Apply for the Nonprofit Legal Clinic

This is an application for new and existing nonprofits to request free legal help from Communities Rise via an appointment at our monthly Legal Clinics. Learn more about our other nonprofit legal services. Communities Rise serves nonprofit organizations, community-based organizations, or such groups that are in the process of being created.

Please note that completion of this application does not guarantee an appointment—a Communities Rise staff member will review the information you submit and reach out to notify you if we are able to provide your organization with a Legal Clinic appointment.

Under our Legal Clinic program, we provide free legal help by scheduling your organization for a 1 hour appointment with a volunteer attorney or Communities Rise staff attorney. Our Legal Clinics are held via Zoom video call once a month from 5:00pm-7:15pm. Clinic participants are scheduled for a one-hour appointment during the following time slots: 5:00pm-6:00pm or 6:15pm-7:15pm. All above mentioned times are in local Washington state time.

Please be aware that space in our clinics are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. If your desired clinic is full, we will work with you to schedule you for the next month’s clinic, if you are eligible. Legal Clinic appointments tend to fill up quickly- we encourage those interested in participating to complete an application as early as possible.

The attorneys at the legal clinic are either volunteer attorneys in Communities Rise’s network or staff attorneys at Communities Rise. Each clinic appointment is handled by one or two attorneys and a volunteer note-taker. Volunteer note-takers may be legal professionals or law student volunteers. Our attorneys bring a diverse range of legal experience, and we will try our best to match you with an attorney whose experience is relevant to your type of legal needs.

To be eligible for the Legal Clinic, applicants must demonstrate each of the following:

1. You are a nonprofit or community-based organization.
2. The organization is registered (or plans to register) in Washington state.
3. The organization’s purpose is primarily charitable or community-based.
4. The organization has (or plans to get) tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. Alternatively, your organization may be fiscally sponsored by a tax-exempt organization.
5. The organization is unable to pay for legal advice without significant impairment of program resources.

Generally, it’s best if the person who is submitting this application is the same person planning to attend the requested appointment. Additionally, this person must have proper authorization to seek legal help on behalf of their organization. Typical examples of those with proper authorization include a board member or the executive director. If you are a volunteer who is not serving on the board of directors and you do not hold an officer position, then you may not be the correct person to fill out this form on behalf of the organization.

We do not serve all types of legal needs at our Legal Clinic:

1. We only advise organizations, so we do not help individuals with their personal legal problems.
2. We can advise on most types of legal needs that typically affect nonprofits, as long as they can be addressed in a 1-hour appointment. If your legal need is too time-consuming for clinic, we can answer general questions about it.
3. We do not help with litigation, lawsuits, threatened lawsuits, court proceedings, administrative proceedings, mediation, arbitration, or any other active legal disputes.
4. Due to time constraints, we cannot help you draft or comprehensively review legal documents, such as contracts, bylaws, etc.

Examples of legal needs that we can help you with during clinic:

• General questions about creating new nonprofits — Questions about local, state, and federal filings.
• General questions IRS applications for tax-exempt status — General questions about becoming a 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4).
• Nonprofit Governance — Advice on good nonprofit corporate governance practices and navigating conflicts of interest. Questions about bylaws, articles of incorporation, and policies.
• Maintenance and Compliance — Questions about protecting your 501(c)(3) status, advocacy and lobbying restrictions, unrelated business income taxes, etc.
• Tax Law — Questions regarding federal, state, and local tax obligations (we do not help prepare tax returns because we are lawyers, not accountants).
• Questions about Contracts — We cannot draft, review, or negotiate contracts at clinic, but we can provide guidance and answer questions about specific portions of a contract or advise on best practices.
• Employment — Questions about complying with local, state, and federal employment laws. Best practices for executive compensation, policies, and conflicts of interest.
• Real Estate — Questions about commercial leases or purchases and sale agreements.
• Intellectual Property — Questions about registering trademarks and copyrights. Questions about license agreements. We cannot help with patents.
• Privacy and the Internet — Questions about privacy policies, terms and conditions, and other website-related concerns.
• Risk and Liability Assessment — Questions about insurance needs, indemnification provisions, and waiver and release forms.

If you are unsure of whether we can help with your legal needs, please contact us to ask for a clarification.

1. APPLICATION FOR LEGAL ADVICE. An individual (the “Individual Applicant”) submits this application for the purpose of obtaining legal advice from a licensed attorney. The Individual Applicant affirms to Communities Rise (1) that the Individual Applicant is seeking legal advice for and on behalf of a small business, nonprofit organization, or community-based organization (the “Client Organization”) and (2) that the Individual Applicant is properly authorized to seek legal advice for and on behalf of the Client Organization. Communities Rise will only serve the legal needs of the Client Organization and not the personal legal needs of the Individual Applicant. If the Individual Applicant does not speak English, then this application has been adequately translated to a language understood by the Individual Applicant.


2. SHORT-TERM LIMITED LEGAL SERVICES. If Communities Rise approves this application, then Communities Rise will arrange for one or more attorneys (collectively, the “Attorney”) who will advise the Client Organization during the clinic appointment. By attending clinic, the Attorney and the Client Organization form a very limited, short-term, attorney-client relationship with each other. This attorney-client relationship is limited to only the 60-minute legal clinic appointment and the subsequent delivery of any final notes to the Client Organization summarizing the advice provided at the clinic appointment. The Attorney is not available to advise the Client Organization on any legal matters outside of these limited circumstances, and the Attorney will NOT represent the Individual Applicant or the Client Organization before any court or tribunal since Communities Rise provides only transactional legal services and not litigation services. If the Attorney nevertheless provides additional legal services outside of these limited circumstances, then the Client Organization understands that such support is a one-time exception and does NOT create or evidence any ongoing or prolonged attorney-client relationship, absent any writing from the Attorney or Communities Rise explicitly stating a change to the limitations of this attorney-client relationship.


3. NO GUARANTEES. This application does not create a contract or agreement requiring Communities Rise to provide legal services, and Communities Rise may reject an application for any reason. Because the outcome of any legal matter is subject to inherent risks and other factors beyond an attorney’s control, Communities Rise and the Attorney have not made, and cannot make, any guarantees or promises concerning the outcome of any matters. Due to the limited scope of the Communities Rise Legal Clinic program, the Attorney relies entirely on the accuracy and completeness of the information provided by the Individual Applicant and the Client Organization, and the Attorney cannot make any independent factual investigations. Therefore, the Client Organization understands its obligations to share all pertinent information with the Attorney in order to receive better legal advice.


4. OTHER ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. The Communities Rise Legal Clinic is a space free from alcohol, drugs, weapons, violence, abuse, and aggressive behavior. Individuals who break this rule may have their appointment cancelled or terminated. The titles and headings of these General Acknowledgements are not legally substantive language and should not be used to interpret or construe the legal meaning of these provisions.

When a small business, nonprofit organization, or community-based organization (the “Client Organization” or “you”) submits this application seeking legal services from Communities Rise (“CR”, “we” or “us”), we will treat any information relating to your request for legal services as private, confidential, and generally protected by attorney-client privilege. We may share your confidential information with others for the purposes listed below in the manner listed below:

1. TO PROVIDE LEGAL SERVICES. To facilitate our ability to offer you our legal services, you authorize us to share, on your behalf, any information and documents relevant to this request for legal help with the volunteer attorneys who will provide legal services to you and with any volunteers assisting those attorneys. To facilitate our ability to identify and place you with an attorney who has the appropriate expertise, you authorize us to share, on your behalf, a limited, anonymized description of your legal matter with community legal partners of CR, including but not limited to pro bono transactional law firms, CR’s funders that CR partners with to provide transactional legal services, and any volunteer attorneys who may be interested in providing legal services to you.


2. TO PROMOTE OUR CHARITABLE LEGAL SERVICES. Unless you at any time inform us in writing otherwise, we may separately disclose the following information in our public materials: (1) the name of the Client Organization, and (2) an anonymized description of your legal matter. Our public materials include, but are not limited to, our annual reports, fundraising materials, outreach materials, any success stories or articles we may publish about Communities Rise, and any presentations about our work at Communities Rise.

By submitting this form, you authorize and consent to the above limited disclosures. At any time, you may withdraw or limit your consent by communicating with us in writing your intent to do so, but such withdrawals or limitations may make it impracticable to render legal services to the Client Organization. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Communities Rise reserves the right to disclose confidential client information as required or permitted by attorney ethics rules or law.