Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center

Legal Services:The APALRC established the multilingual legal helpline and the legal interpreter project from its inception to provide linguistically accessible and culturally appropriate legal services to low-income Asian Americans with limited english proficiency in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Since our founding in 1998, we have matured from an intake and referral model to a full-fledged legal services program. We provide legal assistance in the area of immigration, abuse prevention, family law, housing, employment, victim assistance, disability, public assistance and consumer matters. Immigration legal assistance comprises more than a third of our caseload, with a particular focus on providing legal representation to victims of trafficking, crime and domestic violence. The second largest area of focus is family law where we provide individual legal representation to victims of domestic violence in abuse prevention, child custody and support as well as divorce proceedings. In light of the increasing pressure from gentrification, the APALRC has also focused on legal assistance and advocacy in preserving affordable housing, especially in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington, D.C.