Maryland Legal Aid Bureau - Free civil legal advice to low-income veterans

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.