Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York

We are here for you during this time with information on Housing, Public Assistance, Unemployment Benefits, Consumer Debt, Orders of Protection, Family Court, Taxes, and Social Security.

We understand that this can be a confusing and challenging time for many as we all navigate our way through this pandemic. So we want you to know that the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York is still here for our community. We will have to close our doors and work from home, per the Governor of the State of New York’s request, effective Monday, March 23, 2020 at 9:00 a.m., however, our work will still continue, and we will all be reachable by phone.

We can be reached using the local or toll free numbers for the following offices: Albany, Amsterdam, Canton, Plattsburgh and Saratoga Springs.

We are taking the extraordinary step of maintaining phone access because we know that our legal services are essential to the low income community’s response to COVID-19 issues.

We ask that you please assist us in publicizing this change in services and our “Did you know?” legal updates broadly on your websites and on your social media channels so that clients, as well
as the private bar, know that we are to help.

Support staff will be working remotely to manage new intakes or requests for assistance, and to put clients in touch with intake specialists and case handlers. We will also continue to make referrals for callers who we cannot assist.

We are posting legal information about the response to COVID-19 on our website for anyone to review and reference, www.lasnny.org, and we ask that you direct people in need of our services
to our website.

The community we serve is particularly vulnerable to the economic impact of this pandemic and Legal Aid must continue to play its important role during and after the crises.

Stay home, stay safe, and flatten the curve.

Sincerely,

Lillian M Moy

Per the request of the Governor of the State of New York, the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York is closing our physical doors effective 9am Monday, March 23, 2020. Legal Aid’s phone lines in every office will be open to assist you. While LASNNY’s offices may be closed for walk in traffic, lawyers and advocates will actively work with our clients and community partners throughout our service area to help protect our communities

LASNNY awarded the 2019 PAI Distinguished Service at the annual Holiday party on December 5, 2019 at Wolfert’s Roost Country Club.

Fiona Farrell, Esq. has been a mainstay of the Glens Falls Attorney for the Day program, helping seventeen clients in 2019 avoid money judgments, get time to find new housing, or avoid eviction altogether. Without her help, these tenants would have had to represent themselves in housing court; they could have been evicted in as little as 72 hours or owed large sums of money to their landlords.

Fiona’s work is particularly important in this rural area where low-income people have difficulty finding housing as well as lawyers. She has also helped other attorneys help our clients by sharing her documents, letting them shadow her in court, and being available as a resource.

Sarah Buckowski, one of our PAI coordinators, says, “Fiona has been a much needed addition to our volunteer panel for PAI…Her positive attitude and contagious energy is of great benefit to us, as she has even extended her volunteering to the Closing the Gap program and the Attorney for the Day program in Albany.”

Thank you, Fiona, for your tireless efforts!

Joseph W. Pinto Jr., Esq. enrolled in the NY State Bar’s Attorney Emeritus program after his retirement in 2016 and started volunteering with the LASNNY PAI program to help with our Low Income Tax Clinic (LITC). His experience working for New York State as a Senior attorney trying civil cases for the Department of Tax and Finance and then as a Tax Judge for the next 30 years, with six of those years serving as a Commissioner of the New York State Tax Appeals Tribunal is invaluable to our clients and to other attorneys working in the program.

Joe continues to take cases from LITC but has also become one of our valued utility players. He is one of our go-to volunteers for our pro se divorce clinics, where volunteer attorneys help clients fill out their own divorce papers and explain how to file them. In 2019 he has helped thirty-three clients with their divorces, and he estimates that he has worked with a total of fifty to sixty clients during his time with LASNNY.

Joe’s generosity with his time and expertise has allowed these clients to move forward with their lives much more quickly and easily than they otherwise would have, and we are deeply appreciative of his work.

PAI Coordinator Ryland Wiseman, who works closely with Joe on the pro se divorce clinics, says, He works in more parts of our service area than most of our volunteers, and he has traveled as far as Plattsburgh when we needed someone to run the clinic there. He is really knowledgeable, takes time to answer clients’ questions, and gets along with clients from every walk of life…like a great person should.”

Thank you for your service, Joe!

Renewal House held its annual dinner recently at the Gran View Restaurant honoring Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York for its role in providing free civil legal services to victims in St. Lawrence County and for Creating Hope for the Future.

More on the NNY360 website

Imagine that you’ve worked decades for the same company, choosing not to take another job for higher pay because your employer offers an increasingly rare benefit — a pension plan.

Juanita Aikens-English, 64, doesn’t have to imagine. She started working as a nurse for St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1985. She spent part of her career helping to deliver babies.

Aikens-English said she stayed on at the hospital, which largely served the indigent, because she loved the work and the people. She also counted on her loyalty netting her a monthly pension check. “We would get letters each year saying how much money you would get,” Aikens-English said.

St. Clare’s closed in 2008 with another hospital taking over its facilities and absorbing a lot of its employees. Although the new hospital refused to take on the obligation of the underfunded pension, the former St. Clare’s employees believed the pension was solvent. Then the letters started to come informing plan participants that their pension was in peril.

Read more on the Washington Post website

The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY) was honored to be awarded the Community Foundation of the Greater Capital Region Impact Grant in support of our Children’s Law Project.

The Children’s Law Project (CLP) provides legal advice and assistance for low-income children and youth with disabilities. CLP focuses on protecting the rights of students with disabilities in special education and school discipline matters.

“Legal Aid and the Children’s Law Project are here to help children thrive and develop to their full potential,” says Christen Smith LASNNY Staff Attorney. “Education is a major social determinant of health and ensuring access to education and protecting the educational rights of children with disabilities not only positively impacts the individual child, but also members of their family and their community.”

Through the Children’s Law Project, LASNNY successfully advocated for a local middle school student to receive an education alongside her peers. After being moved to a special school attended only by students with disabilities, this student regressed both socially and academically. She desperately wanted to return to her home school and to interact with children both with and without disabilities, but her school district refused. We represented her at meeting with the school district and successfully advocated for a change in her classroom placement and changes to her IEP. She was moved back into an in-district classroom and is thriving with the right accommodations and supports. In 2018 LASNNY closed over 40 cases in the areas covered by CLP, which include school disciplinary concerns, special education/learning disabilities, and access to education (including bilingual and testing), impacting over 150 individuals, just like this local student.

“The assistance and advocacy provided everyday at the Legal Aid Society helps residents of Northeastern New York of all backgrounds, including those who face the toughest legal challenges; children, veterans, seniors, people living with disabilities, and victims of domestic violence,” says LASNNY Executive Director Lillian M. Moy. “We are grateful that the Community Foundation is here to help our community, and for the vital funding they provided to our Children’s Law Project with the award of this Impact Grant in September.”

“The Community Foundation is thrilled to support the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York’s Children’s Law Project,” says Shelly Connolly, Vice President of Community Grantmaking at the Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region. “In 2019, The Foundation awarded $256,731 in Community Impact Grants to address the community’s most pressing needs. Legal Aid Society was one of 39 organizations throughout the Greater Capital Region to receive a Community Impact Grant this year.”

LASNNY and the Children’s Law Project also provides educational trainings and has materials available for everyone to learn more about ensuring a free and appropriate public education for all children, as well as on other issues affecting children. To learn more please log onto our website at www.lasnny.org or call us at (800) 462-2922.

Evictions are disruptive, Romaker said, and can create a ripple effect with ramifications throughout society, especially when children are involved. (Robert Romaker, Managing attorney, LASNNY)

“It has a devastating impact on families,” he said.

He welcomed the strengthened safeguards for hardship cases, citing a client he represented last year who was facing eviction for missing his rent payment by one day while battling stage 4 cancer.

“This new law will help those situations,” Romaker said. “This gives the court more discretion to fashion a fairer remedy than summary issuing an order of eviction for someone who is dying and undergoing chemotherapy.”

Read more on the Daily Gazette website

For 24 years, Karen Bradley worked as a nurse at St. Clare’s Hospital in Schenectady, N.Y. The pay wasn’t great, she says, but it was a good hospital, the place where her father once worked as a pharmacist. Bradley thought that if she stayed she’d have a nice pension for retirement.

“I enjoyed what I did there and believed in the promises that were made about the pension,” she says.

But a year ago, Bradley got a letter saying her pension was gone.

“Why is there nothing left? Who screwed up?” she wondered.

Bradley, 56, is one of the hundreds of workers at St. Clare’s, which was founded by the Catholic Church, who lost their pensions after its retirement fund collapsed.

Read more on the NPR website

Over 100 people gathered at the Fort Orange Club in Albany to celebrate the 15^th Anniversary of the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York’s (LASNNY) Annual Justice For All campaign. The anniversary was marked by the installation of a new co-chair, David Cost a partner at the firm of Barclay Damon, LLP in Albany.

Founding co-chair of the campaign, E. Stewart Jones, Jr. of E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy said, “in 2004 a small group of partners from the leading firms in the Capital Region came together to stand with LASNNY in their mission of equal justice For All. Now in its 15^th year the campaign has raised over $3 million dollars to provide free civil legal services to low-income individuals and families in our community.”

The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York fights for fairness, dignity, and justice for those living in poverty and for a society which is inclusive and equitable for all. LASNNY transforms lives, builds community, and empowers people by using the law to address individual and systemic wrongs and inequalities. In 2018 the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York closed 10,340 cases, benefiting 21,784 individuals at a cost of only $1,064 per case.

“Justice depends on having a fair chance to be heard,” said LASNNY Executive Director Lillian M. Moy, “regardless of who you are, where you live, or how much money you have.” Thousands of residents in Northeastern New York are fighting legal battles alone, without any access to legal help, compromising the fundamental fairness of our society. “We are grateful to have so many leaders in the legal community to stand by LASNNY to help us provide this vital lifeline to so many of our neighbors.”

Newly appointed Justice For All co-chair, David Cost, a partner at the law firm Barclay Damon LLP, said “I am honored to have been selected as the co-chair for the JFA campaign and to stand alongside E. Stewart Jones and thank the 77 firms, bar associations, and companies who took a stand in 2018 for equal justice. And I look forward to working with each of you to grow the campaign to include all of the firms located in Northeastern New York, and to have individuals stand alongside us too. Together we can be the lifeline to help our neighbors in need.”

Since 1923 the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York has worked to ensure fairness in the justice system and address some of our community’s most serious problems by providing free civil legal aid to low-income individuals and families. The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York fights for fairness, dignity, and justice for those living in poverty and for a society which is inclusive and equitable for all. LASNNY transforms lives, builds community, and empowers people by using the law to address individual and systemic wrongs and inequalities.

LASNNY provides assistance and representation to low-income residents in 16 counties from the Catskills to the Canadian border in civil legal matters with five offices throughout the region. Located at 95 Central Avenue in Albany the Center for Civil Legal Services opened in 2018 as their flagship center. The location in the heart of the City of Albany gives the Center and the LASNNY attorneys, paralegals, and staff the opportunity to not only provide the Capital Region with urgent civil legal services, but also has a co-working space for volunteer pro bono attorneys and spaces for community legal trainings.

Click here for photos of the event