Arlington — The spring semester may be over for George Mason University School of Law students, but school is not out for one of its clinics. The law school’s Clinic for Legal Assistance to Service Members and Veterans, based in Arlington, spends all year tackling pro-bono legal cases for veterans and service members.
Since its early days in 2004, the program has provided nearly $2 million in legal services and has assisted more than 200 clients.
The clinic also functions as a two-credit law school course, run by Laurie Forbes Neff. An U.S. Marine Corps veteran herself, Neff said it is an honor to oversee students coming to the legal aid of veterans, current service members and their families.
“It is a course, and students receive credit for clinical education,” Neff said. “It is a good way for them to get real world experience. We are a training incubator. It gives them real world practical experience in a safe setting and is giving them the opportunity to serve those who serve us all on a daily basis.”
There are 20-25 students per year, and Neff said the class is so popular that most students take it for two semesters. Then, many students become volunteers so they can see their cases settled. All students practice cases under the supervision of a practicing attorney, which is either Neff or a volunteer.
“We always have a waiting list,” Neff said. “They just love it and have so much fun doing it. We are serving a special population. They are responsive and sometimes the cases are very unique. It is a very neat mix for our students and they get legal experience.”
The majority of the clinic’s docket is civil litigation cases. Neff will not take on a case that she does not feel that a student could handle.
“We do a lot of uncontested divorces and step parent adoption cases,” Neff said. “The majority of our docket is split between those two things. Then we have landlord-tenant cases and administrative cases. We take cases with understanding that they are going to be resolved without going to trial.”
Still, the clinic has saved its clients hours of time and thousands of dollars with its efforts. One local Marine, Stormy Knowles of Lorton, said she could not have asked for a better experience with the clinic.
Knowles started her divorce proceedings with the Judge Advocate General (JAG), who could only take her so far through the process. After some research at a law library and then an online search, she found the clinic last year.
“I met the director of the program and everyone was very kind,” Knowles said. “They didn’t try to argue with me. Basically I wanted my marriage to be over. It was a matter of fixing things that JAG didn’t know how to do. They listened to what I needed and wanted out of it to make me happy, so it went very smoothly with them. They were very phenomenal. They asked a couple of small questions, not trying to sway me one way or another.”
Knowles said everything was made convenient and the case was resolved without her having to set foot in a courtroom.
“I sat down with them and they helped me get the paperwork straight,” Knowles said. “They finished up everything, and gave me advice so that I would not have to take off work. I ended up doing a divorce on affidavit, with a witness on my behalf.”
She said she has referred three of her friends to the clinic, which handles between 35 and 40 cases at a time.
Neff said the clinic sees resounding success with its caseload.
“I wouldn’t say we have lost any,” Neff said. “A lot of cases are settled. Clients may not always think they win, but I would say 95 percent of the time we have extraordinarily positive outcomes. And the other five percent are still positive.”
Not only are Neff and her students representing the military population, but the clinic has also been working toward another goal for the past three years. It is fighting for the Commonwealth of Virginia’s first treatment docket, which will establish a new judicial approach toward veterans and active duty service members.
“It says the reason they committed crimes is because of their military service,” Neff said. “They resorted to criminal behavior because they served. The treatment docket places [the defendants] on the docket to try and basically keep them out of jail and get them healthy again.”
She said she added the treatment docket to the clinic’s mission when she came on board three years ago.
“There are no treatment dockets officially in existence in Virginia,” Neff said. “It’s been mostly pushed by community service, and the clinic has been trying for the past three years. It’s a lot of one-on-one with the judge, time-consuming and resource-consuming but we owe it to our veterans to do this for them. Fairfax has the biggest veteran population in the Commonwealth so this is one of our goals.”
A treatment docket in Fairfax County is on track for a January 2015 start date, Neff added.
Neff continues to teach the clinic year round, with each student handling between two and three cases. She said she reaches out to Mason alumni as well as her professional community for volunteer supervising attorneys. While the two-credit class is demanding, she said her students are always eager to put in the work.
Justin Collins of Arlington, a 2014 graduate, took the clinic for two semesters and volunteered for a third semester. He said the clinic was exactly the hands-on experience he craved as a student.
“One of the things I was looking for when I came to law school was practical experience,” Collins said. “The chance to dig in and get your hands dirty with the law was what drew me to the clinic. Professor Neff supervised us but allowed us to do all the up-front hands on work, so we are the ones that interacted with the client and represented them in court. It was the best way to actually prepare yourself to go out into the real world while you are still a student.”
Collins, who accepted a position with U.S. Navy JAG in the fall, said he always had an interest in veteran law and the clinic emphasized how gratifying this particular field of law can be.
“We represent a lot of people of limited financial means,” he said. “I represented a homeless man who couldn’t stop telling me how much he appreciated what I was doing, so it’s very rewarding.”
The clinic is on a number of referral lists and the application process is on its website. If Neff deems the applicant and the case appropriate for student management, the applicant is brought in immediately.
Neff said lobbying for veterans and teaching her students to do so could not be more fulfilling.
“Not only am I serving a population of people that I care deeply about, I am making a real impact in these students’ lives,” Neff said. “Many of my students have gone on to work in this area, and a handful that never considered veterans benefit law as an area they wanted to pursue want to do this now and after taking the class.”