Legal Services News

Auda Hamilton, 73, would never have imagined herself speaking to a large group of attorneys about the benefits of pro bono and how she was rescued from mounting debt and given a fresh financial start in life, but that is exactly what she did. . . . Auda told her story to a room full of lawyers at the monthly Smith County [Texas] Bar Association CLE presentation.

New Mexico Legal Aid (NMLA) is seeking an Executive Director to lead this nonprofit legal services organization that serves migrant, Native American and low-income populations throughout New Mexico.

Jacquelynne Bowman, Deputy Director at Greater Boston Legal Services since 2000, has been chosen as the nonprofit program's next Executive Director. She succeeds Robert Sable, who is retiring after 20 years of service.

Raun J. Rasmussen has been selected as the next Executive Director of Legal Services NYC by the group's Board of Directors. Since 2003, he has served as the Chief of Litigation and Advocacy for the New York program, which is among the largest civil legal aid programs funded by LSC.

For nine gut-wrenching years, Texan Greg Allen has been trying to track down his daughter after her mother absconded to Mexico with the 4-year-old during a rare unsupervised visit after the couple's contentious divorce.

Arkansas Children's Hospital (ACH), Walmart and the Arkansas legal community [on June 17] announced a partnership to provide legal services to hospital patients and their families at no charge. Known as a medical-legal partnership, or MLP, the pro bono corporate initiative is the first of its kind in the country.

Five weeks after Legal Services of New Jersey pleaded poverty at a legislative hearing, the Assembly is taking up a measure that would bump up court filing fees to help fund the legal aid provider.

Through a series of budget cuts and government funds drying up, many of the area's nonprofit organizations have been hit hard and are facing cutbacks and possible closure unless support comes from some other source.

Louise Golden, 79, recently stood at the front door of her tidy brick split-level in Lanham, still shocked to hear the terms of the refinancing agreement she and her now-deceased husband, Stanley, signed in 2006.

Sean Driscoll, the Special Assistant in the Office of Government Relations and Public Affairs and the editor-in-chief of LSC Updates, is leaving the Corporation after a decade of service.

Cynthia Schneider, Deputy Director of the LSC Office of Program Performance (OPP), is retiring. One of Ms. Schneider's many duties as Deputy Director was to oversee the scheduling of OPP's on-site program reviews and to work with staff preparing for the visits.

Representatives of the federal judiciary are inviting civil legal aid attorneys to participate in a project to develop the Next Generation Case Management/Electronic Case Files system. Electronic filing and docket management have revolutionized the federal court system, and the judiciary is exploring how to make the system more efficient and learn what changes attorneys, consumer groups, government agencies and others would like to see in the Next Generation version.

Lois Curtis, one of the original plaintiffs in the landmark Olmstead disability rights case, and Sue Jamieson, an attorney with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, met in the Oval Office with President Obama on June 20 to mark the 12th anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling.

LSC convened a national conference call on June 21 to hear from legal aid programs on the front lines responding to the tornadoes that hit Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri during April and May. This year's storms have been the most deadly in decades.

Funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) would be cut by 26 percent in Fiscal Year 2012 under a proposal announced by the House Appropriations Committee on July 6. The Committee bill proposes a $300 million budget for LSC rolling back LSC funding to a level not seen since 1999.