Lawyers Step up to help Veterans Gratis

Lawyers step up to help veterans gratis

By Laura Parker

The scene resembled Hollywood’s version of how a multibillion-dollar legal deal might be negotiated. Big-name corporate law firm. Posh conference room, with a conference table so large 70 attorneys fit easily around it. Video technicians, hovering nearby, beaming the meeting to other big law firms from Boston to Seattle.

Yet there was no deal to cut. Instead, the high-powered lawyers were getting a tutorial in the arcane vagaries of veterans law. “This could be the VA’s worst nightmare,” Bart Stichman, one of the organizers, said from the podium. “Hundreds of attorneys from around the country providing legal service to veterans for free.”

The recent gathering at Sidley Austin, a firm with 1,700 lawyers around the globe, is part of a growing effort to provide free legal help to thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who are trying to win disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“There are 100,000 veterans seeking benefits, and too many of them are waiting too long to get them,” said Ron Abrams, who, with Stichman, directs the National Veterans Legal Services Program, a nonprofit group in Washington spearheading the effort. “These lawyers are going to treat these veterans the way they would treat their corporate clients.”

The approach marks the first time since the Civil War that attorneys have been recruited in large numbers to represent veterans. The lawyers hope their legal expertise will speed consideration of claims and result in better benefits for veterans, Stichman said. More than 50 of the largest law firms in the U.S. and more than 400 attorneys have signed up. Stichman and Abrams said they hope to start assigning veterans to the attorneys early next month.

Law schools join cause

Amanda Smith, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based firm Morgan Lewis, said many of the participating lawyers are Vietnam veterans and “are appalled at the circumstances that they find veterans in today.”

Besides the push by big law firms, law schools in states such as the Carolinas, Virginia, Delaware, Michigan and Illinois also are offering free services to veterans.

Craig Kabatchnick, who worked as a VA appellate attorney from 1990 until 1995, launched a clinic last January for veterans at North Carolina Central University’s law school, where he now teaches.

“We had all kinds of veterans who were very disabled, litigating against trained attorneys like myself who were defending the VA,” Kabatchnick said.

VA would “win” if the claim was denied, Kabatchnick said. “Did we litigate to win? Absolutely. In cases where the veteran was representing himself, the win ratio was very high.”

Paul Hutter, VA’s general counsel, says its attorneys have “an ethical obligation to fairly and justly” review claims and settle “meritorious cases quickly.”

“Our job is to ensure that veterans get the benefits allowed them by law,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Disability claims have increased from 578,773 in fiscal 2000 to 838,141 this year, according to VA figures. There are about 407,000 pending claims. The average processing time is 177 days, VA said.

Change in law lifted restrictions

Traditionally, veterans have represented themselves or sought assistance from a service organization, such as the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars. But many of the caseworkers in those groups are overloaded with cases, Stichman said — sometimes, one volunteer oversees 1,000 veterans’ claims.

The approach has not led to quick compensation for veterans. Evidence supporting a veteran’s claim — medical records or letters from colleagues — is not always submitted with the original claim. When that evidence is added later, it can lead to reversals or requests for reconsideration. That can add more than a year to the appeals process, VA said.

The Board of Veterans Appeals either reverses or orders reconsideration of decisions made by VA regional offices 56 percent of the time, according to an analysis of VA figures by Stichman’s group. Congress has long kept attorneys at arm’s length from the veterans’ disability process. Until last June, when federal law changed, paid attorneys could not work on cases until after a final decision by the Board of Veterans’
Appeals. VA is now considering new regulations that would require all attorneys to pass a test in order to qualify to handle veterans’ claims, according to Phil Budahn, a department spokesman.

Service organizations, including the Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars, vigorously fought the change in law. They are now pushing to repeal the law and support requiring a test, arguing that lawyers could turn what is supposed to be a nonadversarial process into a litigious one.

“The fear was lawyers will dominate, and they’ll ruin everything,” said Thomas Reed, a law professor at Widener University in Wilmington, Del., who began offering free legal services to veterans in 1997.

Joe Violante, national legislative director of the Disabled American Veterans, which represents 1.3 million veterans, said trained volunteers from the service organizations are far more experienced at representing veterans’ claims than the newly recruited lawyers.

“If the veteran is under the impression that an attorney is going to get their claim through faster, there’s no proof of that,” he said.

Ron Flagg, a Sidley attorney involved in the pro bono veterans’ project, says there are so many claims that the system is overwhelmed.

“Lawyers are not the cure to all ills,” he says. “But this is a problem where lawyers can be helpful.”

ORIGINAL STORY: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-11-26-valawyers_N.htm