Legal Advice Line
By: Source: AARP Foundation Date Posted: 2007-06-07
The Legal Advice Line is available to residents of the District of Columbia who are 60 years of age or older, whether or not they are AARP members.
Callers to LCE are assisted initially by the legal advice line – the first of its kind in the nation (1987). The advice line allows clients to talk with an attorney about their legal problems within 24 hours. Experienced attorneys are able to provide callers with basic information, legal advice, and referrals for a large array of legal matters.
Intake specialists enter all demographic data, thereby allowing attorneys to focus on providing advice and information and making referrals, if appropriate. For cases requiring representation beyond what the advice line can provide, the attorney can refer the caller to other LCE programs or to outside agencies, depending upon the caller's resources. Attorney case notes are collected at the end of every day and reviewed by a supervisor by the following day.
Some 3,000 clients are helped by the advice line annually, and the intake system serves as a model nationally. LCE wrote, published and distributed a "Hotline How To Manual", based on the D.C. system. There are now over 150 legal advice lines throughout the nation that are based on this model. For a list if these hotlines, the geographical areas they cover and other helpful resources, visit http://www.legalhotlines.org
preview