Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 30, 1992 TAG: 9203300152
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: MARION LENGTH: Long
It started with just one lawyer, Joe Tate, who had returned to his native Southwest Virginia after teaching at a small college in Delaware. Since then it has expanded, retrenched, dug in and changed the nature of the services it offers low-income residents of the region.
"For 10 years, I have begun discussions about changes with the bookkeeper by stating that, after this change, things will be routine," said Eileen McIlvane, who joined the program in 1978 and became its executive director in 1981.
"At first, she wanted to believe me. After that, she just shook her head and laughed," McIlvane said.
Now, she said, she admits that change is the only thing that is certain.
When Southwest Virginia Legal Aid began in 1972, it served only two counties. Now its service area covers Smyth, Wythe, Bland, Carroll, Grayson and Washington counties, along with the cities of Galax and Bristol.
Its number of lawyers has gone up and down, too.
"At one point, we were at five. Now we're down to three. Of course, we started with one office, and then we had five, and now we're down to one," McIlvane said.
Besides Marion, the society used to have offices at Wytheville, Abingdon, Bristol and Independence. The recession of the early 1980s took care of that.
"That was a big reason why we put the 800 line in," McIlvane said. "The vast majority of initial appointments come through phone. We try to encourage that anyway."
The number is 1-800-277-6754. The office is located in the Hull Building at 551 S. Main St. in Marion, although the staff members live throughout the service area.
"We experimented with outreach offices, and I found it a bad use of resources," McIlvane said. A lawyer would go to another county only to find the scheduled client had to cancel, and then would not have the case papers for another who walked in.
"We do home visits if people are home-bound, and we can meet people at the Department of Social Services or the courthouse if they can't get to us. We don't ever say to someone, `If you can't get here, tough, we're not gonna help you.' "
In August 1972, Tate - who now practices law in Marion - was hired by a legal services board headed by D. Burke Graybeal, another Marion lawyer. Soon Tate was joined by Gene Lohman, now a juvenile and domestic relations court judge in the 28th District.
The total staff has gone from a low of one to a high of 15, and is now at eight full-timers, most of whom have been there for eight years or more.
Funding, McIlvane said, has been "sort of steady, so we're not looking at cutting people like we were in 1981. But we're not talking about adding people, either."
The three lawyers are Larry Harley, John Gifford and Maria Timoney, the only relative newcomer at about two years. Among other things, they do their own typing.
The staff includes paralegals Ed Seltzer and Eric Reese and part-time bookkeeper Peggy Good. Legal secretary Teresa Dickens handles secretarial chores for five case workers.
Intake worker Mary Parsons usually gets the first calls and schedules clients with staff or volunteer lawyers.
In 1991, a total of 3,441 people sought assistance, one for every half-hour the office was open. Intake days are limited to Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
"And then you think: Oh, there are more out there," McIlvane said. A Virginia Bar Association survey indicates that 84 percent of the legally poor - totaling more than 26,000 in the office's six-county area - who need lawyers are not getting them.
More than 300 people were turned down last year because they were over income guidelines. More than 200 were seeking help on criminal matters or fee-generating cases where a lawyer can collect from the opposing party, and both of those types of cases are outside the agency's guidelines.
More often, people who qualify for assistance do not ask.
"A lot of people think, if they're being evicted, that's not a legal problem, there is no legal solution," she said. "A lot of people think they don't have a legal problem when they have one. They think that's the way things work and they just do it."
The staff's work is supplemented by volunteers, ranging from outside lawyers who spend designated hours at the Marion office to the daughter of a board member who helps with filing. This year, the office also has four student interns from Emory & Henry College.
At the start, the office mainly handled divorces. "Now we don't do any divorces," McIlvane said. These days, the cases are mostly evictions, foreclosures or debt problems.
Eighty-five percent of those debt problems are because the clients had high medical expenses, she said.
"No matter what was being said up in D.C. about there not being a recession, there was," McIlvane said, "because people were coming in to us losing their homes."
She continues to foresee more change in 1992.
"Requests for help will continue to climb as the recession makes more people eligible and leaves more people seeking legal help for medical care, debtor relief, and family problems resulting from debts," she said.
"We will be asking area attorneys to do some case work for free," she said. Under the Virginia Neighborhood Assistance Program, lawyers who do legal aid work could get some tax credit. McIlvane doubted that would cover their expenses.
The agency's board determines what legal services are offered. It is made up of 13 lawyers, seven low-income people and a community advocate.
When the agency does an outreach program alerting communities to its services, there will often be a surge of callers.
"I want everyone to know that we're here, but then we have to respond to the increased demand," McIlvane said, which sometimes further limits the kinds of cases the agency can accept.
"But I still prefer that everybody know we're here."
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.