Talk Justice, an LSC Podcast: How Collaboration Powers Legal Aid’s Hurricane Response
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Carl Rauscher
Director of Communications and Media Relations
rauscherc@lsc.gov
202-295-1615
WASHINGTON– Legal aid staff in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina discuss their wide-ranging hurricane response efforts on the latest episode of LSC's “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. LSC President Ron Flagg hosts the conversation with Lesley Albritton, chief of staff at Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC); Peter Dennis, managing attorney at Florida Rural Legal Services (FRLS); Mike Monahan, pro bono director at Georgia Legal Services Program (GLSP); and Jason Susalla, managing attorney for the Disaster Relief Team at Bay Area Legal Services (BALS).
In the wake of devastating hurricanes in the southeast, legal aid organizations are mobilizing to provide emergency assistance and recovery services. The Florida legal aid providers say that hurricane recovery is more difficult because storms have repeatedly affected some of the same areas over the past three years, so the impacts are compounding.
“We're tired—we just had [Hurricane] Ian two years ago, and that was just a catastrophic storm for us,” says Dennis. “And then with these two storms, we did not have direct hits with either of them, but we certainly did experience flooding with Helene and wind and rain, and especially tornadoes with Milton, which affected a lot of our inland counties.”
In the wake of Hurricane Ian’s devastation in Florida, FRLS received significant support and guidance from other LSC-funded legal aid programs. Dennis says there was a steep learning curve to understanding disaster response, and making connections to other community services providers under “blue skies” is vital for preparedness when “gray skies” strike.
“Disaster recovery is actually disaster preparedness, and that's a year-round activity, and it really isn't optional anymore for many of us who not only live in coastal regions, but as you can see all over the country,” Dennis says.
BALS runs Florida’s statewide Disaster Legal Aid Helpline. It is staffed to take calls year-round. Hotline personnel are well-trained and can direct people to services for all types of problems, not just legal issues.
“We determined that a lot of our at-risk and a lot of our vulnerable communities do not recover by any means at the same rate [as other people], and folks are having issues that crop up long after many traditional disaster resources have dried up or demobilized,” says Susalla. “So, part of our helpline was to make sure that there was this persistent access throughout the entire year.”
Throughout the conversation, the legal aid providers stressed the importance of legal services becoming engrained in the disaster response ecosystem so that other recovery organizations know to refer people to legal aid, and legal aid knows where to refer clients with non-legal issues.
Collaborating with pro bono volunteers is also important to legal aid’s disaster response. In North Carolina, where LANC serves all 100 counties, Helene’s devastation has created a huge influx of need. To help LANC meet this challenge, the North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice issued a “Katrina Rule,” which enables out-of-state attorneys to provide legal services. So far, 590 out-of-state attorneys have registered to help low-income Helene survivors under LANC’s supervision.
“And the other wonderful part about it is that it gives us an opportunity to really educate attorneys who may not live in a state that experiences natural disasters as frequently as we do—although we know those states are becoming more rare—about the needs that we see so we can deploy them again in other disasters,” says Albritton.
Georgia has not enacted the “Katrina Rule,” but GLSP has recently re-organized its pro bono program, creating a team of 20 staff dedicated to pro bono.
“So, we are in a much better position this year than we've ever been to handle these things, and the team of 20 has been working full-time just on disaster legal assistance since the day after Hurricane Helene passed through,” says Monahan.
GLSP has found that pro bono services are well-suited to disaster response because these attorneys have more flexibility than staff attorneys who are tied to specific grants and ongoing cases. Through close collaboration with the Georgia State Bar, GLSP has been able to recruit and train 400 volunteer attorneys to help address the spike in calls to their voicemail-based disaster helpline.
“This is the first time we've had to deal with this kind of volume, and so far we've converted 1,023 voicemails into pre-screens, and now we’re placing cases,” Monahan says.
Talk Justice episodes are available online and on Spotify, YouTube, Apple and other popular podcast apps. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Council.