Legal Research

Free Legal Information and Education in Oregon

Oregon and especially the Portland-metro area is awash in lawyers talking about the law to all and sundry - for no charge. There are pedestrian and bicycle legal clinics, bankruptcy clinics, small business legal clinics, homebuyer clinics, patent law programs (e.g. at CubeSpace), and many more.

You just need to know where to look for the announcements! Despite what you hear, many lawyers are not that good at marketing. Until someone figures out a way (and finds the time) to maintain a website or blog where notices of these legal programs can be posted centrally, here are some tips on how to find them (and on how to set up one yourself). Like most things that are worthwhile, it will take some effort, but will pay off in the end!

1) Find a legal association or organization that specializes in the area of law you are interested in and contact the organization or one of its members. No one knows this better than Oregon bicyclists!

2) Contact the Oregon State Bar (OSB): they may be the logical group to keep a running list of these free events, but in the meantime, they may still be able to give you some contacts.

3) Contact a Legal Aid (LASO) office. They too will know about various free legal programs.

4) Police and sheriff?s departments frequently host landlords and tenants and mediation programs. Call and ask.

5) If you have a neighborhood association, call the reigning Chair and ask about inviting a lawyer speaker.

6) If you belong to any association, talk to fellow members to find out what they want to have a lawyer talk about and have someone contact the Oregon State bar (OSB) to ask for some names of local lawyers. A visit from a lawyer who know about foreclosures, investing safely, neighbor law, dog law, small business legal matters, and other subjects would attract more people to your meetings!

7) Ask your state legislator to set up a meeting in your community to talk about a particular bill that has been introduced during the current legislative session.

I'm sure you can come up with even more ideas suited to your own needs.

But remember, if you?re going to sponsor a free legal talk, don't rely on that lawyer to advertise it. Use your own creativity to get the word out, be it through your association?s newsletter or Twitter and everything in between.

Full post as published by Oregon Legal Research on February 01, 2009 (boomark / email).