Chapter 6

Brief Services

A. Making Third-Party Calls for Clients

Many, but not all, hotlines make third-party calls as part of their services. Some hotlines, such as LASH, refer these calls directly to their full-service staff. The Legal Hotline for Older Texans makes third-party calls only when no other resources are available, resolution of the problem has an impact on survival needs, and it does not involve the hotline attorney "representing" the client in an advocate role. CLEAR will make these calls for clients with high priority issues. The West Virginia program only makes these calls if the time allotment for the case (one hour) has not been used up.

B. Document Review

Most programs surveyed will review documents for clients. They often require that clients fax or mail in the documents. LASH asks clients to bring in any documents that require review. The Texas senior hotline will only review documents of six pages or less. Many programs mentioned that if the review is extensive they would rather give the clients a face-to-face appointment with an attorney.

Is document review via a hotline effective? CLEAR and the senior hotlines in Washington, D.C., Michigan, and Maine believe it is only moderately effective, while CARPLS, SALA and the programs in Puerto Rico, Texas, and Kansas find it very effective. It can be particularly useful for those clients who are unable to read the documents. On the other hand, there are inherent difficulties in “reading” documents over the phone. This must always be something of a balancing act, weighing the need to provide information about what may be a very standard document against the possibility that the document may turn out to be not at all as described.

C. Document Preparation

Some hotlines will prepare simple documents for clients. The Legal Hotline for Older Iowans will prepare wills, powers-of-attorney, and life estate deeds. The Legal Helpline for Older Kentuckians will do powers-of-attorney, living wills, and occasionally other pleadings in certain cases. The staff at North Central West Virginia Legal Aid Society Advice and Referral Hotline will write attorney letters for clients. The Legal Hotline for Older Texans will also write letters and advance directives. The Mississippi Legal Line will prepare documents as time permits. The Georgia Senior Hotline will prepare documents (or perform other brief services) when there is no alternative avenue of assistance, but only if it will not be unduly time consuming, is likely to be successful, and is not trivial. About one-third of the clients receive such help.

D. Pro Se Materials

Many legal services programs are producing pro se materials to enable clients to handle cases on their own or with minimal help. Some of these materials are developed as part of self-help clinics run by the bar, the courts, or legal aid programs. Often these materials are available through a hotline and hotline staff may be the principal source of additional advice and information about the underlying legal issues and how to fill in the forms. It thus becomes the responsibility of the hotline to make a judgment as to whether the client is capable of proceeding pro se and whether there are any legal issues that would preclude this approach. Even when the client is ultimately referred elsewhere for more personal help, it is generally the hotline that performs the initial screening, provides the client with preliminary information, and makes the referral. Sometimes the attorney gives the client substantial assistance, which may even include drafting some pleadings. It is advisable to consult local rules to determine whether the attorney can help the client to this extent without entering an appearance.

Some hotlines play a more direct role. CARPLS staffs the Pro Se Task Force, a subcommittee of the Chicago Bar Association Legal Aid Committee. CARPLS received a grant from the Illinois IOLTA program to coordinate the drafting and dissemination of self-help packets on a county-wide basis. Pro se instruction accounts for 13% of CARPLS' caseload. CARPLS is conducting an evaluation of the efficacy of some of its self-help packets.

Although most of the programs surveyed had no formal mechanism for evaluating the effectiveness of their self-help materials, Statewide Legal Services of Connecticut has done a survey focused specifically on pro se materials. They were able to interview 20% of the clients who had called with questions about family law matters and who had been advised about pro se representation as a way of solving their legal problem. Of the forty-eight people they were able to interview, nine later obtained attorneys on their own and were excluded from further analysis. Of the remaining thirty-nine, nineteen initiated and prosecuted court actions on their own and twenty did not. Of the twenty who did not go to court, seven resolved the problem short of court; eleven had a variety of other reasons for not pursuing court action; and only two said they were too intimidated by the process to proceed on their own. As a group, those who did represent themselves in court had slightly higher education levels than those who did not. They also found that 87% of those interviewed said they had positive feelings about their dealings with SLS and all thirty-nine said they would recommend SLS to a friend. The majority found the materials helpful and only a few reported negative experiences with the court. Out of the nineteen who represented themselves, eighteen said they would do it again.