California's Senior Legal Hotline (SLH) has long had a robust volunteer program, in which mostly retired attorneys and paralegals, some active ones and students in both categories commit to regular work for a period alongside staff, answering calls for legal help from seniors and handling follow-up. To get a sense of how we operate, please spend some time if you haven't yet done so exploring our web site, www.seniorlegalhotline,org. If you look in the volunteer section, you'll see the established job descriptions. For more current information, please have a look at the most recent issue of our quarterly e-newsletter --
http://xrl.us/slhnews.
These days, we are facing extraordinary challenges -- a triple whammy, in fact:
1. Due to the economic situation, demand for our help is higher than ever. Each day, dozens of calls go unanswered. We have no idea how many more give up before their calls are registered in our phone system.
2. The number of Baby Boomers turning 60 every day is accelerating.
3. The entire allotment of state funds for our work was deleted in a stroke of the governor's pen when the budget was approved in September. Anyone who sees current headlines knows it's not going to be restored soon.
The one area for which we have received new funding recently is also marked by the fastest-growing demand for help: foreclosure prevention. These include many cases where some competent, honest advice can be invaluable to help a senior pick among bad and less bad options. But in quite a few cases, fast, effective intervention can actually save a home. Attached is a document with short summaries of a number of recent cases. Several even more dramatic ones are now being pursued, some of them as far as litigation.
Here are a few categories of work with approximate minimum participation levels:
A. General legal assistance on the hotline: This is our traditional volunteer role, and it may be most appropriate for some respondents with legal background but not particularly strong knowledge of real estate lending. Our usual bare minimum requirement for this is a six-month commitment of at least 20 hours a month. Consistency is especially important at first, and more is definitely better. It's great if you have expertise in a relevant area of law, but we expect such volunteers to be generalists at SLH. "Elder law" expertise is not required; you'll learn quickly from our training program. Check out the information at
http://www.seniorlegalhotline.org/7-help.html.
B. If you have a strong background in real estate lending, with or without much other legal background, we'd love to have you come in regularly to field the many calls from homeowners in distress. We have developed excellent checklists and forms for this purpose, and while we'd like you to become acquainted with the other common issues we handle so you'll recognize them when they pop up, the full basic training will not be required. For this, a shorter but more intense commitment may be workable.
Please note: If you are currently active in the real estate business, do not look to volunteering at SLH as a way to find customers. This is strictly prohibited in our practice.
C. If you are a litigator, might you be able to take on a pro bono case after we conclude (and assuming you agree) that's what's necessary, hopefully to spur a reasonable settlement? If so, please be as specific as you can as to what types of cases and in which courts you could play such a role. Sometimes we and/or another legal aid office would be able to co-counsel.
D. If law or real estate is not your thing but you were just attracted by the idea of wanting to help out with our work, there are other possibilities of you can make a serious commitment, including miscellaneous help around the office, answering phones, designing printed or on-line materials, translating to or from other languages. Make your offer and we can talk.
Call the SLH administrative line, 916 551-2145, or send an e-mail from the web site, www.seniorlegalhotline.org.
