Put simply, we answer questions – thoroughly, thoughtfully, and quickly. Our Attorney Network covers a wide range of legal areas, so we’re ready for even your toughest, most obscure questions.

We guarantee a thorough answer or a full refund within 24 hours or less.

Since this is an Attorney Network, legal questions are of course what we’re best at. But lawyers are thinkers, so don’t hesitate to send questions of politics, philosophy, psychology, mental health, finances, investing, and anything else on your mind.

We offer a middle ground between free advice online (which is often terrible) and hiring an attorney, which costs thousands of dollars and might lead to nowhere.

Unlike the for-profit options out there, we offer a full refund if you don't receive an answer within 24 hours, and we don’t scam you with hidden fees or surprise memberships.

Also, unlike those for-profit options, we aren’t paying our attorneys so little that they can’t afford to give you anything but rushed, generic answers.

No. A for-profit company owns JustAnswer, AskALawyer, LawyersOnCall and similar hotlines.

That company provides a similar service as this Hotline, for what appears to be a fee of $84 per month, plus additional fees that they will charge as “premium services” for reviewing or drafting documents or asking too many questions.

We have no connection to that company. This is why we charge only $20 for access to our Hotline, and we guarantee an answer within 24 hours or a full refund.

No. LegalShield is a for-profit company that offers legal insurance, with no connection to our nonprofit or our Hotline.

LegalShield covers only some areas of law, and excludes many pre-existing legal issues. It also does not offer legal advice or in-court representation.

Many LegalShield clients have complained about receiving generic advice, waiting for days for an answer, or being penalized for asking too many questions.

No. So-called “legal insurance” charges you for services and then avoids providing those services as much as possible, for example by finding excuses to deny claims. It takes months or even years of payments before they will hire an attorney represent you in court.

For most people, “legal insurance” offers them nothing more than a false sense of security. And for the attorneys, it’s often a recipe for disaster to try and answer unlimited numbers of questions from their legal insurance clients.

Sure! To verify that we’re a real nonprofit, you can find our profile on the IRS website at this link: https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/

Simply type in “Amicus Curiae” and we’re often the only search result that comes up. Or you can copy/paste our EIN into the search request: 83-3982689.

From there, you can see that the Amicus Curiae Foundation has been a tax-exempt organization since 2019, proudly serving communities around the U.S. as a legal aid nonprofit.

As a nonprofit, we can afford to charge less because we care more.

Our Attorney Network understands that our goal here is to help people, not profits.

On top of that, we also keep our costs to a minimum. We have no full-time staff, no advertising expenses and no executive compensation.

That lets us charge very little, while still offering thorough coverage across most areas of law, 24/7, even late at night, on weekends, and on holidays.

So, if you have any questions, about life or law, why not give it a shot? With our full refund guarantee, you have literally nothing to lose. And the education you’ll gain along the way will be priceless.

As much as we’d like to accommodate refunds, for now the only refunds we can guarantee are refunds for questions that no one answered within 24 hours.

So, please do not submit a payment unless you are confident that you have a question that needs to be answered.

One fun fact is, you do not have to submit a question right away! It’s ok to sign up for this Hotline and then come back later with your question or questions. Sometimes it takes time to think about what exactly you want to ask.

Please know that if you submit a question and then find an answer on your own, that answer may be bad advice and/or incomplete advice, making it all the more useful to talk to a lawyer about it.

Unfortunately, the IRS does not allow tax deductions when payments are made in exchange for services.

You are certainly welcome to donate by selecting the "Donation" button at the bottom of our home page. Your donation would be tax-deductable.

Just keep in mind that in order to maintain good standing with the IRS, we are not able to answer questions in exchange for donations.

The attorneys allowed to work at this Hotline will all have a few things in common, to ensure that everyone gets serious, thoughtful answers to their questions:

1) Currently licensed to practice law

2) Actively practicing law

3) No disciplinary or criminal history

4) 8+ years of lawyering experience

5) Published author and/or recipient of awards related to the practice of law

As a nonprofit service meant to help as many people as possible, our attorneys can only answer questions online and provide education and guidance.

As a result, the members of the Attorney Network are not allowed to represent you, form an attorney-client relationship with you, provide legal advice, fill out your legal forms, contact anyone on your behalf, meet with you in person, speak with you over the phone or via Zoom/Skype, or make any guarantees.

We’d love to charge nothing!

But as a small legal aid nonprofit, the most we can offer at the moment is our very low-cost Hotline and the occasional pro bono event.

At the moment, we do not have the funds to offer any attorney-client representation or provide free legal representation.

With that being said, our blog is free and may have the guidance you needed, if even the $20 fee for Hotline access is outside of your budget.

If you are a licensed attorney who is actively practicing law and has 8+ years of experience, and you would like to serve your community as part of our Hotline network, please submit a statement of interest and resume to us at help@amicuscf.org.

Our Attorney Agreement is available for your review here.

Thank you!

For medical emergencies, please call 911.

For any legal emergency, requiring immediate assistance, please contact an attorney near you.

This hotline does have an option to expedite an answer, but it may still take several minutes to receive a response, and the response is intended as general information, not as a set of instructions guaranteed to resolve any immediate legal emergency.

If you are in danger or experiencing any life-threatening emergency, please call 911.

We’re here for any questions you may have about cases, but asking lawyers to find cases is beyond what a $20 can accommodate.

Finding cases requires having access to search engines such as LexisNexis or WestLaw, which cost about $400/month, and it requires hours and hours of sifting through and reading cases until finding one that is relevant.

But if you found a case and would like someone to review it, summarize it, and/or discuss it, we’re here for you!

Ask away! Asking lots of questions does not cost you anything more, because we’re here to help. Your only limit is a word count limit.

Also, if you don’t know what question you’d like to ask, it may help to let us know what’s going on in your life, and then just ask, “What could I do?”

You certainly can!

If there’s anything unclear in the attorney’s guidance when they email you an answer, feel free to let them know, and they may be able to explain further.

For new questions, please submit a new request. You’re welcome to requeste that it go to the same attorney, if you’d like to keep that conversation going.

We try to respond to everything within 24 hours, but please note that the Refund Guarantee applies to your initial question, not to follow-up questions.

Also, please be as detailed as possible with your questions. Detailed questions can receive detailed answers. That will help you avoid having to send a follow-up question that starts with, “Oh, I forgot to mention…”

Since this is a legal aid hotline, you question will come to an attorney, but attorneys are big thinkers, so they are happy to take non-law questions too.

Questions about life advice, mental health, politics, ethics, philosophy, tutoring, movies, work/school projects, religion and so on are all welcome!

The attorney will do their best to answer your questions. But remember that we are a small nonprofit trying to help as many people as possible, at a very, very low cost. This means we cannot reach out to you just to ask what your question is.

So if your submission to the Hotline says nothing more than “I need help," or "I have divorce questions," then the answer you receive within 24 hours is most likely going to be unhelpful.

Similarly, if your submission has no questions at all, then the attorney will answer the question, “So, what are my legal options?”

For hotline submissions, we guarantee an answer or a full refund within 24 hours. Emailing for updates will only slow down that process.

But if you’d like to chat with a live attorney, we do have an option for that as well, simply click here to set up a time for a 30-minute live chat session: Live Chat

Only the hotline questions are sent to our Attorney Network. If legal questions are emailed to us at help@amicuscf.org, then the only answer we can provide is to redirect you to the Hotline, where you can purchase access to the Hotline for just $20 and then connect with an attorney.

Unfortunately, if everyone with legal questions could ask them for free, we would be completely overwhelmed and unable to answer anything at all.

We do have to collect basic information to process payments and answer questions, but we do not sell or share any customer information to any third parties unless required to do so by law.

We will not share any of these conversations in marketing campaigns or to social media outlets. While attorney-client privilege does not apply because no attorney-client relationships will be formed through our services, we will keep these conversations confidential.

For our more detailed policy, please click here.

Like most websites, we simply ask that you use our platform responsibly and not abusively.

Please remember that we are a small nonprofit, doing what we can to help people in their time of need, and we are always open to feedback on how to improve our services.

For a more detailed policy, please click here.

We're serious about your privacy.

We won't share any of your information unless required by law, and we won't review any of the communications between you and the attorney who answers your question(s).

Compare that to our for-profit competitors, who post full-length conversations on their websites, for anyone to see!

You are welcome to follow up, free of charge, if there is anything unclear in the answer you receive, or if the attorney misunderstood anything you said.

Please remember, the law can be extremely frustrating and unfair, but talking about it with a lawyer will give you what you need to move forward.

You may have already done a great deal of research into your question. It may be that the answer you receive simply confirms what you already knew.

That is still helpful, and for just $20, it is well worth it to confirm things with an experienced attorney. You would have received the same information from meeting with an attorney in person, at the cost $300 or more and many hours of your time.

Also, if you’ve done a great deal of research, please mention that. Mention what you already know, so we can focus our answer on what you don’t know.

Remember, we’re here to help, and we are only the messengers of the law and our experiences with the law.

We did not create the laws, and we don’t always even like the laws. But we do understand the law, and we’re here to put it in plain English for you, so you can understand the law, even if it’s an unfair law.

What sometimes happens is that a person dislikes their answer because they dislike the law, and then they lash out at the attorney with threats, vulgarity, and so on.

We only ask to be treated with the same amount of respect we treat you. Abusing that “golden rule” may result in being banned from the Hotline and/or may incur additional fees, because scrubbing these kinds of messages off the Hotline can take as much time as answering an actual question.

At the moment, our prices are as low as they can be. As we grow, we are eager to set aside funding for pro bono services for those in need.

From time to time, we will offer giveaways, gift cards, coupons, referral deals, and so forth to our emailing list.

Please join our emailing list for notifications of such offers.

But for now, if questions come into the hotline without a purchase and without a special offer from us, we unfortunately cannot afford to address them yet.