“They can log on at their desks, they can sit at their home and make sure that they are contributing in a way that makes sense to those who are in need,” says Martinez.
If a lawyer selects a question and doesn’t respond within three days, the system automatically returns it to the open questions queue. Lawyers can also choose to return a selected question to the queue.
Pro bono volunteers are encouraged to:
Engage in dialogue with the person to determine if the matter involves an actual legal issue. (The lawyer may ask for additional information before responding to a request, but the person may or may not choose to respond. The person’s name and county are provided to the volunteer lawyer, but no other information, unless the client includes it in their inquiry).
Inform the client about the appropriate state and/or federal law that applies to their situation.
Suggest options regarding how to proceed and, if applicable, attach legal forms or other documents in the response that can assist the client.
According to program founder George “Buck” Lewis, some law schools are now using the Free Legal Answers website as a mentoring tool for alumni and law students by making a room available at the law school for students to meet with alumni and answer questions together.
An Urgent and Growing Need
Florida Bar members have been generous in supporting pro bono service. Overall, 40,058 individual attorneys reported providing 1,680,668 hours of pro bono work, and another 571 attorneys said they provided 25,701 hours through law firm pro bono plans. Another 14,659 lawyers said they contributed $9,687,516 million to legal aid organizations.
Yet the need for more pro bono help is clear. The Legal Services Corporation’s 2022 Justice Gap report revealed that low-income Americans receive no or insufficient legal help for 92% of their serious civil problems.
Florida’s numbers are equally dire. According to a December 2023 News article, ABA study finds civil legal aid still lacking, Florida’s poverty rate stood at 13.1%, significantly higher than the national rate of 11.5%. And there were just 1.7 civil legal aid attorneys serving every 10,000 Floridians, compared to the national average of 2.8 civil legal aid attorneys serving every 10,000 impoverished Americans.
The pressure on low-income Floridians is increasing at a stunning rate. Inflation in Florida has risen 22.4% since January 2021, above the national average of 20.1%, according to a report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee.
And although the number of Bar members has increased in recent years, so has Florida’s population, making pro bono service more urgent than ever.
To volunteer, Bar members must be in good standing and licensed to practice law in Florida.
For more information, click here to view a brief video, or visit Florida Free Legal Answers.