A community legal clinic is made up of not for profit clinics that serve a particular community by providing a broad range of different legal services such as representation, law reform, and education. These services can be provided by non lawyers as well as lawyers, since community legal services Philadelphia work much like an urgent care facility. There are doctors that work there, but there are also nurse practitioners that are just as likely and able to help you when you go there.
In fact, originally community legal services establishments were put into place to help teach practical methods to law school students. Now, however, they are not required to have academic ties and instead just serve as a place for people to go for free legal counsel. As far as being tied to academia, the clinic offers hands on experience to law students as well as services to many different, typically indigent, clients. However, academic clinics are more often directed by clinical professors, rather than lawyers.
Usually community legal services inc offer pro bono work in a particular area, though sometimes it is multiple areas, which is how they provide free legal services. If you are looking for a community legal services directory, they are listed in the phone book more often than not, but it is simply faster and easier to just search online for what you are looking for. Just go to your search engine of choice type in community legal services Philadelphia and see what you get! It’ll be faster and easier than flipping through a book, I can tell you that much.