Funding cuts a hardship for people needing legal aid

Sunday, September 23, 2012

 

by Susan Spencer TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

 

Worcester Telegram & Gazette

http://www.telegram.com 

 

Rhonda L. Berger, 34, of Upton, tried to make her marriage work. Last November, the former national-level gymnast and dancer left her native Florida with her three children, twins Michael and Matthew, now 7, and Rose, 4, to move back with her husband of eight years, Adam, who had returned to Massachusetts for a job.

 

But the abuse she claimed she’d suffered for six years got worse and on July 25 she obtained a restraining order and had her husband removed from the home.

 

New to the area with no family around, and with very little income, Ms. Berger has struggled since then to find legal representation for her several divorce, custody and restraining-order court appearances.

 

Ms. Berger and her three children are also deaf.

 

With only the ongoing assistance of her friend Theresa Barbuscia, her children’s interpreter from Florida who moved to Massachusetts with the family, Ms. Berger has encountered holes in the safety net that’s supposed to assure equitable access to the justice system. Cuts over several years in funding for legal aid and difficulties finding interpreters have left some vulnerable people like Ms. Berger going it alone in a complex process, often against an adversary who is well-armed with legal support.

 

Ms. Barbuscia isn’t certified as a legal interpreter in Massachusetts and has not been allowed to interpret for Ms. Berger in Worcester Probate and Family Court. 

 

An interpreter at Milford District Court, where the judge vacated the first restraining order after five days for reasons Ms. Berger didn’t understand, used Signed Exact English, a different and unfamiliar form of sign language from the American Sign Language Ms. Berger uses. 

 

An application to have her case handled by Community Legal Aid in Worcester, which offers free legal assistance on civil cases for low-income and elderly people, was turned down because of resource constraints.

 

“They just don’t listen to her. It’s a shame,” Ms. Barbuscia said about the courts. 

Speaking for Ms. Berger, who said she lived in fear because of the abuse, Ms. Barbuscia said, “It falls through the cracks and then something happens. Give her the opportunity to have what she literally deserves.”

 

People in Worcester County who generally have income less than 125 percent of the federal poverty level, roughly $28,000 a year for a family of four, have for decades turned to Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts for help with civil cases involving family law, access to public benefits, employment, housing and foreclosure, immigration, discrimination and elder law. 

 

In 2011, after sustaining funding cuts of hundreds of thousands of dollars over the preceding years, LACCM merged with Western Massachusetts Legal Services to form Community Legal Aid, which covers five counties. The new organization has its main offices in Northampton, Pittsfield, Springfield and Worcester.

 

More than 90 percent of funding for legal aid comes from government appropriations, public and private grants and support from United Way, all of which have decreased substantially. 

 

Community Legal Aid Executive Director Jonathan L. Mannina pointed to the single biggest decline coming from a quasi-public agency called Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation, or MLAC, which comprises more than 60 percent of the organization’s revenue. MLAC funding comes from annual legislative appropriations and a portion of pooled interest on lawyers’ trust accounts, which are typically used for escrow in real estate transactions.

 

Mr. Mannina said that statewide interest on lawyers’ trust accounts totaled $26 million in fiscal 2008. In 2012, after the real estate crash and miniscule interest rates, the amount was $7 million.

 

“The effect on us has been dramatic,” Mr. Mannina said. 

 

Community Legal Aid has frozen salaries, laid off staff members, turned to volunteer help from laid-off lawyers and AmeriCorps and doubled-down its private grant-writing and fundraising efforts. The agency has raised $80,000 each of the last three years from local lawyers.

 

In 2008, Mr. Mannina said, his organization had 26 lawyers and three paralegals working on cases in Worcester County. Today, for the same region, it has 13 lawyers and three paralegals.

 

“The upshot is we can’t represent the same number at a time when the need for services has exploded,” he said.

 

“Everything we do at a certain level gets worse when the economy gets worse,” he said, citing skyrocketing foreclosures, evictions, unemployment and domestic violence.

Mr. Mannina said it’s difficult for Community Legal Aid to assess which cases to take, but the agency puts the highest priority on those in which it can have the biggest impact and where services are most needed. Family law cases involving domestic violence, especially when there are children in the home, are an overwhelming priority. 

 

For the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, approximately 2,850 Worcester County residents received services from Community Legal Aid. In 2011, 3,000 county residents did; and in 2010 it was 3,700.

 

Community Legal Aid also provides a free “lawyer for the day” every weekday except Wednesday in courthouses so people without a lawyer to represent them can still talk through proceedings in civil cases.

 

For Community Legal Aid clients who need an interpreter, whether for sign language or a spoken language, Mr. Mannina said the organization would pay for the service.

He said a litigant should bring it to the attention of the court clerk or ultimately the judge if communication needs aren’t met. 

 

“The court has a responsibility to do that, and in my experience they’re pretty good about it,” he said. “It’s not in anybody’s interest to have a system where people can’t talk to each other.”

 

“It’s heartbreaking each time we tell a client we can’t take her case,” said Rachel B. Biscardi, director of pro bono projects for the Women’s Bar Foundation in Boston, which works with low-income women across the state, particularly in family law.

“It’s devastating. Legal services have been cut dramatically.”

 

Ms. Biscardi said that cuts have hit interpreter services too and clients may have to wait longer. 

 

“It’s required as a matter of policy, as a matter of state law, and also as a matter of … the Americans with Disabilities Act,” said Richard M. Glassman, litigation director for the Disability Law Center in Boston.

 

According to Erika Gully-Santiago, deputy public information officer for the state Supreme Judicial Court, certified spoken and sign language interpreters are paid for through the Trial Court’s Office of Court Interpreters. She said overall trial court funding, including court interpreters, has declined over the past several years. 

 

Spoken language interpreters are in place on the day needed for 98 percent of cases in which they are sought, but the figure is lower — around 80 percent — for sign language. The Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf certify sign language interpreters, who are paid state rates.

 

After more than a week of reaching out to its volunteers, the Women’s Bar Foundation found a pro bono lawyer to represent Ms. Berger at the last minute, before her most recent court date Thursday. 

 

The Women’s Bar Foundation trains lawyers who volunteer their time; but like Community Legal Aid, it can’t accommodate all the requests for representation.

“We offer counsel and advice,” Ms. Biscardi said, even in cases when they can’t offer a personal lawyer. “We’ll meet with a client, go over pleadings and walk through the process. We’ll do everything we can short of going into court armed with a body.”

Ms. Biscardi said the majority of litigants in family court don’t have a lawyer. “You’re always better off with an attorney,” she said.

 

With a lawyer present on Thursday, Ms. Berger obtained an extension of the restraining order in place since mid-September. But without a certified interpreter, according to Ms. Barbuscia, the hearing was continued until Oct. 12. ▪