Temple Legal Aid Office https://sites.temple.edu/tlao Temple University James E. Beasley School of Law Fri, 05 May 2017 23:01:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 Do I have to worry about my healthcare because the House passed a Trumpcare bill? https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2017/05/05/do-i-have-to-worry-about-my-healthcare-because-the-house-passed-a-trumpcare-bill/ Fri, 05 May 2017 22:33:40 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=225 Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a law seeking to end part of Affordable Care Act health insurance, often called Obamacare, and replace it with the Affordable Health Care Act, often called Trumpcare.  How does this affect you?

For the present, it does not affect your health insurance but it may affect it substantially.  For the law passed by the House to become a United States law, the Senate must pass the law, too, and the President must sign it.  It is not clear that the Senate will pass the law and it has not done so yet.  For now, the Affordable Care Act is in place and the law is the way it has been.  If you count on Obamacare for your health insurance, the House passing this law has not changed anything.

Should you be worried?  Many should.  If the Senate passes the same law or a similar one on which the House and Senate can agree, some people may lose their health insurance or must pay a lot more to purchase it.  People with preexisting conditions who need to buy insurance may be put into higher risk insurance pools.  These people would have to pay substantially higher premiums that could be very hard to afford.  Further, insurance companies that can now charge seniors three times more for their policies due to higher risks could be able to charge five times more.

People who rely on Medicaid for their health insurance In Pennsylvania may face severe cuts as Medicaid expansion may end.   Medicaid expansion makes it so that many people below 138% of the federal poverty line qualify for health insurance.  That program may begin to be defunded, making it so that Pennsylvania may have to go back to only covering only the poorest of those people and cover fewer medical services and medicine. Some people may be allowed to remain on expanded Medicaid, but a one month lapse in Medicaid may mean that they could be considered new applicants and may not qualify.  It is also unclear if state’s would keep the program.  People relying on Home and Community Based Services that provide home and nursing care to people so that they can remain in their homes instead of in nursing homes could face drastic cuts.

All people with  insurance will be at risk of having their policies cover fewer things, including some more expensive treatments and medicines, as all health policies will not have to cover many basic things the Affordable Care Act required to be minimum things covered.  People likely to benefit under the House bill are people with limited medical expenses and higher income.

A good source to keep up on this issue in Pennsylvania is the Pennsylvania Health Law Project’s webpage at www.phlp.org.  A good summary of the differences in the bill passed yesterday and the Affordable Care Act is on the Kaiser Family Foundations webpage at http://kff.org/interactive/proposals-to-replace-the-affordable-care-act/ .  The bill is not law yet, and many things parts of the bill may change before it becomes law so that it affects more or less of your benefits.  For now, your health insurance remains intact.

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Clinic Success Stories–Sometimes, It Takes Years! https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2017/05/04/clinic-success-stories-sometimes-it-takes-years/ Thu, 04 May 2017 17:49:43 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=221 Our mission is to help people with their legal issues no matter what it takes.  Sometimes, it takes years!  We recently completed work we began 6 years ago to help a woman obtain SSI benefits for her disabilities.  Despite her struggles with HIV, mental illness, and eventually with cancer, we needed to represent this client before an ALJ, Social Security’s Appeals Council, and finally before a federal judge, who made a new ALJ relook at her case.  That new ALJ spent an hour with a student in November describing all the reasons he would not grant benefits, but after the client got sicker and with advocacy from that same student, the ALJ finally granted her benefits!  Congratulations to the client, the many students who worked with her over six years, and to Guy Marinari, the 2L who represented her before an ALJ in the fall through the standard Community Lawyering Clinic in the fall and again in the spring in the Advanced Clinic to get her the benefits.

Congratulations also to another client and to 2L Amy Donovan from this spring’s Community Lawyering Clinic.  The client was represented by our office in 2008 and we helped him get SSI benefits.  He was incarcerated a few years later and when he got out of prison in 2015 found himself with no identification and unable to support himself because his SSI was turned off .  Students in 2015 helped him get ID and helped him appeal when his application to renew his SSI was denied.  At a hearing last month, he was found eligible, and will be getting SSI benefits so he can move out on his own and support himself.

This is just a sample of the hard work done by students all semester in SSI matters, advance directive work at community intake sites and home visits, in mortgage diversion court, and in many other areas.  Congratulations on another good year!

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What happens to my children if I die or become very sick? https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2017/05/04/what-happens-to-my-children-if-i-die-or-become-very-sick/ Thu, 04 May 2017 17:22:00 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=219 If you have young children, you may worry about what will happen to them if you become too sick to take care of them, or if you die. There are steps you can take to make sure your children are taken care of by someone you know and trust. However, you must fill out some important legal forms to make sure people know which person you want to care for your children.

 

This post will explain to you the steps you must take. As you scroll down, you will see many “FAQs” (frequently asked questions). These are the most common questions people have when they want someone to care for their children after they die or if they become very sick. If you do not see your question answered in the list below, you should call a lawyer. You may have an issue that is too complicated to handle on your own.

 

You may not recognize or understand some of the legal language that is used to explain how the law works in Pennsylvania. These words will be in bold and their meanings will be explained so you can become familiar with them.

 

  1. What will happen to my children if I die or become very sick?

 

If you have sole custody of your children, you can fill out a form which will tell people who you want to take care of them after you die or become too sick to care for them. Sole custody means that you are the only person legally responsible for your children and allowed to make decisions for them.

 

The form you must fill out is called a standby guardianship.

 

  1. What is a standby guardianship?

 

A standby guardianship is a special legal document (form) which gives a message to the court that you want a specific person to take care of your children after you die or become too sick to care for them. The person you choose to take care of them is called the guardian.

 

  1. Can I just write a note giving permission to the person I choose to take care of my children?

 

No. Pennsylvania law requires that you fill out special forms that the court will recognize.

 

  1. Can I choose someone to take care of my children during times that I am very sick, but with the hope that I will get better?

 

Yes. You can choose a person to temporarily take over responsibility for your children during times when you are very sick. This person is called a co-guardian. Your co-guardian does not get custody. He or she can only make decisions about your children when something happens which makes you unable to care for them. This is called a triggering event.

 

There are two types of triggering events.

 

  1. The first type of triggering event is mental incapacity. This means that your mind is too sick for you to be able to care for your children. For example, if you have a very bad memory and do not remember who your children are, it is likely that you will be unable to care for them. Your doctor is responsible for deciding whether your mind is too sick for you to care for your children. If your doctor makes that decision, the co-guardian that you chose will temporarily take over the care of your children, but only until your doctor decides you are well again. If your doctor says that you are better, your co-guardian will no longer be responsible for your children.

 

  1. The second type of triggering event is called physical debilitation with consent. This means that you are physically unable to care for your children and give your permission to the co-guardian to take over. For example, if you cannot get out of bed because you are in too much pain, you may decide that you want someone else to care for your children and make decisions for them. It is important to remember that you must give your written permission to the co-guardian. It is your decision. When you decide you are well enough to take care of your children again, the co-guardian can no longer make decisions for them. However, you must tell the co-guardian in writing. This is called withdrawing consent.

 

  1. How do I choose the person who will have legal responsibility for my children?

 

You must fill out a designation form. You can find an example here.

 

  1. I have joint custody with my child’s other parent, but do not want them to have the child after I become sick or die. Can I choose someone else?

 

No. You cannot choose a guardian for your child if you share custody with someone else. You must go to family court and ask for sole custody first. When you ask the court for sole custody, you are asking the court to allow you to make decisions for your child without the other parent’s agreement or permission.

 

  1. I have sole custody of my child, but my child’s other parent is still alive. Can I choose a guardian to take care of my child after I die or become too sick to care of them?

 

Sometimes. You can choose someone who is not the child’s parent only if one of these four is true:

 

  1. The child’s other parent no longer has parental rights. Having parental rights means that you have the ability to ask the court to see the child and to make decisions for the child. These rights must have been terminated. This means that your child’s other parent has permanently had his or her parental rights taken away. Losing parental rights is not the same as losing custody. A parent who has lost custody of their child may still have parental rights, and may still ask the court to see and make decisions for the child.

 

  1. The child’s other parent is dead.

 

  1. The child’s other parent is unable, or does not want to care for the child.

 

  1. The child’s other parent gives his or her permission for you to choose someone else.

 

You must be prepared to prove to the court that one of the above is true. Make sure you have documents that can prove what you tell the court. For example, if your child’s other parent has died, you should be ready to give their birth certificate to the court. If you tell the court that the child’s other parent has given their permission for you to choose someone else as the child’s guardian, you must have a piece of paper signed by them saying that.

 

  1. Do I have to give the standby guardianship (the piece of paper choosing someone to take care of my child) to a court?

 

Yes. You or your chosen guardian must file (give to the court) something called a petition for approval. The court will read your standby guardianship paper and decide whether the person you chose to take care of your child is the best person to do the job. The court will usually agree with the person you choose.

 

  1. When do I have to file the petition for approval (give the standby guardianship papers to the court)?

 

The petition for approval can be filed either before or after the triggering event. (Remember, a triggering event is something that happens which prevents you from taking care of your child, like dying or becoming very sick.) In many cases, it is a good idea to give the court your papers before you die or become very sick.

 

It is often a good idea to file a petition for approval and give the court your standby guardianship papers before you die or become very sick. This is because you will be allowed to tell the court your story and why you think that the guardian you chose is the best person to take care of your child. Here’s an example:

 

Let’s say a mother has sole custody of her daughter, Lisa. That means that only the mother is legally allowed to make decisions for Lisa. Lisa’s father is not a good parent and has been abusive in the past. The mother wants her sister to take care of Lisa after she dies. The mother creates a standby guardianship document, choosing her sister as the guardian. However, Lisa’s father is angry that he does not have custody and wants to have Lisa back after the mother dies.

 

It would be a good idea for the mother to file a petition for approval with the court BEFORE she dies. This way, the mother will be allowed to testify (meaning that she can tell her story) about how Lisa’s father is abusive and how he would be unfit to care for Lisa. The court will listen carefully to what the mother says and will make a decision that it believes is in the best interests of Lisa.

 

If the mother does not file a petition for approval before she dies or becomes very sick, it will be easier for the father to get custody of Lisa. This is because the mother will not be able to tell the court about the father’s history of abuse.

 

  1. What happens if I do not ask the court to approve my standby guardianship before I die or become very sick?

 

If you do not ask the court to approve your standby guardianship before you die or become very sick, the person you chose as guardian must give the papers to the court and file a petition for approval. The guardian must ask the court to agree with your decision choosing them as the best person to take care of your child. The guardian will be able to make decisions for the child if you die or become very sick, but only for 60 days after that. Without the court’s approval, the guardian may no longer be able to make decisions for or take care of your child after 60 days.

 

  1. What happens after I give my standby guardianship papers to the court for approval?

 

The court will schedule a hearing. A hearing is a period of time that you will be allowed to go to court and tell a judge why you believe they should agree with who you chose to be guardian. The judge does not have to agree with you, but will pay careful attention to what you have to say. If you have sole custody of the child, the judge will very often approve the person you chose to be guardian.

 

  1. What if I change my mind about who the guardian should be?

 

If you have already filed a petition for approval with the court, you must ask the court to withdraw the petition for approval. This means that you must ask the court to throw away the standby guardianship papers you gave it before. You must do this in writing.

 

If you have not filed a petition for approval, you only need to notify the person you chose to be guardian that you no longer want them to be guardian. You must do this in writing. After that, simply throw away the standby guardianship papers.

 

  1. Can I put the person I choose to be guardian for my children in my will instead of using a standby guardianship?

 

Yes, but there are important reasons why it is better to use a standby guardianship instead of a will. After you die, your will must be probated. This means that the will must be given to the court, and the court must approve it. Usually, courts will approve what you have written in your will. However, it can often take many months after your death before the court has time to approve your will. During those months, the person you chose to be guardian in your will might not have the legal ability to make decisions for your children.

 

With a standby guardianship, the guardian you choose will have legal responsibility for your children and can make decisions for them immediately after you die or become very sick.

 

  1. I don’t live in Pennsylvania. Can I still use a standby guardianship?

 

It depends. If you don’t live in Pennsylvania, you need to find information on how the law works in your state. The information here is specific to Pennsylvania.

 

  1. I live in Pennsylvania, but the person I chose to be guardian lives in New Jersey (or another state). Is that a problem?

 

No, but it may change the steps you need to take to make sure that your guardian can begin making decisions for your children after you die or become very sick. You should call a lawyer for help if your chosen guardian lives outside of Pennsylvania.

 

  1. Where can I get more information on standby guardianships?

 

You can click on the link below. The AIDS Law Project has prepared a detailed guide about standby guardianships in Pennsylvania. Please keep in mind that their guide is written for lawyers.

 

http://www.aidslawpa.org/get-help/legal-information/standbyguardianship/

 

The Pennsylvania law on standby guardianships can be found here:

 

http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/23/00.056..HTM

PLEASE NOTE:  This website and the posts on it are intended as information and not as legal advice on which you should rely.  You should seek help from an attorney if you are seeking legal advice about a particular problem.

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Getting SSI or Social Security faster with stage 4 cancer or other very serious illnesses: asking for a Compassionate Allowance https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2017/05/04/getting-ssi-or-social-security-faster-with-stage-4-cancer-or-other-very-serious-illnesses-asking-for-a-compassionate-allowance/ Thu, 04 May 2017 13:47:23 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=211 You can get Social Security to decide your SSI or Social Security application more quickly if you convince Social Security to process your case as a “Compassionate Allowance” case.  If Social Security considers your case a Compassionate Allowance case, you do not win automatically—you still must prove that you have the condition and it impairs you enough to qualify. You also do not get higher benefits.  However, it can really help with the speed of the case and make the process much easier for you.

 

Having your case considered Compassionate Allowance Program means it will be fast tracked.

This means that Social Security will take every step more quickly.  Instead of waiting weeks for your initial appointment, you may get one in a few days.  Instead of waiting months for them to review your medical records, they may do so in a few weeks.

You qualify for Compassionate Allowance consideration if you have certain medical conditions

The medical conditions that qualify for Compassionate Allowance consideration are very severe.  Stage 4 cancer is often one of them.  If you have a very severe illness, you should ask for Compassionate Allowance consideration.  A list of 165 conditions, which includes conditions such as cancer, brain injury, immune system disorders, etc. is here:

https://www.ssa.gov/compassionateallowances/conditions.htm

Having a case considered as a Compassionate Allowance speeds up the case but does not mean more benefits

A person who wins a Compassionate Allowance case has their decision faster but does not get more money.  If the case is for Social Security, there is still a five-month waiting period from when the disability started (not from when the person applied) before Social Security sends the first check.  If it SSI, the checks start right away.

Having a Compassionate Allowance case still means the person has to meet all of the other qualifications to get Social Security or SSI. 

To get Social Security, a person has to have worked enough quarters to qualify for benefits.  To get SSI, a person does not have to have worked a certain amount but has to be low income and have few assets.  A person still must meet those rules to qualify, even if the medical condition is very bad.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU THINK YOU  HAVE A CONDITION THAT MEETS THE COMPASSIONATE ALLOWANCE STANDARD

Call Social Security to apply at 800-772-1213 or go to your local office, which can be found by zip code at https://secure.ssa.gov/ICON/main.jsp

TELL THE CLAIMS REPRESENTATIVE ON THE PHONE OR IN THE LOCAL OFFICE THE MEDICAL CONDITION AND ASK THAT THE CASE BE CONSIDERED UNDER THE COMPASSIONATE ALLOWANCE PROGRAM.

Ask for the soonest appointment you can get under the compassionate allowance program

Get medical evidence from your doctor to confirm you have the condition and bring it to your appointment.

There is no special application or form that is unique to the Compassionate Allowance so make sure you are told that it      is being processed as a Compassionate Allowance case.

For more information on Compassionate Allowances, Social Security has its own website:  https://www.ssa.gov/compassionateallowances/index.htm

You may qualify for our services if you are a low income Philadelphian seeking benefits.  Contact us to find out at 215-204-1800 or lawtlaw@temple.edu.

PLEASE NOTE:  This website and the posts on it are intended as information and not as legal advice on which you should rely.  You should seek help from an attorney if you are seeking legal advice about a particular problem.

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Students in Temple Legal Aid Community Lawyering Clinic Are Representing Clients and Bringing Our Services To The Community https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2016/02/18/students-in-temple-legal-aid-community-lawyering-clinic-are-representing-clients-and-bringing-our-services-to-the-community/ Thu, 18 Feb 2016 18:18:05 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=180 Over the past 10 days, Temple Law students in the Community Lawyering Clinic at the Temple Legal Aid Office have represented four clients seeking disability benefits in federal hearings before administrative law judges.  In two of the cases, students in previous semesters had represented the clients in Federal District Court on written summary judgment motions and had successfully gotten these clients another chance at obtaining benefits after they had been wrongfully denied benefits by administrative law judges.  In both of those cases this time around, current students won benefits for and with the clients.  The clients will receive monthly checks as well as checks to compensate them for the time that the Social Security Administration had wrongly denied them and should have been paying them.  These clients can now live successfully and independently in the community .

Students continue doing this important work for clients while continuing their work to bring legal services to the community in the community.  In the last few weeks, students have traveled to work work with clients at Temple Hospital’s Cancer Center, Liberty Resources Center for Independent Living, and Action AIDS North Philadelphia office.  Pictured below are Kyle DeMarco at the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review and Kate Emert at Action AIDS.  Thanks and good work by them and their co-student interns Chi-Ser Tran, Andrew Newstein, and Liz Dolce.

KyleKate

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Taking A Clinic To Find Your Public Interest Calling While Learning Skills https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2015/03/31/taking-a-clinic-to-find-your-public-interest-calling-while-learning-skills/ Tue, 31 Mar 2015 13:23:09 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=171 Sometimes lost in the discussion of why law school clinics have value is the clinic’s role in helping students develop their public interest calling and voice. Certainly, clinics are great places to learn practice skills and develop a professional identity—by lawyering under the supervision of an attorney, particularly in the intense setting of a clinic with real clients who have real problems, students learn to be good lawyers.

 

However, perhaps as important are students taking clinics to develop their public interest voices. A frequent complaint of longtime clinical teachers is that as law schools focus more on teaching skills, clinics are losing their social justice missions and public interest teaching. I have had the opportunity to hear about this regularly over the past few weeks. At Penn Law, I had the chance to hear Barry Scheck from Cardozo Law talk about how clinical programs must necessarily have a social justice voice and how his innocence work was intentionally designed to be part of a clinic instead of a public defender’s office, in part to maintain this focus for students. Also at Penn, Samir Ashar from Cal Irvine spoke of teaching students to lawyer for the poor while thinking about who clients are within their communities and how to strengthen those communities. At Yale’s Rebellious Lawyering Conference, I heard students and professors alike discuss social justice agendas and what students were doing in their clinics to further them. This mirrored comments made to me a few years ago by a Yale clinical fellow,who told me that if a student was interested in the lives of the poor and social justice generally, there was no question they would be in a clinic—that is where public interest and social justice is learned and expressed.

 

As students come through my clinic, they certainly develop skills through the administrative hearings, disability planning, and other legal work they do. But like is true in many of our clinics, they learn about their social justice voice by diving into the community and learning. One student this semester went to a prison to interview a client, getting to see some of what life is like for the prisoner there while discovering how our welfare system fails to help people prepare for leaving prison. Another saw clients at Liberty Resources, our Center for Independent Living, and got to see how people with illnesses and disabilities struggle to maintain independent lives due to intentional and unintentional barriers that are hard to overcome. Two students are developing an intake site at Temple Hospital’s Cancer Center, learning about legal struggles that accompany illness that can be exacerbated by poverty.   Each of these students has the opportunity to perform social justice and public interest work by helping the clients they see. They also have the opportunity to think about what they see generally, interact with other professionals working with those clients, and think through what their roles could be after the clinic is over. As I am most familiar with other internal clinics at the law school, I know that professors at each of them could tell similar stories about how students learn about what is going on in the world for the poor and legally underserved and where they can insert themselves as law students and later as graduates, either by taking on public interest jobs or by taking on public interest work as part of their private practice. Next academic year, as our Community Lawyering Clinic keeps working with people with disabilities, cancer and HIV but focuses more on being in the community and as the makes connections with students in the Poverty Law class I will teach, the opportunity for students to develop their public interest selves will continue.

 

Helping students find and develop their public interest voice is one of the things that many of us who teach in the clinics really value, as do students and employers. Although clinics can be the best place to learn skills, let’s make sure that clinics maintain this social justice focus in this moment in legal education.

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There Is Snow and Yes, We Are Open! https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2015/03/05/there-is-snow-and-yes-we-are-open/ Thu, 05 Mar 2015 13:35:24 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=168 My students are probably tired of hearing me talk about how lawyering was almost thirty years ago, when lawyers were lawyers and did not let snow or broken technology harness our lawyering.  In what I am sure they consider some of their most interesting classes (or maybe not!), I have described times when I did things like drive for an hour and a half to the courthouse in Woodstock Illinois down Illinois Rt. 14 in a foot of falling snow to get to a landlord/tenant hearing.  We got a continuance that day, but had we not gone, the client might have been evicted.  The drive was harrowing but snow had to be conquered and such problems overcome.

Though I sometimes question whether new lawyers today would do the same thing, perhaps I needn’t worry based on what my interns have done over the last years.  Last year, one of my students met a client outside a local Social Security office in a snowstorm because we had learned the day before that the client had only one more day to appeal a denial.  The Social Security office never opened, but the student and client didn’t know that it wouldn’t.  She and the client waited for two hours, alternating between standing outside and sitting in the doughnut shop across the street, each deciding whether it was okay to offer to buy the other coffee, until they realized they would have to come back the next day.  They did, and the client still gets benefits because of it.  Another student a few years ago stayed in constant contact with a hearing office and pushed for a hearing to happen that did not, but was ready to help his client move her case forward that day so that the client would not have to have her case delayed several more months for a hearing, delaying the decision on whether she could get the income support help she needed.  Both students realized that their inconveniences were minimal when compared to the problems of their clients and that those problems would be prolonged or worsened if the clients and their attorneys or interns gave in to something like snow.

Today, we expect 4-8 inches of snow and the school and the Temple Legal Aid Office are open.  We had no hearings set, but I am in the office.  I will enter an appearance in a Social Security hearing, work on a federal court appeal, and meet with clients who can get here.  Students will be here or working remotely if they can, one researching federal law so we can submit an argument today or tomorrow to an administrative law judge.  Another will be tracking down records for a client and writing letters to a judge while working with our hospital to set up an intake site in a few weeks.

Although we can do some our work remotely like we could not do 30 years ago, we still have to work.  We still cannot let snow stop us.  And hopefully, our clients will be better off for the work we do today.

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Bespoke Legal Services For The Poor https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2015/03/03/bespoke-legal-services-for-the-poor/ Tue, 03 Mar 2015 15:12:41 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=166 Over the past few years, the value of “bespoke” or personalized legal services has been challenged.  My experiences over the last few months suggest that there is a real place for these individualized services and that projects that ask people to navigate the legal system with little help from an attorney can be dehumanizing and ineffective.

Although my survey of clients is not systematic, I have had the chance through recent representation and consultation to talk with clients who were represented by systematized practices or through court sponsored programs.  It is clear that many are lost in court sponsored programs—the most common unhappiness that clients frequently share with me has come from clients who go through landlord/tenant court and are told that they can handle their eviction defenses through settlement programs, programs that invariably lead to their eviction, whether they have defenses or not.

More problematic, however, are clients who have sampled systematized law firms that purport to represent them and do a bad job.  My discussions have been with clients who have sought help in SSI and Social Security Disability cases similar to the ones we handle at the Temple Legal Aid Office.   Repeatedly, clients are unhappy with the systematized, one-size-fits-all legal services of these firms and do not feel like they have had their day in court without a connection to their attorney.  Sometimes, it is just dehumanizing, whether a client wins or loses.  More troubling, however, are clients who get bad representation from  attorneys who either are bad at using mechanized services or who assume that by doing so they do not have to develop a real relationship with their clients.  An example of this is a client who described going to a small firm where the legal work had been parsed out to paralegals.  At that firm, attorneys only spoke to clients in the waiting room before hearings.  The client told me about his hearing, where he felt both his attorney and the judge did not understand him and reported that he did not remember his attorney doing anything to learn about how he was different from any other claimant or actually saying anything at the hearing.  A worse example was a client who came to see me because she had gone to a national Social Security and SSI Disability agency she had contacted that was systematizing her claim.  She was concerned she had not heard from them for a year.  It took me several days to get through to the person she was told was her contact at the agency.  When I did, I learned  that this client was right and her case had been lost in the shuffle—due to her trying to contact them over the last several months, someone had actually looked at her case a few months before to discover that an appeal had not been filed that she thought they had filed.  They filed a new claim at that time but without talking with the client.  Even worse, they did so without collecting the information they needed to help her, in her case including that she had metastasized cancer, about which I informed them and gave them necessary paperwork.

Even when clients lose their cases, there is a value to bespoke legal services.  One client said that to me explicitly.  We had represented her after she had been represented by a systematized law firm.  Although that firm and our office had both lost her case, she told me that she was much happier with us than her previous attorney as we actually talked to her.  She said she felt that she had her day in court and that we had tried.

It is true that computer programs can create documents and paralegals can fill them in if people need help. However, it is not necessarily true that this leads to representation close to the quality that can come from bespoke legal services.

 

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Watching Low-income Pennsylvanians and Medicaid Expansion https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2015/02/10/watching-low-income-pennsylvanians-and-medicaid-expansion/ Tue, 10 Feb 2015 14:23:32 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=162 News today that Pennsylvania is withdrawing its Healthy PA Medical Assistance (Medicaid) plan for what should be a much more comprehensive and simpler Medicaid Expansion should be welcome news for the poor in Pennsylvania.  Since Healthy PA was implemented, our Legal Aid office has been receiving calls about it from clients describing ways it was cutting their health care coverage.  For example, one client diagnosed with lymphoma last fall found himself categorized by the state as not needing full coverage and was put into a new private insurance plan in the midst of his treatment.  Potentially, that lesser plan would not have covered his treatment and the physical and mental health problems he developed due to his diagnosis.  Under the “traditional” Medicaid Expansion the state is planning to choose, he should now be covered, as will many more of our clients suffering with HIV, cancer and disabilities who will more likely be able to live independently in the community.

As a teacher in the Temple Legal Aid Office, I have the chance with my students to watch the way the poor face life and how government decisions on how to help those seeking help really matter.  Although Medicaid Expansion is a start and will have a heavy impact on our clients, other governmental decisions and a weakening economy for the poor has made poor people today look very different than they did a few years ago.  Welfare paid to parents with children who cannot support themselves (TANF) has not increased in Pennsylvania since 1990 and leaves a family of three below 25% of the federal poverty line in deep poverty.  Since 2012, welfare is not paid in the state to people with illnesses disabilities who have not yet proven their eligibility for the federal SSI program or whose disabilities last less than a year—this has affected many of our clients with severe acute disabilities, like people going through cancer treatment that devastates them like chemotherapy but whose disabilities are considered short term and not worth help.  We see the effects of this lack of minimal amounts of welfare in little things, like clients who can no longer afford phones and rely on phones with limited minutes so they cannot seek work easily or stay in contact with people who can help them with their problems, like their legal aid lawyers and our interns, or people who used to be able to contribute at least something household expenses who no longer can.

Medicaid Expansion will help many.  They will find it a great start toward getting help they need, but maybe only a start.

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Summer Reading on Empathy https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/2014/07/14/summer-reading-on-empathy/ Mon, 14 Jul 2014 18:53:09 +0000 https://sites.temple.edu/tlao/?p=159 My students get tired of hearing me saying that lawyering is all about empathy. (See, at least I understand my students’ feelings!) A lawyer cannot practice effectively without understanding their clients’ situations from their clients’ points of view, recognizing their clients’ emotions to the extent they play a role in their legal decision making, identifying what having a lawyer and utilizing the legal system means to them, and knowing what their clients’ visions of a successful outcome is.

My study of this over the summer led me to Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams. In it, Jamison writes essays that explore people’s emotions and mindsets. Her subjects range from athletes who participate in the Barkley Marathons, a race where people cover over 100 miles over several days through almost impossible terrain and torturous obstacles that almost no one completes; a prisoner who was one of those athletes, looking particularly at what confinement means to a person whose daily life as an endurance athlete involves active movement that prison takes away; people with Morgollons, a disease where people believe thread or other matter is growing out of them, a condition that they clearly believe is very real that others question; and parents of child murder victims of the West Memphis Three, looking at how their grief is taken away from them and turned to anger when perpetrators are identified, and then looking at their subsequent feelings when it becomes clear that those alleged perpetrators might not have done it. She even tries to explain and understand the artistic genre she calls “wounded women”—the Ani DiFranco, Sylvia Plath, Carrie expressions of female pain (I admit that I struggled with this one).

In the words of Merve Emre in an interview from the Paris Daily Review reproduced for this book, Jamison is a writer and observer without being a collaborator or participant. When subjects are familiar to her, she applies her own experience, like when she describes being an actress for a medical school and playing patients for students who are learning to take histories. In this role, she can think about how the patients and the doctor’s must feel from her own experience in the medical system. She can also step back and be an observer while playing that role, as she watches new professionals as they try to develop empathy.

I want my students and myself to be empathetic observers like Jamison. The Empathy Exams will help me think through how to discuss working with our clients this year. What inquiry is necessary to understand our clients’ emotions better? How can we observe our clients and explore their feelings without fully joining their vision and their world? How much does sympathy play a role in empathy—can we have empathy for clients who are not entirely saintly or when we do not necessarily like them? Can we understand their point of view without agreeing with it? How much are we like or not like particular clients—can we draw on our own experience? Do we have to learn about our clients’ community experiences and mores to understand them?

I am looking forward to more of this exploration in my clinic this Fall!

Many of Jamison’s essays are published separately. Click on the links above to get a taste of her work.

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