Our Program

NEW: Check out our COVID-19 Resources for Clients page for the latest updates on benefits and resources during the COVID-19 crisis.

Our Legal Assistance Hotline is staffed Monday through Friday from 9:30am to 4pm. Call 917-661-4500 to speak to an intake officer in any language.

Project Director: Peggy Earisman

Manhattan Legal Services (MLS) is proud to announce the formation of the Edward N. Simon Fellowship in partnership with the family of our colleague and partner in the fight for social justice, Ed Simon. To donate to the fellowship, please click here.

On one of the richest islands in the world, 85% of Manhattan Legal Services (MLS) clients live on less than $15,000 year. We fight poverty and seek economic, social and racial justice for low-income borough residents through the provision of free legal representation, systemic advocacy and community education.  Each year, MLS’s advocates represent and advise thousands of low income residents of Manhattan facing crises with basic needs such as:

• Access to Education
• Civil Rights & Language Access
• Community & Economic Development
• Consumer Rights 
• Disability Advocacy Project
• Disaster Recovery
• Elder Law
• Employment Law & Workers' Rights
• Family Law & Domestic Violence
• Government Benefits
• HIV Advocacy
• Housing & Tenants' Rights
• Immigration & Immigrants' Rights
• LGBT Advocacy
• Reentry
• Veterans Justice Project

We especially focus on vulnerable populations including people living with HIV or a disability, elderly people, families with children, domestic violence survivors, immigrants and people who are unemployed. We empower our clients by providing holistic, culturally competent and linguistically appropriate legal services which address the multiple legal needs of clients (housing and public assistance or filing for an order of protection while seeking custody, for example).

Our advocates seek permanent change in the lives of the low income clients they serve by working with community residents and providers to identify problems and to find solutions to the multiple problems which impact their communities.MLS has a long and successful history of working collaboratively with community-based organizations in the low-income communities of Manhattan including Chinatown, the Lower East Side, Harlem, East Harlem, West Harlem and Washington Heights/Inwood. to address systemic problems such as the treatment of mentally ill people by the welfare system, gentrification and the loss of affordable housing,  language access for LEP clients and  illegal debt collection. We proudly trace our long history back to Harlem Assertion of Rights (later Harlem Legal Services) and MFY Legal Services, both neighborhood-based anti-poverty efforts arising in the 1960’s, and strive to continue that legacy.

Our Locations

40 Worth Street   map
Suite 606
New York, NY 10013
646-442-3100

Tenant Rights Coalition 

East Harlem Office    map
1827 Madison Avenue
New York, NY  10035

Inwood Office   map
5030 Broadway
Suite 664
New York, NY  10034