Legal aid services strained to the limit

Steve Marcus

Mary Lou Perez, left, a paralegal at Nevada Legal Services, helps client Angela Black fill out paperwork for a landlord-tenant problem.

By Buck Wargo

Monday, Sept. 21, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Steve Marcus

Pamphlets are shown in the lobby of Nevada Legal Services.

The slumping Las Vegas economy has increased demand for free legal services and stretched the resources of agencies trying to provide those services.

“It is overwhelming,” said Lynn Etkins, development director of the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada. “Our lobby is filled with clients ranging from victims of domestic violence to people losing their homes and jobs. With the economy and layoffs, we have a lot more people in the community (who need) our services.

“We are swamped and everybody has a maximum caseload,” Etkins said. “The intake staff is taking the brunt of it. Paralegals are meeting and talking with everyone who comes through our doors.”

Pro bono attorneys are handling 25 percent more cases this year than last, and a consumer hotline has received 14 percent more calls than a year ago, she said. Cases involving divorce, consumer credit and bankruptcy have led the increase in demand, Etkins said.

“We don’t see any letup with the economic crisis as far as clients are concerned,” Etkins said. “We just try to keep up and help the greatest number we can.”

Another legal resource, Nevada Legal Services, had closed 2,600 cases through the end of June, about 1,000 more than through the same six-month period in 2008.

“With the economy, the number of people coming through our doors is skyrocketing,” Executive Director AnnaMarie Johnson said. “It’s terrible to say but when the economy is bad, our business is good and we don’t see any slacking off in the demand for our services.”

Housing-related issues make up most of the caseload, including Section 8 housing assistance and foreclosures, Johnson said. But unemployment benefits cases have nearly doubled to 17 percent of the workload, with clients complaining that benefits have been denied.

With so many requests for help, the agency has more narrowly defined who it can help, she said.

“It is like triage, and we have to take cases that are truly an emergency for someone who would truly be homeless,” Johnson said. “With only nine attorneys in Las Vegas and an estimated 350,000 poor people who are eligible for services, we can’t help everybody. It is very frustrating.”

The increased demand has created the need for more attorneys to take pro bono cases at a time when they say they are less able to volunteer their services.

“We have actually been lucky in the number of attorneys volunteering their service, but some attorneys who have been strong supporters in the past can’t do as much as they used to,” Johnson said. “They do need paying clients.”

In cases where people can’t be helped, classes held in conjunction with Boyd Law School teach people to represent themselves, Etkins said.

Some of the biggest increases in demand have been in consumer issues such as credit card debt and payday loan collections.

“There are a lot of people struggling to make ends meet,” Etkins said. “If they are taking out a payday loan and trying to pay bills and have medical expenses and then they are laid off, they are unable to pay those back.”

Attorneys work with them to ensure collection proceedings are handled correctly, and if they are sued the attorneys help them answer complaints in court, Etkins said. In some cases, people’s wages had been garnished and they didn’t even know a lawsuit had been filed against them.

“There are a lot of complicated issues, especially if they are not educated and they don’t know what to do, and we are the only place they can go,” Etkins said.

Complaints of abusive debt collectors have overwhelmed the three attorneys at the Senior Citizens Law Project, which serves people 60 and older.

The agency has also seen an increase in elder abuse cases, Director Sugar Vogel said, including cases of relatives and caregivers cleaning out bank accounts of sick, elderly people who trusted them.

“In these tough times, we are more concerned than ever because they are in danger,” Vogel said. “They are the most vulnerable of our citizens.”

A version of this story appeared in In Business Las Vegas, a sister publication of the Sun.