Supports Increased Funding for NFP Legal Service Providers and More Pro Bono Attorney Services
(Mineola, Long Island, NY) Peter J. Mancuso, President of the Nassau County Bar Association, the largest suburban bar in the country and a long-standing leader in providing pro bono services to the less advantaged, today announced that trained attorneys and paralegals should be relied on to provide access to justice to those who have limited means to afford it, and that efforts to increase funding for existing not-for-profit legal service providers that have proven to be cost-effective and efficient service delivery models should go hand-in-hand with efforts to encourage and reward voluntary pro bono attorney services.
“Proposals to consider creating a new classification of profit-making, non-attorney providers to render limited legal services in defined areas are ‘fraught with peril’ and is a less desirable way to address the need for legal services to lower income citizens,” Mancuso said.
In a task force report regarding non-lawyer proposals recently adopted by the NCBA Board of Directors, it was suggested that there is a significant work force of attorneys and law school graduates who could be used to assist with access to justice, without the need to create a new vocation and new body of regulations and accompanying regulators presumably required. “Resources devoted to the development and maintenance of this new vocation would be better spent on expanding existing service providers in employing some of these unemployed lawyers,” noted Douglas J. Good, chair of the Task Force. The report noted that when the Nassau Bar provides training for pro bono attorneys, the level of pro bono participation increases.
“Thanks to Chief Judge Lippman’s leadership, significant strides have been made in closing the access-to-justice gap. It is simply too soon to say that existing modalities — not-for-profit legal service programs and pro bono efforts will never close the gap. We should redouble our efforts in those areas before looking to establish a new modality of service, by non-attorney providers. The cost of establishing, monitoring and regulating such a second system of legal service providers (or worse yet, allowing an unregulated system) diminishes the profession, deprives the public of the protection it deserves, and sends the wrong message to the underserved community,” Good said.
The Nassau County Bar Association currently provides volunteer attorneys for free legal consultation clinics twice a month to residents with mortgage foreclosure and Superstorm Sandy related issues, daily pro bono representation for residents at court mandated foreclosure settlement conferences, monthly legal consultation clinics for senior citizens. In addition, NCBA attorneys volunteer to represent those who meet certain income guidelines in landlord/tenant disputes in court, and in bankruptcy and divorce cases, and domestic abuse. The complete “Report and Recommendations of the Task Force on the Use of Non-Lawyers in Closing the Access to Justice Gap, As Adopted by the NCBA Board of Directors, Responding to the Report of the State Task Force to Expand Access to Civil Legal Services in New York,” is available on the Nassau County Bar Association website, www.nassaubar.org.
About the Nassau County Bar Association
Founded in 1899, the Nassau County Bar Association, with a membership of nearly 6,000 private and public attorneys, judges, legal educators and law students, is the largest suburban bar association in the country. NCBA demonstrates its commitment to the community by offering a variety of services for the public, including lawyer referral services, mortgage foreclosure, Sandy recovery and senior citizen free legal clinics, judicial screening, public education programs and support for the Volunteer Lawyers Project, which provides much-needed free legal services for the indigent of Nassau County. The WE CARE Fund, a part of the NCBA’s charitable arm, assists children, the elderly and others in need, through countless projects and donations.
For more information, call (516) 747-4070 (language translation available), email info@nassaubar.org, or visit www.nassaubar.org.






Senator Zeldin is pictured with the 2013 Hispanic Business Award recipient, Norma Paredes, owner of Paredes Tax Services in Brentwood.


