A legal hotline is a service designed to provide legal advice and information by telephone at the time the client contacts the program or soon thereafter. This definition includes programs that provide answers to clients’ legal questions, analysis of their legal problems, and advice on solving those problems. Hotlines may perform brief services such as making phone calls, writing letters or preparing documents on behalf of clients. Hotlines may also provide referrals to other programs or serve as the intake mechanism for a full service program. Programs that provide only information and referrals, or which are limited to intake screening, are not considered to be legal hotlines. Hotlines frequently call themselves help lines, advice lines, or intake units. It is the service, not the name, which defines a legal hotline. This website primarily addresses the needs of not-for-profit hotlines, although many of the issues apply to for-profit hotlines as well.

Hotline call handlers may be attorneys, paralegals or law students, working under an attorney’s direct supervision.  "Hotline advocate" and "hotline attorney" are used interchangeably to refer to these persons. Our definition includes programs that may not call themselves "hotlines" so long as they have a system for providing telephone legal advice.