NEVADA LEGAL SERVICES INC

Nevada Legal Services (NLS) is a statewide, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, public interest law firm. It is the mission of NLS to strengthen the community by ensuring fairness and providing equal access to justice for low-income Nevadans.
NLS has been providing free legal services to low-income populations for more than 40 years and is the preeminent legal services organization in the State of Nevada. NLS provides a broad range of legal services to eligible residents in all 17 counties and 27 federally recognized Native American tribes across Nevada.
To meet our mission, NLS provides the following free legal services:
Consumer Law – including responding to garnishments, debt collection, repossessions, bankruptcy, and predatory contracts.
Education Law – including school expulsion and special education
Employment Law – including discrimination claims, wage and hour issues, and agricultural/farm worker matters.
Family Law – including guardianship, representation of wards, adoptions, ICWA cases, divorce, custody, child support, and visitation.
Health Law – including Medicaid issues, Medicare issues, nursing home issues, and home health care issues.
Housing Law – including federal subsidized housing program issues, private landlord/tenant issues, habitability issues, mobile homes, mobile home park closures, and foreclosure.
Income Maintenance – including TANF, SNAP (food stamps), county general assistance, unemployment benefits, Social Security, SSI, and Veteran’s benefits.
Individual Rights – including immigration/naturalization for victims of domestic abuse and other forms of violence, human trafficking, and civil rights.
Tribal Law – including representation for Nevada Tribes, representation in criminal matters in Tribal courts, and preparation of Indian wills
End of Life Planning – estate planning, healthcare directives, and powers of attorney.
NLS has also established the following specialty programs, which encompass many of the above-referenced case types but serve a particular purpose:
Indian Law Project: The Indian Law Project serves all 27 federally recognized tribes in Nevada. NLS staff represent individuals in civil cases and criminal cases in Tribal courts.
Pro Bono Project: NLS recruits private attorneys to accept pro bono cases for direct representation, brief services, or advice, provide Ask-A-Lawyer consultations, and to teach legal education classes.
Consumer Law Project: Represents clients facing foreclosure, bankruptcy, medical debt, wrongful auto repossessions, fraudulent or predatory practices, and other consumer issues impacting financial stability. This project is funded primarily via grant funds provided by the Nevada Attorney General’s Office.
Veterans Law Project: Aids in a variety of legal areas to low-income, homeless, and at-risk veterans, with a focus on legal issues impacting housing stability.
Tenants’ Rights Center: Provides legal advice and brief services to tenants in unsubsidized housing regarding eviction, habitability and essential services problems, security deposit disputes, and other landlord-tenant matters.
Senior Law Project: Provides services to seniors in Nevada on any legal topic, with a focus on serving seniors living in northern and rural areas of the state where pro bono legal assistance is particularly scarce. This project is funded primarily via grant funds provided by Nevada’s Aging & Disability Services Department and the Nevada Bar Foundation.
HIV Impact Law Project: This Project assists Nevadans who have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in a variety of legal matters, primarily serving clients eligible for assistance using grant funds provided under the Ryan White Part B program and foundation grants.
The LGBTQ+ Project: This project assists with legal name and gender marker changes pursuant to Nevada law and civil rights or discrimination cases. This project is funded primarily by foundation grants.
Worker’s Rights Project: Provides outreach and legal representation for low-income and rural/agricultural workers concerning matters such as workplace safety, health standards, and fair wages.
Lawyer in the School Program: Provides outreach and legal representation to low-income families with children attending public Title I schools with a focus on matters affecting household stability and student success.
NLS has a strong organizational reporting structure including an Executive Director, Deputy Director, Directing Attorneys, and Senior Attorneys to manage its programs. Directing Attorneys are responsible for the day-to-day supervision of program senior attorneys, staff attorneys, paralegals, and advocates and oversee projects with hands-on oversight from the Executive Director and Deputy Director to ensure proper case handling and compliance. The Director of Community Engagement also supports programs by working with staff to develop and implement targeted outreach and referral relationships/processes, consulting with staff regarding program progress and needs, and coordinating external communications to raise awareness of available services and programs.
The Executive Director and Deputy Director supervise the fiscal reporting on our grant projects in collaboration with our finance team. NLS has complied with all grant agreements and has met all of its financial obligations since inception. Moreover, NLS has and continues to successfully simultaneously administer multiple large grants that require reporting and reimbursement requests to be submitted on differing schedules. For example, NLS receives funding from the Legal Services Corporation, Nevada’s Aging & Disability Services Division, the Office of HIV through the Ryan White Part B Program, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office, and others. Each of these grants funds one or more projects staffed by two or more advocates and entails separate eligibility and reporting requirements. NLS’s leadership team meets frequently to ensure program oversight and proper grant reporting.