Get Legal Help with your eviction

If you received an eviction complaint filed with the court, it is important to appear at all court proceedings.

If you’re facing an eviction in Essex County, New Jersey, please register below using Calendly.

Step 1 - Register for an upcoming appointment. To register you will need:

Your docket number
Your upcoming court date
The name of your landlord / management company

Step 2 - After you register, you will be emailed a link. Use this link on the date and time of your appointment to speak with a lawyer.

Step 3 - You will first speak with a paralegal to share more details about you, your finances (for eligibility screening), and your case.

NOTE: Volunteer Lawyers for Justice (VLJ) is a non-profit legal services organization and has financial eligibility guidelines. Only eligible tenants will be able to speak with a lawyer.

Step 4 - Eligible tenants will be placed in a virtual meeting room to wait to speak with the next available lawyer. Tenants are seen on a first come, first serve basis. There may be a wait.

You can also apply over the phone on Mondays and Tuesdays, between 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM and from 1:30 PM - 4:00 PM Eastern. Please Call (973) 943-4754.

register Below:

tenant information provided by New Jersey Courts is available here.

For tenants facing an eviction in Essex County, New Jersey, below are workbooks created by Newark Community Solutions and VLJ to help prepare for landlord/tenant court:

A Tenant Workbook (English)

Manual del inquilino (español)

Manual do arrendatário (Português)

The Tenant Survival Book

More than seventy million people in this country live in homes owned by someone else. Rich, poor, middle-class; living in public projects, single-family houses, or luxury high-rise apartments - these people all have one thing in common. They are tenants and they face the same enemy: the Real-Estate System.

In Berkeley, Ann Arbor, New Orleans, New York, Boston, and Chicago . . . Tenants are organizing for power to gain the rights they do not now have. THE TENANT SURVIVAL BOOK is a valuable tool for the mushrooming tenant movement. In this comprehensive guide, Emily Jane Goodman explains why tenants must organize, how to go about organizing, and what results organizing can accomplish.

THE TENANT SURVIVAL BOOK describes how the economics of real estate has led to the current housing crisis and details the traditional landlord/tenant relationship in which the landlord has all the rights and the tenant none. The book then sets forth the practicalities of organizing: calling a meeting, confronting the landlord, finding the proper organizer and dealing with the court system, when and how rent strikes can be organized, bargaining collectively with the landlord for equitable leases, working with the media to gain publicity and funds. An important chapter of the book translates common clauses found in most leases from legalese to plain English. A glossary of legal terms is also provided. Survival exhibits include sample demands for negotiation, a sample negotiated contract, ideas for leaflets, and forms useful for organizing.

About the Author:

Emily Jane Goodman is a New York attorney. Most of the work she does is for liberation: of tenants, prisoners, and women. She is a feminist. According to Ms. Goodman, tenants are one of the most oppressed groups in the United States. She says, "We're oppressed not only on the basis of race, religion, nationality, sex, sexual preference, money, education or lifestyle, but because we don't own property." She is a tenant.