Our staff work in specialized units to best address the problems faced by the people in our service area living in poverty.

Asian Outreach Unit
The Asian Outreach Unit offers legal services to Asians in GBLS' service area in all areas of law GBLS handles. Currently, Asian Outreach staff speak Cantonese, Mandarin, Toisanese and Vietnamese. Services are available to clients speaking other languages through interpreters.

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Elderly Unit
The Elderly Unit provides legal assistance to Senior Citizens (people age 60 and older) in areas such as housing and tenant rights, nursing home issues, Social Security, SSI, Medicaid and Medicare, elder abuse, and defense against guardianships and conservatorships, regardless of a client's income. The Unit is also focusing on the problems experienced by elderly legal immigrants who are losing their SSI and food stamp benefits.

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Employment Unit
The Employment Unit helps people who have been wrongfully denied unemployment benefits, victims of discrimination in training opportunities or employment, and people who are not receiving minimum wage or the overtime pay to which they are entitled. In addition, through legislative and administrative advocacy, the Unit has addressed the unemployment system, wage and hour laws, low wage worker protections, and training for disadvantaged families.

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Family Law Unit
The Family Law Unit represents victims of domestic violence in securing their own safety and well-being and that of their children. Advocates assist these clients and others in obtaining custody and visitation orders and child support through divorce and paternity actions. The Unit also helps families involved with the Department of Social Services and provides assistance in the guardianship cases of minors.

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Health & Disability Unit
The Health & Disability Unit assists people with disabilities and elders obtain cash benefits and access to health care to enable them to live independently. The Unit helps people obtain and keep Social Security or SSI disability benefits under the Social Security program and helps people secure health care through access to Medicaid or other public health insurance programs. 

The Unit also works to ensure access to public transportation for people with disabilities.  For more information on the MBTA Access Lawsuit please click here

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Medicare Advocacy Project
The Medicare Advocacy Project provides legal assistance to elders and persons with disabilities to help secure the full Medicare coverage to which they are entitled. MAP offers advice and representation when beneficiaries are wrongfully denied benefits to access durable medical equipment, home health services, physicians' services, skilled nursing facility care, as well as issues with HMO/managed care.  MAP assists beneficiaries with eligibility and enrollment issues; imminent hospital discharges; hospice; and quality of care.   MAP helps Medicare beneficiaries to navigate the Part D prescription drug program and secure subsidies for those who qualify.  MAP also provides guidance regarding Medicare-related programs, such as Prescription Advantage.

MAP serves Medicare beneficiaries throughout Massachusetts.  In addition to GBLS, MAP has offices at Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts (LACCM), Western Massachusetts Legal Services (WMLS), and South Coastal Counties Legal Services (SCCLS).

To reach the Medicare Advocacy Project, please call:

1-800-323-3205 (GBLS): Greater Boston area (Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk counties)

1-800-649-3718 (LACCM) or go to http://www.laccm.org: Worcester area (Worcester County)

1-800-639-1109 (WMLS): Springfield area (Franklin, Hampden, Berkshire, and Hampshire counties)

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Housing Unit
The Housing Unit offers legal assistance to individuals and families who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless and groups that represent tenants in substandard housing and the homeless. The Unit helps people gain access to emergency shelter and long-term affordable housing. Because of the limited availability of safe and decent affordable housing in Boston, the Unit's highest priority is to preserve existing low-income housing and to help people access and remain in such housing.

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Immigration Unit
The Immigration Unit represents people fleeing persecution in their own countries, undocumented battered women and undocumented unaccompanied minors to help them obtain legal status from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and to defend them in proceedings to remove them from the U.S. The Unit also provides advice, referrals and information on a wide range of other immigration questions through its intake clinics. In addition services are provided by law students through a legal clinic of the Harvard Law School. The Women Refugees Project focuses on securing formal acknowledgment by immigration agencies of gender-based violence world-wide, opening access of refugee women to political asylum and other protected status in the U.S., and promoting development of asylum law at agency and federal court levels.

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Welfare Law Unit
The Welfare Law Unit helps clients get and keep the help they need from the TAFDC cash assistance program for families with children, the EAEDC cash assistance program for disabled individuals and some others, the Food Stamp program, and related benefits such as child care and education and training programs.

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Cambridge & Somerville Legal Services Office
In addition, our Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services office (CASLS) offers legal assistance in all of these areas to residents of Cambridge, Somerville and surrounding towns.