We will ask you a few basic questions. For example:

• What is your name and contact information?
• Are you calling for yourself or someone else? If for someone else, what is his or her name?
• What is your legal problem?
• What kind of help do you want?
• The date of any upcoming meetings, hearings or court dates.

If you contact us by email, fax or mail, or if you leave a voice mail message, please tell us the same information listed above. Having this information helps us know the best person to follow up with you.

We might also ask you for information about your disability. If you are calling for another adult, we may ask to speak directly to that person. This is because, in most cases, we take direction from the person with the disability (unless he or she is a minor).

We will contact you within three business days. We return calls in the order we receive them. We will accommodate disabilities and foreign languages as needed. Please note that if we do not receive enough information about the type of help you need from your initial request for help, we will first have to contact you to ask some basic questions before we can assign your call to one of our intake specialists.

Our intake specialists will ask for basic information including:

• Your name
• Age
• Gender
• Race
• Income amount and source
• Type of disability
• Education level
• Voter status
• Where you live
• Whether you have a guardian

Our federal and private funders require us to collect this information. We will also ask a lot of questions about your specific legal issue. These questions are necessary to figure out if we can help you, the level of help we can provide, and what resources and referrals we can give you as well.

Our legal team will review the information at a weekly case assessment meeting. We will evaluate whether your request is within our case selection criteria, whether the case has merit, and whether we have enough resources to give you the type of help you’re seeking. We will also determine what type of help we can provide such as:

• Referrals
• Brief advice
• Technical and self-advocacy assistance
• Negotiation
• Litigation