Colorado Legal Services is celebrating 100 years of fighting for justice for Coloradans with low incomes in 2025.
The organization recently released its 2025 Annual Report, which you can download here.
The statewide legal aid organization serves around 10,000 Coloradans each year who are facing civil legal challenges, helping people in our communities stay housed, escape domestic violence, stop unfair debt collection, undo bureaucratic public benefits mistakes, solve tax disputes, protect the rights of farmworkers, advocate for survivors of human trafficking and severe crime, and fix complicated identification document issues.
“For 100 years, we have remained true to our core values of defending the rights of low-income people and seniors,” said Matt Baca, executive director of Colorado Legal Services. “I am eternally grateful to the continued dedication of Colorado Legal Services attorneys, paralegals, intake staff, social workers, and many others who do this important work. As we look forward to the next 100 years, it is with the dogged determination, compassionate dedication, and resilience that carried us through the first century of service. While our clients face continued hardships and threats to legal aid funding are ever present, the future of legal aid is one we will meet with the conviction that civil legal representation is a vital human right.”
Colorado Legal Services began in February of 1925 when the Legal Aid Society of Denver (later called the Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Denver) was formed. Until the Legal Aid Society of Colorado Springs was founded in 1953, Denver was the only city in the state with a formal legal services program for low-income Coloradans, leaving people in other areas in civil court without representation if they could not afford it.
More legal aid organizations continued to start across the state, until several separate legal aid organizations, including the original Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Denver, consolidated in 1999 to become the cohesive, statewide legal aid program Colorado Legal Services is today.
Colorado Legal Services rings in the next century with support and collaboration from Coloradans and organizations statewide. It recently added social workers to help provide holistic services, continued to build community relationships, rebranded and built a new website to help people more easily access it and various resources, and worked to increase funding options for low-income Coloradans.
Read the report, apply for services, and learn more at coloradolegalservices.org.
Colorado Legal Services is Colorado’s statewide nonprofit legal aid program providing civil legal assistance to low-income individuals and older Coloradans throughout the state. Its 12 offices provide free legal assistance in a broad variety of legal areas, including eviction defense, consumer protection, services to survivors of serious crime, representation for domestic violence survivors, and many others.
About 1 in 5 Coloradans qualify financially for CLS’s services. CLS’s innovative staff of around 180 experts, including attorneys, paralegals, licensed legal paraprofessionals, intake specialists, social workers, and other operations staff, reach tens of thousands of Coloradans each year to support their civil court needs.