Tuesday night, Legal Aid convened a group of eight former clients we served across a broad cross section of our practice areas to explore whether they would like to be a part of our organization’s first inaugural Community Advisory Council. We are thrilled and honored to report that by the end of the meeting, we received an enthusiastic “yes!” from each participant. Read more →

Did you provide 50 hours or more of pro bono service in 2018? If so, the District of Columbia Courts want to honor you for your contribution. Applications to be included on the 2018 Capital Pro Bono Honor Roll are due Friday, March 1, 2019, so submit your application today! Read more →

The Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia is pleased to announce that we will be honoring Anthony T. Pierce and Judith L. Lichtman with the Servant of Justice Award at the 30th Annual Servant of Justice Awards Dinner taking place on April 25 at the J.W. Marriott in DC. Read more →

Legal Aid was saddened to learn of the passing of Judge Patricia Wald on January 12, 2019. Judge Wald became the first woman to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and became the D.C. Circuit’s first female Chief Judge in 1986. Read more →

Tomorrow, the DC Council will vote for a final time on the Wage Garnishment Fairness Act of 2017, a bill that would reform District law governing garnishment of employees’ wages for collection on civil judgments. Introduced in November of last year, the bill would protect low and moderate-income District residents by placing reasonable limits on this often-debilitating debt collection method. We urge the Council to vote for the bill one final time and resist any efforts by the debt collection industry to weaken the bill via last-minute amendments. Read more →

Today, the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security stating our strong opposition to proposed regulations governing the “public charge determination” for immigrants and their families. The proposed rule would treat receipt of essential public benefits (such as Medicaid, SNAP and Section 8 housing subsidies), low income, poor health, being young or elderly and lack of English proficiency (among other factors) as negative factors in assessing an immigrant’s application for lawful permanent resident status.
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Many personal injury cases in the District are settled using a “structured settlement.” Such settlements provide for the payment of damages to the injured party in a stream of income over a period of years through a special form of annuity. But the persons holding these annuities are often victimized by companies who seek to purchase some or all of the future payments in exchange for immediate cash that is far less than the value of the purchased payments. To make matters worse, the sellers often do not understand the full implications of the transaction. Read more →

Yesterday, DC Attorney General Karl Racine announced that the District has joined 42 states in a $6 million settlement with the nation’s largest debt buyer and collector — Encore Capital Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries, Midland Credit Management, Inc. and Midland Funding, LLC — in order to resolve claims involving the company’s use of illegal tactics to collect on unverified debts. Read more →

Last week I started a two-week SNAP Challenge which entails eating on the amount of food stamps benefits a SNAP recipient would receive: $4.40 per day.

With Week 1 completed, I wanted to share some of my reflections on the experience so far. Below are some of my biggest takeaways from Week 1 and my daily SNAP journal: Read more →

The Bar Association of DC (BADC) has announced that it will honor Jeremy Peterman of Orrick and his fellow 2018 Generous Associate Campaign Co-Chairs with the Young Lawyer of the Year Award for their exemplary legal service to DC’s community. The award will be presented this Saturday, December 1, at BADC’s Annual Banquet and Awards Gala.
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