StatuteFINDER has provided free legal resources to 439 survivors and advocates in the last 28 days, as of April 16, 2025. We’ve served national inquiries from 40+ states.
“Nearly half of those who seek legal aid are turned away for lack of resources.”
However, StatuteFINDER appears to fill a unique niche: it serves both survivors and their advocates, providing legal information, statute guidance, and referrals rather than courtroom representation. This kind of service – delivering quick, accessible legal guidance – complements the work of traditional providers.
Multiplier effect: StatuteFINDER’s ability to assist advocates also multiplies its effect, since those advocates (such as shelter staff or victim service providers) can in turn help multiple survivors armed with better legal knowledge.
Domestic Violence Legal Services Comparison
Organization & Location |
Monthly Clients |
Annual Clients |
Annual Budget |
Size | Services & Focus |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Texas Advocacy Project Austin, TX | 833 | 10,502 (2022) | ~$4.3 million | Large | Statewide civil legal aid for domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking survivors. Handles protective orders, divorces, custody, etc., in 4,765 cases for 10k+ Texans yearly. Operates a hotline and partnerships across 58% of Texas counties. |
Sanctuary for Families – Legal Center New York, NY | 458 | ~5,500 legal clients (FY 22–23) | ~$29 million (FY 23) | Large | New York City’s largest gender-violence agency. Its Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services (240 staff, 1,000+ pro bono lawyers) provides comprehensive free representation in family law, immigration, and public benefits for abuse survivors. |
StatuteFINDER | 439 | 5,268 (estimated) | $6,000 ($500/month) | Small | AI-driven nonprofit providing efficient legal resources to domestic violence survivors. Achieves substantial impact with minimal budget through innovative technology solutions. |
Her Justice New York, NY | 308 | ~3,700 women & children (FY 2024) | ~$7 million (FY 2024) | Large | NYC nonprofit mobilizing pro bono attorneys to serve low-income women survivors. Provides free legal representation in orders of protection, child custody, child/spousal support, divorce, and immigration. The volunteer attorney model generated ~$45 million of donated legal services. |
DC Volunteer Lawyers Project Washington, DC | 167 | >2,000 (2022) | ~$3.5 million (2023) | Medium | Unique model pairing a small staff with hundreds of volunteer attorneys. Provides free counsel to domestic violence survivors, at-risk children, and immigrant victims in DC. Services include obtaining civil protection orders, then handling related custody, divorce, and immigration cases. |
Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law Los Angeles, CA | 96 | ~1,150 (500 adults + 650 children) yearly | ~$1.6 million | Medium | LA-based family law center focusing on low-income DV survivors. Helps clients (85% women experiencing abuse) with restraining orders, custody, divorce, property, and support issues. Uses a volunteer-supported model for legal consultations and representation. |
Project Safeguard Denver, CO | 65 | ~780 (2022) | ~$1.1 million (2022) | Medium | Regional nonprofit providing civil legal advocacy in the Denver metro. Offers court accompaniment and attorney representation to help survivors secure protective orders and navigate family court. Small staff (~15 people) partnering with police and shelters. |
Delaware County Domestic Abuse Project – Legal Services Media, PA | 20 | ~240 (est.) | Part of ~$2 million agency budget | Small | A county-level legal aid unit embedded in the local domestic violence agency. Two staff attorneys and one paralegal provide free legal options counseling and court representation for Protection From Abuse (PFA) orders. |
University of Alabama Domestic Violence Law Clinic Tuscaloosa, AL | 5 | ~50–60 (estimated) | University-funded | Small | A law school clinic serving Tuscaloosa County. Law students, under faculty supervision, offer free representation to domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault survivors in civil matters like protection orders, divorce, and custody. |
DV LEAP – Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment & Appeals Project Washington, DC | 3 | 30–40 cases (appeals) per year | ~$0.5 million (2019) | Small | A national appellate advocacy project that assists in precedent-setting domestic violence cases. The only nonprofit in the U.S. dedicated to appealing unjust trial outcomes for DV survivors. Handles cases via pro bono appellate lawyers. |
Cost Efficiency Analysis
StatuteFINDER Impact Ratio
With only $6,000 annual budget, StatuteFINDER serves 439 clients monthly, achieving nearly the same impact as organizations with budgets hundreds of times larger.
Cost Per Client Comparison
While larger organizations spend thousands of dollars per client served, StatuteFINDER’s innovative AI-driven approach costs approximately $1.14 per client ($6,000 ÷ 5,268 annual clients).
Note: Organizations are ranked from highest to lowest based on average monthly clients served. StatuteFINDER’s annual client number is estimated based on monthly data (439 × 12 = 5,268).
Comparing StatuteFINDER’s Service Output to National DV Legal Aid Averages
StatuteFINDER’s Reach: StatuteFINDER, a free legal resources app for domestic violence survivors, assisted 439 survivors and advocates in a 28-day period (roughly one month). This equates to about 20 people per day, or projected out, roughly 5,268+ individuals per year. To put this monthly service output in context, we compare it to two benchmarks: (1) the typical caseloads of nonprofit legal aid organizations focused on domestic violence survivors, and (2) the combined output of all organizations offering free legal services to DV survivors nationwide. Below we analyze monthly and annual service numbers from reputable sources to see how 439/month measures up.
Nonprofit Legal Aid Organizations for DV Survivors (Protective Orders, Family Law, etc.)
Domestic violence-focused legal aid nonprofits devote their resources to helping survivors obtain orders of protection, child custody, divorces, and other legal remedies for safety. These organizations range from small local programs to large state-wide agencies. Their annual and monthly caseloads vary widely:
Local DV Legal Clinic (Montgomery County, MD): One county-level project launched in 2016 handled 286 DV survivors’ cases in 2017 – about 24 clients per month montgomerycountymd.gov. Many small domestic violence legal clinics serve only a few hundred survivors per year.
Citywide Pro Bono Project (Washington, D.C.): The DC Volunteer Lawyers Project, which provides free representation to DV survivors, served over 2,100 victims of domestic violence (and at-risk children) in 2020 dcvlp.org. That is roughly 175 clients per month on average. This reflects a mid-sized urban DV legal aid program’s output.
Large Statewide DV Nonprofit (Texas): Texas Advocacy Project, a statewide legal aid nonprofit for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, handled 4,765 legal cases impacting 10,502 survivors in 2022 texasadvocacyproject.org. This is about 875 survivors per month served across Texas. Each of TAP’s staff attorneys assisted an average of 650 victims that year business.decaturdailydemocrat.com, underscoring the high volume a large specialized program can reach.
Comparison: StatuteFINDER’s 439 survivors/advocates in 28 days is a substantial monthly reach when compared to these organizations. It exceeds the monthly caseload of many local DV legal clinics (e.g. 24/month in one Maryland county) and even outpaces some city-level programs. At ~439 per month, StatuteFINDER is helping roughly 2.5 times the number of people that a mid-sized program like DCVLP averages per month dcvlp.org. Its output is about half the monthly volume of one of the nation’s largest DV legal nonprofits (TAP’s ~875/month)texasadvocacyproject.org. In other words, StatuteFINDER in one month is serving a number of survivors on the order of a large regional legal aid organization’s workload, which is a remarkable contribution for a single service.
All Free Legal Service Providers for Domestic Violence Survivors (National)
Nationally, free legal assistance for domestic violence survivors is provided by a patchwork of organizations: general civil legal aid programs, DV-specific nonprofits, law school clinics, government-funded initiatives, and pro bono attorney projects. Aggregating across all these providers, the number of survivors receiving free legal help each year reaches into the hundreds of thousands:
LSC-Funded Legal Aid (nationwide): The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) funds 132 legal aid organizations across every state. In 2021, LSC-funded programs closed 148,057 cases involving domestic violence lsc.gov. This equates to roughly 12,300 DV cases per month nationally handled by LSC grantees. (For context, this was an increase from ~129,000 DV cases in 2018 lsc.gov, reflecting growing demand.) These cases mainly involve protective orders, family law, and related civil matters for low-income survivors. Family-related issues (often involving domestic abuse) consistently make up the largest category of cases for LSC programs lsc.gov.
Other Nonprofits and Programs: In addition to LSC-funded services, many survivors are helped by non-LSC organizations – for example, the Texas Advocacy Project’s 10,500+ survivors in 2022 (noted above)texasadvocacyproject.org or city initiatives like DCVLP’s ~2,100 annually dcvlp.org. Law school domestic violence clinics and various pro bono projects contribute as well (typically handling dozens of cases per year each). Government-funded programs under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) or Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) also support legal assistance to thousands of victims through grants to nonprofits. While comprehensive data outside of LSC is scattered, these additional providers likely account for tens of thousands of cases annually on top of LSC’s figures. For example, one report notes that in a recent year Texas alone saw over 8,700 requests for legal help from DV survivors statewide business.decaturdailydemocrat.com, and similar efforts occur in other states.
National Scale Comparison: Combining all sources, it’s reasonable to estimate that well over 150,000 domestic violence survivors receive free legal services in the U.S. each year (LSC’s 148k + additional non-LSC cases). The true national total may be on the order of a couple hundred thousand when every nonprofit, clinic, and pro bono project is included. On a monthly basis, tens of thousands of survivors are getting legal help nationwide (LSC programs alone assist ~12k per month lsc.gov, and others add thousands more). In this context, StatuteFINDER’s 439 people in one month represents a meaningful share relative to a single program’s contribution, though of course it is a small fraction (a few percent) of the nationwide volume of services. Put another way, if StatuteFINDER maintains ~5,000+ assists per year, that output is similar to the annual caseload of a moderate-sized legal aid organization and would constitute around 3–4% of the LSC network’s yearly DV cases. Given that experts estimate low-income survivors get help for only about 23% of their legal problems lsc.gov, any addition to capacity is significant. StatuteFINDER’s services are helping to bridge this gap by reaching hundreds of survivors monthly who might otherwise struggle to find free legal aid.
Conclusion
In summary, StatuteFINDER’s monthly service output (439 survivors/advocates in 28 days) is highly notable when compared to traditional DV legal aid providers. It rivals the caseload of established nonprofits – exceeding what many local clinics accomplish and approaching the scale of large statewide programs. Nationally, the demand for free legal help for domestic violence is enormous (on the order of 100,000+ survivors served annually across all programs), so StatuteFINDER’s ~5,000+ annual pace makes a valuable contribution, though it addresses only a portion of the unmet need. Still, for a single service, reaching over 20 people a day with legal information or assistance is an impressive impact. StatuteFINDER’s performance demonstrates how innovative tools can complement existing legal aid efforts, potentially allowing survivors and advocates to access critical legal resources at scale. As the service grows, its output could further augment the national capacity for free legal support to domestic violence survivors – helping more individuals obtain protective orders, navigate family courts, and secure safety through legal means in line with what nonprofit legal aid organizations strive to do lsc.govlsc.gov.
📚 Citations & Data Sources
Legal Services Alabama (LSA)
Annual Reports. Legal Services Alabama. Retrieved from: https://legalservicesalabama.org/annual-reports/
Prairie State Legal Services (PSLS)
2022 Impact Report. Prairie State Legal Services. Retrieved from: https://pslegal.org/files/galleries/PSLS_Impact_Report_2022_FinalVersion.pdf
Legal Aid Chicago
Annual Reports and Financials. Legal Aid Chicago. Retrieved from: https://legalaidchicago.org/who-we-are/annual-report-and-financials/
Maryland Legal Aid (MLA)
2022 Annual Report. Maryland Legal Aid. Retrieved from: https://www.mdlab.org/wp-content/uploads/Maryland-Legal-Aid-Annual-Report-2022-optimized.pdf
Lone Star Legal Aid (LSLA)
In 2022, we served approximately 65,000 households. Lone Star Legal Aid. Retrieved from: https://www.facebook.com/LoneStarLegalAid/videos/in-2022-we-served-approximately-65000-households-including-clients-like-chester-/188110684087702/
Southern Arizona Legal Aid (SALA)
Southern Arizona Legal Aid - Tucson Office. Legal Aid Offices. Retrieved from: https://www.legalaidoffices.com/details/az_85719_southern-arizona-legal-aid-inc-tuscon-officeLegal Aid Offices+2Legal Aid Offices+2Legal Aid Offices+2
Texas Advocacy Project (TAP)
Who We Are. Texas Advocacy Project. Retrieved from: https://www.texasadvocacyproject.org/who-we-areTexas Advocacy Project
Montgomery County Legal Center
Montgomery County Legal Center TX. Retrieved from: https://www.dir.gen.tr/lcl/1125406-montgomery-county-legal-center.htmlGen Directory
DC Pro Bono Week
Pro Bono Goes Local: A Launch Celebration for DC Pro Bono Week. Washington Council of Lawyers. Retrieved from: https://wclawyers.org/dcpbw24-24-10-16/