Economic uncertainty hurts legal aid program (Boston Globe)

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Below is an excerpt from an October 6 interview, published by The Boston Globe, with Greater Boston Legal Services President Melissa Bayer Tearney.

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Melissa Bayer Tearney, a partner at the Boston law firm Choate Hall & Stewart, was recently elected president of Greater Boston Legal Services for a three-year term. She has served on the board of the nonprofit legal services group for a decade and recently talked to Globe reporter Beth Healy about her new role and her goals for the organization.

What kinds of representation does Greater Boston Legal Services provide?

It’s a very wide range of services that touch all social issues that the community is very concerned about, including access to housing, which would be homelessness, evictions, work with the disabled, work with the elderly, work with the low-wage earner, work with unemployed, domestic violence victims. Immigration as well.

What’s the biggest challenge the group is facing?

The challenge in the next few years is increasing our philanthropic efforts beyond the legal community and to engage corporations in the city. I think, too, the challenge of trying to provide as many quality legal services to as many people as we possibly can, under very difficult financial situations.

The group has been hit with financial difficulties since the recession, hasn’t it?

Yes, like all legal service agencies, they’ve been hit by budget cuts and by the economy more generally. And cuts from [federal] sequestration should come into effect starting in September. It’s been a very rocky four or five years.

Is it funded entirely with public money, or do you raise money from private donors?

One of the main components of fund-raising comes from the area law firms. Most contribute very generously.

One of the challenges is trying to diversify philanthropic efforts. Not only focusing on law firms but also focusing on other corporations to see if they’re willing to step up to support legal services. The agency is turning away 60 percent of clients that are coming, so there’s a huge need.

Read more at The Boston Globe.

Legal aid kept him truckin’ (Worcester Telegram)

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Below is an excerpt from a June 15 piece written by a Community Legal Aid client and published by Worcester Telegram.

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Driving around New England with 35 tons of stone and sand behind you isn’t an easy way to make a living. I know, because I’ve spent my entire career doing it. In fact, I’ve been around trucks my whole life. It’s the only work I know, and it supports my wife and our teenage son in our modest apartment in Dudley.

Or at least it did until last year, when I found out that no matter how many runs I did behind the wheel, I couldn’t make decent pay. I was working 60 or 70 hours in a week, but my employer only paid me for the time I was driving a loaded truck. All the paperwork and all the mandatory safety checks I had to do were on my own time. I didn’t get paid for any of it, and all the money I was losing meant I could no longer support my family.

One day, I just couldn’t take it any more. I called in to report for duty and was told to drive an empty truck nearly an hour from Chelmsford to Watertown, pick up a load, and drive it to Littleton. I asked my boss, “Are you going to pay me for the empty run to Watertown?”

“No,” he told me. “You know how it is.”

When I told him I wouldn’t drive for free, he told me to turn in my things. I assumed I was fired, so I did what he said.

I was shocked when I received a letter telling me my unemployment claim had been denied.

I didn’t know what to do. Eventually I noticed that the denial letter mentioned I might be able to qualify for free legal help to contest my denial of unemployment insurance. I called the number listed, and I was referred to Melissa Pomfred, a lawyer at Community Legal Aid in Worcester.

Melissa took my case, steered me through the legal system and state bureaucracy, and convinced the state that I was eligible for unemployment insurance.

Read more at Worcester Telegram.

A growing need for legal aid (Boston Globe)

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Below is an excerpt from a May 29 op-ed published in The Boston Globe. The piece was written by Susan Alexander – executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Biogen IDEC – in support of increased civil legal aid funding in Massachusetts.

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Shanice, a young mother of two, considers herself lucky to live in Cambridge public housing. She can’t afford to pay market rent for an apartment on her wages as a hotel worker, and she knows from personal experience that time spent on the waiting list for an apartment like hers can stretch on for years. So Shanice was shocked and frightened when she received a notice from the Cambridge Housing Authority saying that they were evicting her because she owed $197 in unpaid rent. Within 48 hours, a moving truck would be at her door.

Shanice had paid her rent and was sure the notice was a mistake, but she couldn’t afford a lawyer to contest the eviction. She was afraid that she would have to move to a homeless shelter with her 9- and 4-year-old sons. But Shanice was lucky. She found free legal help at Greater Boston Legal Services, where an attorney discovered that the Housing Authority had added maintenance fees to her rent and was trying to illegally evict her for non-payment of these fees. The charges were for minor issues, like failing to attach trash can lids. The attorney contested the eviction in housing court, and Shanice was able to keep her home.

People like Shanice face similar challenges every day in courtrooms throughout Massachusetts, but unlike her, they are often forced to navigate complex legal proceedings by themselves because they can’t afford an attorney. These are families facing eviction and foreclosure, working people who are denied unemployment, the elderly needing coverage for medication and mothers seeking child support.

Civil legal aid programs like GBLS, funded in part by the Commonwealth, have historically provided attorneys for residents unable to afford them. However, reduced funding has left these programs unable to keep up with a growing need for assistance. Today, civil legal aid programs turn away more than half of the people who request their help. Without an attorney, these litigants are at a disadvantage when facing mortgage companies, abusive spouses or partners, landlords and employers with greater means. A recent study by a Harvard Law School professor found that tenants who face eviction with a lawyer had significantly better outcomes than those who represented themselves.

Read more at The Boston Globe.

Legal-aid group helps Brockton woman (Boston Globe)

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Below is an excerpt from a March 3 article, published by The Boston Globe, about a former South Coastal Counties Legal Services client who spoke at the EJC’s annual lobby day.

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CIVIL SUPPORT: Brockton resident Daniele Bien-Aime  had a difficult spring in 2011. Her mother had just died, and a week later, Bien-Aime was diagnosed with breast cancer, which resulted in a bilateral mastectomy.

Things then got worse for Bien-Aime, a native of Haiti who was a Haitian Creole interpreter at a Brockton hospital. She lost her job because of the time she needed for her cancer treatment, which included chemotherapy, and so also lost her health insurance, and the ability to pay her rent and to care for her two teenage daughters.

However, that’s when things started to turn around. Through contacts at the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, Bien-Aime heard about the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation. She contacted the nonprofit organization, which got her in touch with Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies, who works for South Coastal Counties Legal Services. Eventually, Bien-Aime got her job and insurance back, avoided eviction from her apartment, and put her life back on track. Bien-Aime, 42,  also became an American citizen last July.

“I could not have gotten through all that without her help,” Bien-Aime said of Nelson-Davies, calling her “heaven-sent.”

In late January, Bien-Aime was one of hundreds who took part in the 14th annual Walk to the Hill for Civil Legal Aid, where Governor Deval Patrick asked participants to urge their legislators to support increased funding for the state-supported Legal Assistance Corporation, which provides services for those who can’t afford to pay for them.

Bien-Aime, who declined to name the hospital where she works, said she developed an infection four months after her surgery, and that without insurance to help pay for her health care, “I would have died.”

Read more at The Boston Globe.

Top funding needed for legal assistance corporation (South Coast Today)

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Below is an excerpt from a June 15 op-ed, written by Justine Dunlap and published by South Coast Today, in support of increased civil legal aid funding.

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Lawyers — we love to hate them until we need one. The good news is that, in certain critical situations, lawyers are available. They are a constitutional entitlement for the criminally accused. They can be retained on a contingency fee basis in certain kinds of cases. Legal services may be available through a work-based pre-paid plan. And, if you have lots of money, legal services are, of course, readily procurable. That’s the stuff of legal “dream teams.”

The bad news: In other critical circumstances, a lawyer’s service is out of reach, particularly for persons of low income. In certain areas of the law, like landlord/tenant and family law cases, many cases proceed with one or both sides not having a lawyer. In legal parlance, these self-represented parties are called pro se litigants. In some cases — like small claims court — pro se litigants are appropriate. In those cases, because the financial stakes are low, the system is set up so that lawyers are not necessary. But that is not true generally. Most lawsuits involve high stakes — financial or otherwise — and do not proceed well without lawyers who know the substantive law and procedural rules. Thus, although one might have rights provided under the law, those rights are difficult to assert or achieve without a lawyer.

Our society is sometimes criticized for being too litigious. But those who need lawyers are often brought into court by others. A tenant, for instance, whose landlord may be seeking to evict him, or a consumer being sued by an unscrupulous lender. Other times people need to affirmatively seek the court’s aid. A victim of intimate abuse may need legal protection to begin to remove herself or himself from an abuser’s control. The rights that each of these persons have are less likely to be realized if there is not a lawyer available to assist.

Read more at South Coast Today.

 

Legislature must increase funding for MLAC (Mass. Lawyers Weekly)

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Below is the text from an April 5 editorial, published in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, encouraging the House Committee on Ways and Means to include increased civil legal aid funding in its budget proposal.

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The House Ways and Means budget expected to be released this week will include funding for the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corp. We urge the Legislature to fund MLAC at $14.5 million, a $4 million increase that will help provide desperately needed civil legal aid to people throughout the state.

The harsh reality is that Massachusetts is still feeling the effects of a tough economy, and lawmakers have the unenviable task of creating a budget with limited resources. But calling civil legal aid “a system in crisis” does not adequately convey the extent of the problem.

The legal needs of low-income Massachusetts residents are overwhelming, and the resources to meet those needs have plummeted. MLAC depends on two main funding sources: a state appropriation and income from IOLTA.

Once MLAC’s largest funding source, IOLTA revenue has declined by 78 percent since fiscal year 2008, driven down by a combination of historically low interest rates and a stagnant housing market that has resulted in fewer transactions for attorneys. And that revenue is expected to continue to drop through fiscal year 2013.

Further, MLAC’s grants have shrunk so dramatically that it has been forced to cut program staff and reserves have been depleted.

The issue of inadequate funding for civil legal aid affects the entire justice system. When courts are flooded with low-income people attempting to represent themselves, it creates havoc for all litigants and overwhelms hard-working court personnel.

MLAC-funded programs currently recruit more than 560 pro bono attorneys generating over 45,000 hours annually. The staffing cuts that would be required if diminished IOLTA revenues were coupled with reduced appropriations cannot be offset by private attorneys donating their time to pro bono work.

It’s already not a pretty picture. Phones at MLAC ring off the hook, and several days a week lines of people in dire circumstances wait for help. Many don’t get it: Across Massachusetts, three out of every five eligible individuals who contact a legal aid office are turned away

Civil legal aid programs save taxpayer money by preventing evictions and homelessness and helping people obtain federal benefits for which they are eligible. In fiscal year 2011, cost savings to the state as a result of work done by legal aid totaled an estimated $53.2 million.

But fewer legal aid lawyers results in fewer services for clients, and that means Massachusetts realizes less in federal money and cost savings. In fact, new revenue and cost savings last year was 10 percent down from the year before.

In severe economic times, the most vulnerable people need more access to civil legal services, not less. Adequate funding of legal services must not be allowed to fluctuate with the ups and downs of the economy.

The Legislature must step up now.

Funding cuts force layoffs, closings at Legal Services (South Coast Today)

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Below is an excerpt from a March 12 article, published by South Coast Today, about the effect of funding challenges at South Coastal Counties Legal Services. Richard McMahon, Executive Director of SCCLS, is quoted.

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NEW BEDFORD — The same recession that caused many low-income and elderly persons to seek free legal help with their worsening problems is undermining the very agency that is supposed to be there to help them.

South Coastal Counties Legal Services Inc., or SCCLS, which once had offices throughout Southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod, has been forced to lay off 10 attorneys, secretaries and paralegals and close three offices, including the one in New Bedford, Executive Director Richard McMahon told The Standard-Times.

The remaining employees are trying to handle the work load and yet are being cut 9 percent in their pay.

The agency’s office on Union Street has been shuttered even though the agency owns the property, McMahon said.

“At least the initial contact is by phone,” McMahon said. The head office in Fall River will take the New Bedford calls, and send attorneys to the clients as needed.

The Plymouth office was closed late last year, McMahon said, and the Taunton office will close in a matter of weeks.

That will leave offices in Fall River, Hyannis and Brockton.

McMahon did not provide financial details, except to say that the losses came in grants and federal aid while state funding remained level.

“This is a real blow, of course, at a time when the economy is impacting the low-income community. There’s an increase and greater demand for our services and yet we’re laying off.”

McMahon said that there is a misconception that legal advice is free to the poor by right, but that only applies to cases that threaten their liberty, mostly criminal cases. In civil matters they must depend on nonprofits such as the SCCLS or on attorneys who do pro bono, “for free,” work as a way of giving back to the community.

Read more at South Coast Today.

Civil legal aid is a sound investment for all of us (Boston Globe)

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Below is an excerpt from a January 26 editorial, published by The Boston Globe, supporting increased state funding for civil legal services in Massachusetts. Lonnie Powers, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation, is quoted.

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Sometimes, the world puts you in a situation so unfair, so absurd, that only a lawyer can get you out of it. But what if you can’t afford a lawyer?

What if you’re Remon Jourdan? Jourdan, 37, was paralyzed from the chest down after a car accident 10 years ago. He needs help with almost everything: dressing, bathing, eating, scratching itches.

“Life happens, right?’’ Jourdan says.

So does Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Each week, four personal care assistants visit the Randolph home he shares with his mother to help him through his days. MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, had always funded them. But last summer Jourdan learned that the payments stopped, because his doctor had failed to sign a certain form. He appealed, and the state resumed the payments, but it refused to fund the month the application was in limbo. His assistants, like family to him, were out $4,000.

He appealed twice and was denied. So there he was, stuck, through no fault of his own, promising to pay his caregivers in dribs and drabs from his $500 monthly disability payment, even if it took him 10 years. Then, Jourdan got lucky – not lucky in the sense that the state’s paper-pushers saw the error of their ways, of course. No, he had the great good fortune to have his case taken by one of the state’s civil legal aid attorneys. It took 15 hours of work, but Nancy Lorenz, a senior lawyer at Greater Boston Legal Services, got Jourdan’s caregivers covered.

“She was a lifesaver,’’ Jourdan says of Lorenz. “I had no other avenues open to me.’’

Tens of thousands of people each year – people on low incomes seeking benefits they were unfairly denied or fighting unjust foreclosures and evictions or needing protection from battering spouses – have no other avenue.

Lawyers Call on Beacon Hill to Increase Legal Aid (WBUR)

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Below is an excerpt from a January 26 article, published by WBUR, about the EJC’s annual lobby day, Walk to the Hill for Civil Legal Aid.

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Calls to increase funding for legal aid services are being made on Beacon Hill. With more and more low-income residents being turned away from free legal services due to a lack of funding, the legal community worries justice may not be served.

There’s a paradox in Massachusetts’ legal system: as the economy has sputtered over the last four years, the amount of money available for civil legal aid has dropped sharply. At the same time, because of the economy, the demand for legal aid has spiked, with low-income citizens facing increased legal problems including eviction and foreclosure, to name a couple.

“This is a need. This is something that people who are underrepresented need,” said Remon Jourdan. He understands that need first-hand. The Randolph resident is a quadriplegic and was in danger last year of losing his personal care attendants after his doctor failed to complete the necessary paperwork so they could be paid. Jourdan turned to a lawyer from Greater Boston Legal Services.

“I’m not in a situation where I could just hire a lawyer. So, I thought I had no other options available to me, so, when I was given this opportunity, to have some type of help, I just jumped on it,” Jourdan said.

Nancy Lorenz is Jourdan’s attorney from Greater Boston Legal Services.

“We get people calling who have been trying on their own to resolve it for months, sometimes,” Lorenz said. “Like their MassHealth got shut off, they don’t know why. They call, they can’t get through on their phone, they’re not able to go to the doctor, they’re not able to fill their prescription, and then, they get to us, and we fix it.”

Read more at WBUR.

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