The

he startling reality that older Americans do not have the practical means of obtaining legal services is now abrasively evident to members of the legal profession.1 Organized segments of the Bar are reacting to this serious problem by addressing the current legal concerns facing older persons. (The District of Columbia Bar Association is considering a cooperative effort with local organizations representing the elderly in the following areas: pro bono representation of low-income elderly in conservatorship proceedings; referral listing of lawyers willing to handle elderly clients; referral program for legal representation on a reduced fee basis; and pro bono representation of clients appealing public benefits decisions to the courts.)

Recently, the Legal Services Corporation and the Administration on Aging (HEW) formally joined forces to provide increased access for older persons to legal assistance.2

Still, the underlying reasons for the dearth of legal services to 10% of our population are, and remain, endemic to the legal system in this country. What is required is inven

1 The Statement of Understanding between the Administration on Aging and the Legal Services Corporation is predicated on "[t]he need for legal services among persons who are elderly." The basis stated is unique problems, outreach education, transportation and limited funds, which the Statement indicates "... is becoming increasingly apparent."

2 State of Understanding between the Administration on Aging, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and the Legal Services Corporation.

By Donald P. Rothschild*

tive new training and meaningful structural change to facilitate the delivery of increased services.

The elderly person, often conveniently tabbed as "senile," does not fit within a common profile of lawyer's client. He or she is often physically and/or mentally ill, proud and ashamed of being a client, in desperate need of help but distrustful of the cost of legal assistance, and confused by being continuously buffeted by terrible lifestyle problems after having led an "exemplary" life of a productive citizen of this country. The attorney who is not put off by such an atypical and often angry client is faced with certain cost-ineffective service. In addition to the older client probably being poor, the

The need for
legal services
is becoming
increasingly apparent

remedy needed is usually available only from limited funds under government programs.3

As if these impediments were not sufficient in themselves, communication with the elderly client is difficult and time consuming. The attorney needs a comprehensive knowledge of interdisciplinary skills as well as specialized legal expertise necessary to deal with a complex, administrative, insurance-welfare system which seems the only feasible alternative for older Americans. Under our present legal system, attor

3 National Council of Senior Citizens, Inc., The Law and Aging Manual 9 (1976).

neys are not provided with the requisite training or economic incentive to surmount these obstacles.

The Institute of Law and Aging at the National Law Center of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. has developed a unique and innovative model program intended to slowly change this dismal picture. The federally-funded prototype trains lawyers, law students, and specialized senior paralegals in "elderly law." The program also provides direct legal assistance to the elderly in clinics in the District of Columbia and nearby VirginiaMaryland suburbs. By using a clinical mode that provides direct services to older persons living in the District of Columbia who need representation, the project is providing lawyers, law students, and specialized senior paralegals with experience and expertise in dealing with contemporary legal problems of the elderly.

The Institute plans to share this significant development in legal education with other law schools through an "export plan" which enables them to coordinate training programs in the area of elderly law by utilizing existing clinical and classroom programs. The export plan is being coordinated with Administration on Aging State and local agencies now serving the elderly, in order to maximize the delivery of legal services throughout the country. This article

*Donald P. Rothschild is co-director of the Institute of Law and Aging and a professor of law at George Washington University. This article was originally printed in the May issue of Trial magazine.

will explain the Institute's Paralegal Training for Seniors program, the law student training program, and the export plan.

At the very core of the effort is Paralegal Training for Seniors (PTS) whose goal is "to train older persons in the skills necessary to offer competent paralegal and social service assistance to other senior citizens," while using the skills of persons 55 years and older to help others help themselves. PTS training is directed at public service employment on a part-time or full-time basis. The training program is based on the theory that older persons should continue in education rather than "phase" into retirement. PTS consists of both traditional classroom instruction (two trimesters of 12 weeks each) and one 12-week trimester of clinical experience.

In the classroom setting, senior paralegal students are trained in the required subjects of Legal Research and Writing, Administrative Practice and Procedure, and the Role of Specialized Paralegals. In the latter subject, the art of interviewing older clients (especially the psychological and emotional problems the interviewer might encounter) is taught by professors from The George Washington University Medical Center. (Parenthetically, Professor Eric S. Sirulnik, co-director of the Institute, teaches in the Medical Center's gerontology program.) Substantive courses in Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, Consumer Law, Landlord-Tenant Law, Medicare and Medicaid, Wills and Small Estate Management, and related areas

4U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, Hearing on Improving Legal Representation for Older Americans, Testimony of Eric S. Sirulnik, Co-Director, Institute of Law and Aging, September 28, 1976.

are offered. A complete set of paralegal training materials has been developed by the Institute for use in our program and other training programs throughout the country."

The paralegal students also work under four full-time attorneys, volunteer attorneys, and 100 advanced law students in a bilingual (EnglishSpanish) storefront office (Operation PEP-Protection for Elderly Persons), in the Adams-Morgan section of Washington, in seven public housing projects, in a nutrition site for the elderly in southeast Washington, in selected "practicum" sites working for public service agencies which need specialized paralegal service, and in a unique visitation program which provides on-site legal services to the city's elderly poor who are not mobile enough to visit our offices. In the last 12 months these clinical projects have handled a case load of over 3,000 persons.

At the end of the year-long program, the paralegals who satisfactorily complete the required courses, the clinical training, and a minimum number of electives, receive a Specialized Paralegal Training Certificate, and the Institute's assistance in finding public service employment. Three members of the first graduating class of twelve students were retained by the Institute to help supervise new paralegal students in their clinical training.

What About Law Students?

Just as the PTS program involves classroom and clinical education, so does our law student training. The major difference in the case of law students, however, is the recognition

5ILA, Paralegal Training Materials on

Legal Problems of the Elderly, edited by Raymond Natter, Esq. (1976).

that a law school's curriculum normally includes all of the fields of law in which the special legal problems of the elderly arise. Accordingly, insofar as classroom training of law students is concerned, the program has developed "Supplementary Materials on Legal Problems of the Elderly" to be utilized in regular law school courses. The Institute has written seven supplements: Administrative Practice in Social Security, Agency Practice in Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Health Care Delivery Systems, Housing, Consumer Problems of the Elderly, Taxation, and Probate Problems of the Elderly. Several new additions to this series are currently underway. (For information about the Law School Supplementary Materials Series, Legal Problems of the Elderly write: Institute of Law and Aging, National Law Center, The George Washington University, 716 Twentieth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20052.)

In addition to receiving regular classroom exposure to the special legal problems of the elderly, law students who are interested in more extensive training participate in seminars in all of the substantive areas previously mentioned. In the past year over 100 such students have signed up for clinical work including representation of older persons in everything from will writing and probate counseling, to representation at administrative hearings before the Social Security Administration and in various divisions of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

The clinical training also offers a variety of nonlitigating clinical experiences such as legislative drafting and legal research. Thus, no matter what particular law and aging project a clinical student enrolls in, the pro

gram concentrates on providing the students with certain skills not readily teachable in the traditional classroom setting. Subjects covered include client interviews, investigation and discovery techniques, oral advocacy, and litigation management. The clinical program helps the law student make the transition from student to lawyer by exposing him or her to the responsibilities of representing the interests of an older person who is the type of client neglected for far too many years.

The "export plan" is founded on several basic notions about legal education. First, clinical education is firmly established as part of the curricula in most law schools today. Resistance to new clinical programs is based upon limited supervision and cost. By utilizing established clinics and offering the assistance of State, regional, and local Administration on Aging offices, these two impediments can be overcome.

Secondly, curricula have been expanding during the last ten years, and law schools are questioning the addition of each new course more carefully. Our program is founded upon the concept of using existing and traditional courses to supplement training on the specialized legal problems of the elderly. This reduces opposition to adding new courses, and leaves it up to individual faculty members to supplement their existing courses. Since we offer Supplementary Series on the Legal Problems of the Elderly, addition of the new material is made attractive. Our initial survey indicates that faculty members are very interested in the subject matter involved in our series.

Thirdly, although there is little consensus about paralegal training or use, our specialized training program for persons 55 years and older has

several advantages to law schools. If senior students are trained alongside law students working in legal problems of the elderly, the expertise contributed by older persons is invaluable to the law students' ability to gain a practical dimension to the lifestyle problems of older Americans. Since the training provided seniors is continuing education, there are funds. available to make the project selfsupporting. Most importantly, universities are better qualified to lend support to this specialized training, because of facilities and interdisciplinary expertise, as well as the fact that they provide an established community in which to make a contribution to the educational needs of the elderly. Our export plan provides a cost-effective way of making this worthwhile contribution.

Plan Is Catching

The response to our export plan has been gratifying, to say the least. The University of Miami, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Southern California law schools are already in the process of establishing programs. Each program will be tailored to the institution's own priorities and needs. For example, the University of New Mexico is going to train specialized senior paralegals to work in an outreach program in Taos, New Mexico, where legal advice will be solicited from law student interns, law school faculty, and phone lines to the law school's clinic. This type of project will enable law schools. to reach rural areas in their States through their clinics.

Other schools have also indicated their intentions to develop new programs, and a conference has been scheduled to work out preliminary details. The Institute of Law and Aging will serve as a clearinghouse

of information and materials for new projects. Naturally, each law school's program will be autonomous, but the Institute believes that a central clearinghouse operation will preclude the necessity of reinventing the wheel with each new program, and will be an incentive to multiply new programs rapidly.

A serious question has been raised as to whether these programs are simply a new version of liberallymotivated educational programs of the 1960's, some of which have fallen into disrepute in the 1970's. The answer is twofold. Many of the programs developed in the 1960's have changed legal education for the better by adding both motivation and expertise for new lawyers to work in contemporary legal fields. But more important, the Institute of Law and Aging is working in traditional fields of law which have failed to provide service for a large and revered part of our population-older Americans, Although a number of ground-breaking programs of the 1960's have failed to meet the test of time, others are now firmly established as a part of new law school curricula. It is myopic to ignore the impact of the failure to serve older Americans because the plight of our parents is our plight and the plight of our children. Some might be tempted to offer that such training must be morbid, depressing, or at best dull, but our experience has proved the opposite. Working with older Americans, as distinguished from providing service to older persons, is stimulating, exciting, and rewarding. It has demonstrated to the staff of the Institute of Law and Aging that legal education can make an invaluable contribution to structural change to facilitate the delivery of legal service to older Americans.

A new national organization is

striving to make the American principle of "equal justice under the law" a reality for millions of elderly poor. Created and funded by Congress to provide legal assistance to the poor in civil matters, the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) began operation in July 1975.

The Corporation is the private, non-profit successor to the poverty law program of the Office of Economic Opportunity (now the Community Services Administration) instituted during the mid-sixties.

The Corporaton currently funds some 3,200 lawyers and 1,200 paralegals in 320 legal assistance programs. These serve clients in nearly 700 offices throughout the country. LSC assumed responsibility for these programs from the Community Services Administration when the Corporation moved from government to

independent status in October 1975.

The Corporation distributes its congressional appropriation through grants and contracts to legal services programs that meet specific requirements. It is responsible for ensuring that its grantees provide services efficiently and that they observe the regulations issued by the Corporation.

The Legal Services Corporation Act of 1974 requires each governor to appoint a nine-member Advisory Council for his State. These councils are responsible for notifying the Corporation of apparent violations of the Act, or violations of Corporation regulations by Corporation-funded programs.

The Need for Legal Services

Recent studies show that for every person served by a legal services program each year, six other poor per

sons, many of whom are elderly, have legal problems that go unattended. Indeed, according to LSC president Thomas Ehrlich, "The capabilities of those programs funded by the Corporation actually declined from 1970 to 1975 when their budgets were virtually frozen despite a period of high inflation."

When the Corporation began operation, nearly 20 million of the Nation's 29 million poor were without access to legal services. They lived in areas where no programs existed or where programs did not have enough money to provide services to everyone who needed them.

By the end of FY 1976, nearly 12 million poor persons still lived in areas where no legal services programs existed. Over eight million poor resided in program areas but still did not have "minimum access" to services. Another nine million had

minimum access. The Corporation defines "minimum access" as the availability of the equivalent of two lawyers for each 10,000 poor persons nationwide. The term "equivalent" includes paraprofessionals as well as professionals.

Meeting the Need

At the time the Corporation was formed, funds for legal aid programs had been virtually frozen at $71.5 million for five years. In order to carry out its plan of providing "minimum access" to services for all the Nation's poor, the Corporation has sought substantially increased appropriations.

The appropriation of $125 million which the Corporation received for FY 1977 allowed the first significant expansion of legal services programs into areas where the poor had had little or no access to legal assistance

(Photo courtesy of the Legal Services Corporation)

since the mid-sixties. By the end of FY 1977, the Corporation had provided expansion grants for new or existing programs in 40 States. Legal assistance has been made available for an additional 3.8 million poor persons previously unserved.

On August 2, 1977, President Carter signed an appropriations bill awarding the Corporation $205 million for FY 1978.

Programs for the Elderly

Under its 1974 authorizing legislation, the Corporation is mandated to provide civil representation to "persons financially unable to afford such legal assistance." Some 20 percent of this target population is elderly.

Recognizing this fact, the Corporation is making additional efforts to reach the elderly. Besides its regular programs, the Corporation funds

the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Los Angeles, the Council of Elders in Boston, Legal Services for the Elderly Poor in New York, and the Senior Citizens Project of the California Rural Legal Assistance program in San Francisco.

These programs, which have a combined budget of nearly one million dollars, are devoted exclusively to legal services for the elderly poor. Their activities range from providing representation and assistance in important litigation involving elderly clients (the role of the National Senior Citizens Law Center) to providing general legal services directly to elderly clients. Furthermore, the Corporation funds many legal services programs which, although not devoted solely to serving older persons, have units or individual specialists that concentrate on such service.