Free civil legal advice to low-income veterans
Brief overview of the project and the services for veterans:
Maryland Legal Aid Bureau is a non-profit law firm. Our firm handles civil (not criminal) cases, involving a wide range of issues to eligible Marylanders from 12 offices around the state.
We
were recently granted funding to create a comprehensive legal project
to serve veterans with civil legal issues in areas of veteran’s
benefits, public benefits, consumer, housing, family(i.e. custody),
and foreclosure issues. We plan to execute the project in July, 2015.
Maryland Legal Aid’s “Joining Forces” project is a telephone hotline
staffed by volunteer lawyers specifically for low-income veterans to
receive brief advice for their civil legal issues. One of the purposes
of us going the hotline avenue is so that we can assist vets that are
unable to physically come in due to transportation, disability, or
distance limitations. The hotline serves as a way for our vets to
receive legal advice in a location convenient to them. In instances
where more extensive legal representation is needed, we will have
qualified volunteer lawyers to provide full representation or someone
from our agency will assist them.
Brief overview of information for those that may be interested in serving as pro bono volunteers:
Maryland
Legal Aid Bureau is looking to recruit pro bono attorneys to volunteer
with the Joining Forces Project which will endeavor to offer civil legal
advice to indigent veterans. The goal is to have at least 300 attorneys
around Maryland volunteer for the program and provide at least 12 hours
of pro-bono service via a hotline. Scripts and training will be
provided to attorneys in order to allow them to participate in the
program effectively, without necessarily having substantial experience
in any of the target areas of law.
There
will be scripts in the following areas of law: family, housing,
foreclosure, consumer, and public and veterans benefits. The scripts
will be in a “yes/no” or multiple choice format. The end of each script
will have advice for the attorney, it will have links to different
statutes, links to community referrals, and also links to pro se
forms. The purpose of the hotline is to provide brief advise on
matters that are simple to address over the phone. The goal is to allow
the Legal Aid Bureau to better focus on more complicated cases that
require more than a telephone consultation.
If
the issues are more complex, the script will indicate that the issue
should be referred back to Legal Aid. Also, the scripts will have a
drop down menu where an attorney can choose to advise the client, refer
back to legal aid, or state that they provided brief advise, but would
like us to follow up for further assistance. Legal Aid will also have
mentors available to answer any questions that might arise during the
call with the client.
The program will be completely web based; it will not require you to install anything onto your computer.
The hotline hours will be available during both the day and evening so, you can choose when you would like to volunteer.
