Posted April 26, 202410:30 pm
By Stephanie Haney
The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland celebrates its volunteers all year long, and is making a special push for awareness about its volunteer program during National Volunteer Week, which runs from April 21-28 this year.
One way Legal Aid relies on thousands of volunteers each year to meet the civil legal needs of people across Northeast Ohio, alongside its full-time staff, is through their many Brief Advice Clinics.
"We address civil legal needs, so it could range from getting advice on an eviction to a divorce to small claims issues, all sorts of things," supervising attorney Julie Reed explained. "As long as they're within the civil legal realm."
At the clinics, volunteers like attorney Suzanne Bretz Blum — who helps advise Legal Aid's Volunteer Lawyers Program — help support the full-time staff of more than 130 people.
"There have been over 3,000 lawyers involved in volunteering with Legal Aid over the past five years or so," Blum said.
Many of those attorneys show up early on Saturday mornings to give free counsel at Legal Aid's Brief Advice Clinics, which happen almost every weekend across Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, and Lorain counties. Volunteers also include people who haven't taken the bar exam, like administrative assistant Aliah Lawson.
"People who aren't attorneys are very important at Brief Advice Clinics to make sure that the client needs are being serviced and that they are getting the advice they need to move forward," Lawson told 3News.
Brief Advice Clinic client Sherry Howell is grateful for the volunteers' time and attention, especially from the lawyer who helped her with her landlord issue.
"She broke it down for me to understand everything, because before, I just seemed like a deer in the headlights, like I didn't know where I was going with this," Howell said. "I'm a single mom, so to actually be heard and listened to, I really appreciated it."
That's exactly the outcome that Reed and her fellow staff are hoping for when clients come to these clinics.
"A Brief Advice Clinic is really a one-stop shop to get some answers to very simple legal needs," she added. "So you get to sit down and talk to an attorney and leave with some more answers than you had when you walked in."
"The need is there," Blum noted. "The need is greater than we can meet, but every lawyer who volunteers reduces that need just a little bit."
Lawyer or not, there's a place for you to volunteer with Legal Aid all over Northeast Ohio, if you're interested.
"Not everyone has a car, not everyone has easy access to a clinic," Lawson said. "Our Brief Advice Clinics are important for meeting people where they are, so we try to go all over our service area to meet them in their neighborhoods."
If you're interested in registering to volunteer with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, you can do that at this link.
Legal Aid's Brief Advice Clinic dates and locations can be found on its website, here. The next clinic will be held on Apr. 27 starting at 10 a.m. at the Food Bank Community Resource Center located at 15500 South Waterloo Road in Cleveland.
Source: WKYC - Legal Aid Society of Cleveland celebrates National Volunteer Week