Mission

We provide high-quality, free legal representation to the Latino community and low-income immigrant families. We work to advance civil and human rights and ensure access to justice, especially for people most impacted by historical discrimination and violence.

Licensed attorneys and competent staff work so that poverty, immigration status, disability, language, sexual orientation, or gender identity is not an impediment to justice.

Vision

We envision a world where all peoples are treated with deep dignity and respect and where there are no impediments to justice.

Guests in Ohlone territories

We intend to be good relatives. This office was born on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Nation lands. It sits at the border of the American Indian Cultural District and the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District in the Mission.

We recognize a delicate balance in being a good guest and honoring Ohlone relatives and neighbors. We seek reverence, respect, and reciprocity as defined by Indigenous political and spiritual governments. We support the sovereignty and self-determination of all Indigenous peoples.

These lands, waters, and people are sacred. Many of us are displaced relatives from the south of Turtle Island and Abia Yala. We ask neighbors to learn how Ohlone people ask us to live here, and to show gratitude.

Our history

Founded in 1973 by Latino law students — children of immigrants or immigrants themselves — to fill a gap in economically and culturally accessible legal services for the Bay Area’s Latino, low-income, monolingual Spanish-speaking, and immigrant communities. Founders had lived the obstacles of systemic racism, sexism, classism, poverty, language injustice, and immigration status.

In the early years the office built an immigration practice and defended important political cases. Later came a tenants’ rights project and a lawyer-referral service with a growing community of Latino lawyers. After IRCA, Proposition 187, the Patriot Act, and later enforcement waves, the immigration practice expanded to help eligible people become U.S. citizens.

The Workers’ Rights Program began in 1991, joining organizing campaigns with legal work against wage theft and other abuse. Senior Law and Youth Law began in 1998 when Mission Legal Defense closed; the senior program remains a culturally competent free legal service for Spanish-speaking and Latino older adults in San Francisco. We have also housed a Housing Law Program that we seek to revive.

Advocacy has always sat beside the legal work. In the 1990s we joined fights against Proposition 187 and Proposition 209. INS Watch answered Bay Area raids. In 2000 we adopted the San Francisco Day Labor Program; in 2001 the Women’s Collective of that program; in 2002 FairCare, organizing families against racially unjust school discipline. Today we still take part in coalitions and policy change, and we work with law firms on MCLE seminars that lead to pro bono support.