Statewide Advocacy Project

Legal Services Corporation of Virginia - 030135

Abstract Number: 030135

August 2003

In conjunction with Virginia's LSC and non-LSC funded legal services providers, Legal Services Corporation of Virginia coordinated a statewide advocacy project dedicated to improving the quality and range of legal services available throughout Virginia. This project has three components:

1. A statewide capacity to provide services that might otherwise be unavailable to clients of a federally funded program.
2. A statewide litigation task force coordinated by Virginia's statewide training and support center.
3. Multiple statewide advocacy list-serves through which advocates can communicate and discuss substantive legal issues. This component also includes a statewide website and web-based case management system accessible to all delivery system advocates.

This project involved six LSC-funded legal services programs, five non-LSC funded legal services programs and the Virginia Poverty Law Center, the organized private bar and individual private attorneys. With the creation of six LSC service areas in Virginia, LSCV contractually required all of its grantees within a LSC service area to cooperate on the development and submission of service area plans that provided for the integration of intake, brief advice, referral and extended representation between LSC and non-LSC funded programs. In service areas with only an LSC funded program, the LSC funded program submitted a plan for referring clients to the private bar when that program was unable to deliver the legal services needed by the client. This work was further supported by the creation of a statewide litigation task force composed of experienced litigation directors from each service area to coordinate the development of statewide litigation.

The statewide support center also created list-serves for use by advocates and intended for use in developing strategies and ideas in delivery legal services to low-income people. Virginia also implemented a statewide web-based case management system used by both LSC and non-LSC funded programs that better facilitates referrals between programs while eliminating duplicative record keeping. Virginia also implemented a statewide legal information hotline with foreign language scripts available in Spanish, Korean and Vietnamese. All LSC and non-LSC funded programs in the delivery system participate in the statewide hotline. During business hours, client callers are automatically routed to the nearest legal aid office for assistance. During non-business hours, clients can access a wealth of legal information in the different languages.

Contact information:

Mark D. Braley
Executive Director
Legal Services Corporation of Virginia
700 E. Main Street, Suite 1504
Richmond, Virginia 23219
Phone: 804-782-9438
Fax: 804-648-3917
Email

back to top ^