Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> So how does legal fit into the areas
that we've been discussing today?
Well, when we talk about military and veterans
and their families, we often talk about the sacrifice
that they make for us all.
And part of that sacrifice involves living the military
lifestyle and all that that entails.
And a big part of the military lifestyle unfortunately can give
rise to legal problems,
especially for our military families
and certainly for our veterans.
When you think about how often military families have
to relocate across the country and around the world,
and all of the kinds of issues that arise when dealing
with contracts, dealing with leases, and so on.
When you think about our reservists
and our National Guard's men and women who are mobilized
and deployed, leave their jobs, perhaps have a reduction
in income because of going on active-duty service
and then have to return to their civilian employment
after 12, 18 months.
Legal issues can arise there.
Certainly with our veterans we hear a lot of about their need
for legal assistance to get the benefits that they are entitled
to for service-connected injuries.
And of course, unfortunately we also hear a lot
about legal problems that can arise from those
who are seriously injured or killed in action
or perhaps have committed suicide as a result
of mental health issues coming back from combat.
So I see these issues every day in my work
at the American Bar Association, and what I'm here to talk to you
about -- oops, excuse me; other way --
is how to deal with these legal issues.
And if there's one takeaway that I would like you to have
from this session today, it's this:
a resolvable legal issue may lie at the heart
of a military client's problem.
And remember that.
and I'll give you an illustration to sort
of help understand that better.
Let's imagine you work
at a social-service-type organization,
and a military spouse comes in and says,
"My husband, he's been deployed.
He's in Afghanistan, and I've just received a letter
from a bank.
It says that the home that I've been renting,
the landlord hasn't been paying the mortgage.
And so the home now is going into foreclosure.
And the bank says I have to leave right away.
And I need help.
I need -- I just paid my rent a week ago.
I don't have any extra income.
I don't, I don't know how I'm going to pay to move myself
and my children to a new home immediately."
So what do you do in that instance?
DO you just address the immediate problem --
find financial help, maybe find some housing
or some other assistance?
Or do you stop for a moment and think, "You know,
this doesn't really seem right.
It doesn't seem, it doesn't seem like it could be legal
for a bank just to do this, to come in and remove a family
from a home like this, especially a military family."
Well, obviously, that's what you should do:
you should consider whether there might be a resolvable
legal issue that may provide a better, longer-term solution,
that might keep that family in the home for an extended period
of time allowing them to relocated under conditions
that are most favorable to them.
If you do this, you may encounter two key challenges.
The first is figuring out how to identify the legal issue
and identify the legal rights
that might be available in that circumstance.
And then the second challenge is locating legal help
to actually resolve the problem.
When seeking out legal information it's important
to remember that you should be looking
for military-specific legal information.
If you, say, in the hypothetical example that I gave you,
if you were looking to try to find out does the law allow
for a foreclosing entity to remove a family like this
and under these circumstances, you could go Google
and probably find the answer fairly quickly.
But what you might not find is how federal and state statutes
that are military-specific might give
that family additional legal rights
and additional legal protections.
They're out there in a variety of different ways
for active-duty and for veterans,
and you should always remember to be looking for resources
that will provide you with that information,
because your client may have more rights
than you may have found in your, in your quick search.
The American Bar Association has created an online resource
called ABA Home Front, which is a clearinghouse
of legal information written for non-lawyers
in a very easily accessible style where you can find
that military-specific information and find
out what kinds of special rights a military client may have.
ABAhomefront.org.
Now, once you've figured
out whether there are special legal rights available
for that military member or veteran, the next step is to try
to find actual, in-person legal help.
And the key thing to remember here is
that a military legal assistance attorney is generally the best
first place to find free civil,
legal help for that military member, dependent, or veteran.
They can go to a military legal assistance office,
meet with a J.A.G. or civilian attorney, get legal advice
and direction, and get some assistance
with whatever that problem may be.
ABA Home Front has a national directory
of every military legal assistance office available
throughout the country and those overseas as well.
The difficulty that your client may have when meeting
with a military attorney is
that that military attorney may not be able
to actually provide the full range of service
that that client needs.
Military attorneys can't often go into court
to provide representation.
So the American Bar Association has created Military Pro Bono
Project, which helps move those cases
from the military legal assistance office
to a civilian attorney in the community
where the legal help is needed.
And that attorney then will provide free representation
and legal counsel to that military member to help resolve
that problem permanently.
And if you go on Abahomefront.org
to the national directory, you'll find many,
many other organizations, legal aid, lawyer referral, and bar,
and bar associations, law clinics,
and others that also provide a similar service.
So the ABA stands by to assist you in helping to identify
and to resolve the legal issues that you may find
with your military clients.
My contact information is here.
And I thank you for your time and your attention
in helping this very deserving population.
[ APPLAUSE ]