2. Contact PTLA

Contact PTLA

Contact Pine Tree Legal Assistance for legal help

By phone

Call us at 942-8322 during our call-in hours:

  • Mondays 12:00 pm – 2:30 pm 
  • Tuesdays 9:00 am – 11:30 am 
  • Thursdays 9:00 am – 11:30 am

If this number is busy, you can try any of our office numbers at the bottom of this page.

In person

At our offices:

  • Augusta: Wednesdays 9:00 – 11:30 am (Notice: The Augusta office is closed for walk-ins on June 25th)
  • Bangor: Wednesdays 1:00 – 4:00 pm
  • Lewiston: Fridays 9:00 - 11:30 am (Notice: The Lewiston office will be closed for walk-in hours on July 4th and July 11th)
  • Machias: Mondays 9:00 – 11:30 am 
  • Portland: Wednesdays 9:00 – 11:30 am (Notice: The Portland office will be closed for walk-in hours on July 2nd)
  • Presque Isle: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 9:00 - 11:00am. May also be available at other times during regular business hours, call the Presque Isle office at 764-4349 to ask about availability. 

In our communities:

 

Do you speak a language other than English? 

If you call us or come to our office, ask for an interpreter right away. We will provide one free of charge. 

You can also call us at 207-942-8322. Press “2.” Then press: 

 

Please leave a message letting us know where you are in the state, what kind of issue you have, and how we can reach you. A staff member will call you back within 5-7 business days. 

What does Pine Tree Legal Assistance do?

Pine Tree Legal Assistance (PTLA) is a civil legal aid organization – this means we help people with non-criminal legal issues solve their problems. Sometimes this looks like talking to you on the phone to give advice about a problem, and sometimes it means full representation by a lawyer in court. 
Some of the most common problems we help people solve are:

We cannot help with:

  • Criminal cases
  • Traffic violations
  • Personal injury
  • We are not able to take calls about Family Law problems. We do Family Law cases related to sexual assault or domestic violence through a special referral relationship with local advocacy organizations across Maine. If you are experiencing sexual assault or domestic violence connect with those services to find out what legal and other resources may be available to you. Reach out for help and support around domestic violence. Reach out for help and support around sexual assault.

What to expect when you contact PTLA

Whether you get help in person or on the phone, our first step is doing an 'intake' with you. One of our trained paralegals will talk with you privately to get more information about you and your situation.


To figure out if we can help, we will need to ask you a lot of questions. We will ask about: 

  • Your legal issue 
  • Your name and the names of other people involved
  • Your contact information
  • Your income and assets

We will ask you questions about your demographics, including your citizenship or immigration status. We will not share immigration information with USCIS or ICE. 

Sometimes we are not able to help you with your legal issue. We may not be able to help because:

  • It is not a legal issue Pine Tree handles
  • We have a conflict of interest and the ethics rules stop us from helping you
  • We have limits on who we can help based on income and assets – and if you are over those limits we may not be able to help.
  • Some of our funding only allows us to help people with certain immigration statuses – so there are some people we can’t help.

If you are eligible, we will ask for more information about your legal issue. It is helpful to have with you anything you have in writing about your issue. 

Once we have the information we need, we will figure out if we can give you advice or if we can do more work on your case. If we give you advice, the paralegal will work with you and an attorney to give you legal advice about your case. If we can do more work on your case, we will send it to one of our units where our staff will work together, and with you, to help solve your problem. Someone from the unit will get in touch with you within one week, or sooner if your issue is more urgent. 

Why is it so hard to get you on the phone? 

We know the wait on our phone line can be long. We serve the whole state, and many people need our help. Each year we work on more than 6,000 cases but we get over 10,000 requests for help. If you call during our phone hours and wait on hold, someone will answer your call and talk to you about your issue. Wait times are sometimes shorter at the beginning and end of each shift. 

Is it safe for me to talk with Pine Tree?

We understand that the legal system can be complicated and scary – it can be hard to know who to trust or what to believe. Here is some information about who we are, and what we do that may help you answer this question:

  • Pine Tree Legal Assistance is not a government agency. We do get some funding from the state and federal governments, but that does not mean we work for them. We work for our clients. In many cases we represent people who are having problems with government agencies!
  • PTLA will not charge you for legal help. We give advice and represent people who qualify for our services at no cost to them. Sometimes our clients may have to pay for things like court costs – but we will never charge you for legal advice or services.
  • Because some of our funders require it, we will ask you about your immigration status. We will never share this information with USCIS or ICE. The worst thing that will happen is that we might not be able to help you because of restrictions on our funding. The rules around that are very complicated, but it is better to reach out and ask than to assume we cannot help just because of your immigration status. 
  • PTLA will always provide an interpreter at no cost to you. Learn more about your language access rights in the Maine Courts.
  • We won’t take any legal action or discuss your case with anyone, unless we talk with you about it first and agree that is what we should do.
  • If you are worried we are not treating you fairly, we have a process for clients to complain, and have those complaints heard and taken seriously. Read our Client Grievance Policy.

Contacte a Pine Tree Legal Assistance (Spanish language contact page)

 (Arabic language contact page) Pine Tree الاتصال بـمكتب

Kala xiriir Pine Tree Legal Assistance (Somali language contact page)

Fale com a Pine Tree Legal Assistance (Portuguese language contact page)

Solola na lisungi ya mibéko ya Pine Tree (Lingala language contact page)

Contactez Pine Tree Legal Assistance (French language contact page)

Kontakte Pine Tree Legal Assistance (Asistans Jiridik Pine Tree) (Haitian Kreyòl language contact page)

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