| Posted
April 23, 2004
Elder Law Clinic Addresses Broad
Range of Legal Issues
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| From left: Megan Davidson (wearing
cap), Lance Morita, supervising attorney Claire Curry, Eric Carelli,
coordinator April Holmes, Jack Wilson, Kristiana Brugger, and Kathleen
Zvarych. (not pictured: Jennifer Banner) |
Their clients are a vulnerable group and often overlooked by the community,
but students taking the Advocacy
Clinic for the Elderly found that
in helping low-income seniors they tackled a range of legal problems
offering a well-rounded practical education in law and pro bono service.
“It’s a great way to serve an underserved population first
and secondly it’s a fantastic way to learn,” said clinic
student Kristiana Brugger. “From being an adviser, to drafting
transactional documents, you really get the gamut. . . . It really
lets [students] do pretty much any kind of case that they want.”
In the clinic’s first year, the seven students in the year-long
course drafted wills, powers of attorney, and advance medical directives.
They also worked on administrative appeals on social security and Medicare
benefits claims, Medicaid cases, and tax and property disputes. This
spring, students paired up to make a series of educational presentations
to area seniors on the new Medicare prescription benefits, consumer
protection and nursing home residents’ rights, and trusts, wills,
and powers of attorney.
Since many of the low-income seniors the students served were house-bound,
students often paired up to make home visits.
“They’re vulnerable to different kinds of exploitation
and they’re not in good positions to get out and get effective
legal representation. They really do need it for a lot of things,” said
clinic student Jack Wilson, a philosophy professor on leave from Washington
and Lee University. Ironically, clinic students are the ones getting
out in the community as a result. “I’ve seen more this
last year of the community than I have [the past three years] combined,” said
third-year law student Megan Davidson.
The students entered their clients’ lives in some cases as they
were close to dying. “We confronted death a lot, which is something
I didn’t necessarily expect,” Davidson said. Having families
let them in at such a time “has really been a privilege.”
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| Curry (with Carelli): “We
have a large number of cases with people in very dire situations.” |
Students are guided by supervising attorney Claire Curry of the Charlottesville-based
Legal Aid Justice Center, which offers civil legal services to low-income
families throughout Central Virginia and to low-wage immigrant workers
statewide. At the Center, Curry works with the elderly population and
also represents the Public Housing Association of Residents. The School
of Law received a two-year start-up grant to run the clinic from the
Jessie Ball DuPont Fund and the Virginia Law Foundation, due to the
efforts of Virginia alum Lora Hamp ‘02, who co-taught the clinic
during the first semester. She has since handed administrative duties
to April Holmes, who previously coordinated the 2020 Community Plan
on Aging, a collaborative effort spearheaded by the Jefferson Area
Board for Aging (JABA). Clinic students also worked with such partners
as JABA and the Senior Center, Inc. Other planned projects will be
coordinated with the Virginia Elder Rights Coalition and the Senior
Lawyers Division of the American Bar Association.
Hamp and law professor Richard Bonnie designed the clinic to expand
practical opportunities for students and to help fill out the Health
Law Program offerings, which also include courses on Aging and the
Law and the Mental Health Law Clinic.
Bonnie said he is excited about the clinic and the overall program
in law and aging.
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| Wilson (left) explains the status
of a case as Brugger, Banner, Zvarych, Morita and Curry listen. |
“We have a chance to do some very interesting and innovative
things involving the Medical School—which is developing great
strengths in geriatrics—and the community,” Bonnie said. “This
will spawn research opportunities as well as educational ones.” Bonnie
and Dr. Suzanne Holroyd, a geriatric psychiatrist, are working on a
research study involving the competence of people with dementia to
vote, which will yield further advocacy opportunities for students.
Bonnie said he and the clinic’s instructors hope to expand the
course next year so that more students can enroll.
The growing number of seniors in the area, due in part to the graying
baby-boom population and the popularity of the city as a retirement
hotspot, suggests the need for such services will only increase.
“We have a large number of cases with people in very dire situations,” supervising
attorney Curry said. The clinic offered a good opportunity for law
students to work directly with clients and expand what the Legal Aid
Justice Center could offer. “It exceeded my expectations in terms
of the students actually getting out there and going to see the clients
who physically could not come to Charlottesville,” she said.
In addition to Charlottesville, the clinic serves Albemarle and surrounding
counties Fluvanna, Greene, Nelson, and Louisa. “I lived here
before I came to law school so it’s nice to go into communities
that I haven’t been exposed to,” Wilson said. “It’s
a great chance to help an underserved community and get great experience
in practical lawyering along the way.”
Students meet for a two-hour session each week to discuss the cases
they are working on. Clients are often referred through outreach workers,
social services, or relatives, although some are walk-ins. The clinic
has had guest speakers, such as attorneys from the law firm McGuire
Woods, who talked about trusts and estates. “It provides for
an informal atmosphere too,” Brugger said. “We really get
maximum access to our instructors.” Brugger worked about eight
to10 hours on clinic work each week, including calling clients, researching,
writing memos or updating memos, and sometimes spending hours on the
phone trying to get clients social security benefits.
After taking the clinic, third-year law student Kathleen Zvarych chose
to start her legal career at the nonprofit Council for Senior Centers
in New York City, where she received a fellowship. The clinic “definitely
contributed to them offering the job.”
Students had varying reasons for taking the course. Jennifer Banner
said she often thinks about elder-care issues because her parents are
older. “It’s important to me that people help older people
in this country…that they’re treated with the respect
that they deserve,” she said. Banner called one trip the class
took to Westminster Canterbury Nursing Home on Pantops Mountain an “amazing
experience.” The University’s head of geriatrics, Dr. Mark
Williams, showed them the different levels of care, from able-bodied
seniors to those on ventilators.
“It’s really different from anything else you’re
going to do in law school,” Wilson said.
While giving a presentation about the new Medicare bill to well-informed
seniors in Greene County, Brugger said she “was really surprised
to see how opinionated our audience was on one viewpoint or another.” Curry
herself was surprised. “I thought we were going to have an AARP
card burning,” she said, adding that it brought home the dire
situation seniors face with expensive prescription drugs. (view
a handout from the student presentation about the revisions to the
Medicare Act)
Curry said the clinic has likely been an eye-opening experience for
students. “I think they’ll probably take more seriously
their pro bono obligations,” Curry said. “It’s a
privilege to practice law.”
Although cases varied each week, Curry said they tried to ensure each
student got direct experience in trusts and estates, which includes
work such as writing a will, and counseling clients about powers of
attorney and advance medical directives. Students without their third-year
practice certificates had the opportunity to advocate for clients at
administrative hearings. Such cases can include those before the Social
Security Administration, which can focus on whether clients received
the correct amount of benefits or whether they were overpaid, whether
the client was at fault in getting the higher payment, or whether they
are able to re-pay overpayments. Other administrative cases might address
veterans’ benefits, food stamps, or fuel assistance, a program
that helps low-income seniors with their heating bills.
Holmes, who is not a lawyer but coordinates with area senior advocacy
groups, said she was “impressed with how complex the issues are
that students are dealing with.”
Some federal programs in particular can be intricate to wade through,
Curry said. “The Medicaid cases can tend to be complicated because
the laws and the regulations are so byzantine.”
The students’ presentation materials likely will be used in
the future at informational presentations, and two students are also
working on material for a brochure on administrative remedies for nursing
home residents.
“I was very pleased with the students and what a contribution
they can make,” Curry said. “I think they have a great
affinity and compassion for these folks.”
• Reported by M. Wood
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