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!