Legal aid lawyers spend hours providing clients with valuable self-help legal advice. What happens to that advice? What results are achieved? This session explores Atlanta Legal Aid Society’s (ALAS) experience building an extensive follow up pro bono project that provides additional assistance to clients and collects legal outcomes, using modifications to its Legal Server database. It will be of particular interest to organizations that work with legal Hotlines, utilize senior volunteer attorneys or would like to leverage brief service and advice on a variety of legal topics. Such a project could be replicated in urban legal aid offices with high volume, or in more rural areas. Participants will learn how to document and enhance the value of advice and brief service pro bono, identify core elements to establishing a sustainable follow up project, and discuss key stakeholders, important to creating a larger scale, long term follow up project.
1. Following Through by Following Up:
Taking Brief Service Pro Bono to the
Next Level
August 23, 2016
Allison Stiles
Kristin Verrill
2. Enhanced Services Project
• Pro Bono Innovation Fund grant, in November 2014
• Pro bono volunteers make follow up telephone calls
• Brief service & advice-only clients
• Additional or repeated advice to clients, identify cases
that need more assistance & collect outcomes
3. History of Enhanced Services at
Atlanta Legal Aid
• In 2010, the Georgia Senior
Legal Hotline completed an
outcomes study
• Advice/brief service clients
had low success rates
• Clients not calling back for
more help
• Hotline asked volunteers to
call clients, provide assistance
& record an outcome.
4. What percentage of Atlanta Legal Aid cases are
advice or brief service only?
a) 25%
b) 50%
c) 75%
d) 95%
5. Without a follow up call, what % of clients
successfully obtaining food stamps?
a) 25%
b) 50%
c) 80%
d) 95%
6. With follow up assistance, what % of clients
successfully obtaining food stamps?
a) 25%
b) 50%
c) 80%
d) 95%
7. • 2-year Pro Bono Innovation Fund grant from LSC
• Formalize the follow up process
• Incorporate it into existing case management database
• Expand scope
• Replicable model for other programs
8. Where We Are Now…
• Downtown office and two
county offices.
• $350,000 in outcomes
• 350 cases received follow
up
• More than 400 people
helped
9. Applying this Model to Your Program
Atlanta
Legal Aid
Internal
Staff
FundersVolunteers
10. Keys to Success:
• Use existing
infrastructure
• Evaluate
stakeholder
interests
• Keep it simple
• Be transparent
about “work in
progress”
• Accept feedback
11. A Place of Their Own
• A Custom Homepage with a Follow Up Tab
Process was informal and work recorded in a three-ringed binder
75% of Atlanta Legal Aid Society cases are closed as advice/brief service only cases. That is A LOT of legal advice, attorney time.
The Hotline outcomes project found that clients in food stamps cases who were receiving advice and brief service only from its unit were successful at a rate of 50%.
With follow up assistance from volunteers, the Hotline found that 80% of clients they assisted successfully received food stamps.
- 9 regular, weekly volunteers engaged in half-day shifts
- Collecting data points for specific units to analyze trends or report to other funders
Volunteers:
- Experienced attorneys
- Personal referrals, networking
- Value flexibility
- Approaching or in retirement
- Varying backgrounds
- Short “pitch” meetings
- One-on-one trainings work best
Internal Staff:
- Atlanta Legal Aid has 68 staff attorneys
- Handles approximately 20,000 cases each year
- Serving Metro Atlanta with 5 county offices
- Serving the state of Georgia with special projects
- Staff attorneys directly report to unit & office managers
- Practice areas vary based on unit, office, need & expertise
Funders:
- The Legal Services Corporation Pro Bono Innovation Fund – two year grant
- The UPS Foundation provides funding for support staff.
- Local organizations in support