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Community Corner

Legal Services of the Hudson Valley to Host Veterans' Benefits CLE

Legal Services of the Hudson Valley is a non-profit civil legal services agency that has been committed to its motto “Protecting Rights, Promoting Justice,” for over 45 years, providing free legal counsel and representation for low-income members of the Hudson River Valley.  In July 2012, LSHV made a strong decision to fight homelessness and poverty among the veteran communities of Westchester by starting their Veterans & Military Families Advocacy Project. 

In May 2013, the veterans’ unit organized the first installment of their new Continuing Legal Education series Serving Those Who Serve, dedicated to educating the Westchester legal community about issues affecting local veterans.  The second installment of the series will be 12:00-2:00 PM on January 16, 2014 at the Westchester County Surrogate’s Court at 111 Martin Luther King Jr., Blvd in White Plains, NY and is being co-sponsored by both the Westchester Women’s Bar Association and the Westchester County Bar Association.  The event will feature presentations about VA benefits cases and best practices for working with veteran clients and is open to any interested attorneys.

“We take our commitment to our community’s veterans very seriously and the veterans’ unit does whatever it can to help,” said Barbara Finkelstein, Executive Director of Legal Services of the Hudson Valley.  She went on to add “Educating the rest of the legal community in order to include them in the effort to serve our veterans is great for everybody involved.”

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Concurrent with the launch of the CLE series last May, LSHV’s veterans’ unit started their pro bono attorneys project.  The goal of the project is to recruit attorneys to accept a small number of pro bono case referrals from the veterans’ unit in order to ease the burden on LSHV’s resources.  LSHV plans to continue the CLE series in the future and use it as a source of recruitment for the pro bono project.

“I believe that Westchester County is a community that stands in strong support of our nation’s veterans,” said Virginia Foulkrod, staff attorney for the veterans’ unit.  “As long as we continue to raise awareness about the goal of our unit and how the legal community can get involved, I think we will have no shortage of people willing to help.”

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For more information on Legal Services of the Hudson Valley, how to get involved with their organization, or to see if you qualify for their services, visit their website at www.lshv.org.

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