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Advocates for Vets

New York Lawyer
October 26, 2007

By Thomas Adcock
New York Law Journal

The City Bar Justice Center, the pro bono affiliate of the New York City Bar Association, launched the Veterans Legal Clinic this week in concert with attorneys from 10 Manhattan firms.

The new program will provide free counsel to low-income men and women returned home to the metropolitan area from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - some of whom are homeless, and many suffering from severe physical and mental health problems.

One of a handful of such clinics around the country, the New York initiative was established in response to the anticipated needs of returnees from the "most sustained combat operations since the Vietnam era," as conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were characterized in a joint statement by two New York state Assembly committees that held fact-finding public hearings in May.

The committees on mental health and veterans affairs said further in their statement that today's military personnel have especially high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder due to "lengthy and multiple tours of duty, decreased mortality rates and traumatic brain injuries."

Left untreated, post-traumatic stress disorder could lead to "devastating ramifications, including unemployment, substance abuse, homelessness or involvement with the criminal justice system," according to the statement.

On Wednesday afternoon, nearly 100 private firm volunteer lawyers gathered at city bar headquarters on West 44th Street for a three-hour training session in the fundamentals of Veterans Benefits Administration law and practical tips on filing for disability benefits.

Instruction was given by Michael Taub, staff attorney for the Homeless Advocacy Project of Philadelphia, among the first regional nonprofit groups to recognize the special needs of today's veterans. Mr. Taub said his agency's concern for returned soldiers reflects an estimation by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that one-third of America's homeless population has worn a military uniform at one time or another.

In an interview before Wednesday's training session, Mr. Taub said, "Who wouldn't feel compassion for this population? People went there [to Afghanistan and Iraq] with no problems, and they're coming back with brain injuries, amputations and complete loss of limbs and [post-traumatic stress disorder] because of the constant and unpredictable violence they endured. So they're down on their luck, but they're appreciative, they're smart and they're patriotic."

Successful advocacy for veterans, he said, is "as much about knowing the law as knowing the ins and outs of the claims process, with some social work thrown in."

Mr. Taub added, "You're dealing with a [federal] bureaucracy with a lot of overworked employees. Over time, we've developed strategies for getting the VA what it needs, which eliminates a lot of repetition and a lot of back and forth - and errors that can result in denials."

On Thursday morning, the initial group of New York-area veterans assembled as clients at the city bar. They numbered about 20 men and women who responded to fliers posted at military service organizations, union halls and homeless shelters. Clinic attorneys expect that number to rise dramatically, as well as involvement by law firms beyond the 10 represented in Wednesday's training.

"No one has any sense of how long this is going to last," said William M. Bagliebter, a Reed Smith partner and a leader among attorneys from the 10 firms who began meeting this summer with the Justice Center's director, Carol Bockner, to formulate the Veterans Legal Clinic.

"We hope that once we get this going it will become an institution," said Mr. Bagliebter. "We don't want to bite off more than we can chew, so for right now we're concentrating on initial applications for benefits."

"We're looking for [pro bono] clients in the New York area at this stage, and what their needs are," said Eric A. Stone, a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. "I'm hopeful that as we get up and running and successful, projects like ours will pop up in other parts of the country.

"We think we'll continue to do this for years," he added. "The commitment we've been discussing is more on the level of how much time it will take per each [initial VA application for disability benefits]."

Should appeals of rejections be necessary, said Mr. Stone, "Then as a group we'll consider what we can do."

In addition to Reed Smith and Paul Weiss, the firms involved in the working group are Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; Covington & Burling; Howrey; Mayer Brown; McCarter & English; Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; Shearman & Sterling; and Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

"The good thing about VA law is that it's so favorable to veterans," said Mr. Taub, who after graduating from Villanova University School of Law did general litigation work at a private Philadelphia firm. He joined his city's Homeless Advocacy Project four years ago.

Many of the pro bono cases New York lawyers are set to handle, said Mr. Taub, are not particularly difficult, due to standards of proof in documenting claims.

"In most civil cases, the standard is a preponderance of evidence," he said. "For veterans, it's not even that. These are actually very winnable cases, with good rewards and benefits. Denials occur because a lot of vets simply don't know how to organize and present their cases - the homeless in particular, and those with mental illnesses."

At the same time New York and other cities are gearing up to assist returning veterans - notably Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles and Raleigh, N.C. - the nonprofit National Veterans Legal Services Program in Washington, D.C., will begin a pro bono recruitment program on Nov. 1 for appeals beyond the country's regional VA offices.

The New York clinic, said Messrs. Bagliebter and Stone, will provide free counsel to veterans whose annual incomes are less than three times the federal poverty level, as determined by the Department of Health and Human Services. The federal poverty level is $10,210 for individuals in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., and rises by stages to $34,570 for a household of eight.

Mr. Taub said he considered the triple-poverty rate "generous," and said his own agency in Philadelphia represents veterans at only twice the poverty income level.