VLSP Deserves Your Support
By Bion Gregory

The Sacramento County Bar Association has a long history of supporting programs that provide legal services to low and moderate-income individuals who live in our community. Once such program is the Voluntary Legal Services Program (VLSP) - a nonprofit agency that provides free civil legal assistance to low-income people in Sacramento and surrounding counties. It is able to provide free help because it receives several grants to help the poor with legal matters and because attorneys and other legal professional donate their services - they work pro bono.

Working through the Association, Jim Mize (now Judge Mize of the Sacramento County Superior Court) and Tom Eres brought organized pro bono to town 1981. Several years later, the Association and Legal Services of Northern California entered into a partnership to separately incorporate VLSP as a nonprofit, charitable organization. Today, VLSP is under the direction of Managing Attorney Victoria Jacobs.

VLSP receives funding from the Sacramento County Bar Association, Legal Services of Northern California, IOLTA (the State Bar's Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts), and others. VLSP also holds an annual phone-a-thon, its main fundraiser.

Approximately 700 volunteers - among them attorneys, paralegals, new law school graduates, legal secretaries, expert witnesses, interpreters, and student interns - donate their time to help meet the legal needs of the poor in our community as well as in surrounding counties. In 2002, VLSP closed over 4,000 cases and assisted many others with brief advice by telephone. VLSP handles civil law cases only, providing clients with help in matters of consumer, education, employment, family, health care, and housing law, and with probate cases, government benefits, and personal injury defense.

Attorneys serve either by helping clients at advice clinics or by taking cases that VLSP refers out to them for direct representation. VLSP holds clinics in debt collection defense, employment law, driver's license reinstatement, and criminal records expungement, and operates a self-help center in probate (guardianship, conservatorship, small estate advice) at the William R. Ridgeway Family Relations Courthouse. Before cases are turned over to attorneys, student interns interview the clients to define their legal problems and to ensure that they meet financial eligibility guidelines.
There are many ways to contribute to the pro bono cause in our Sacramento community, and VLSP is an excellent choice. It asks for a commitment of 16 hours a year. This contrasts with the recommendation of the American Bar Association and the State Bar of California that attorneys perform 50 hours of pro bono serve a year.

Three-fourths of the volunteer attorneys who donate their services to VLSP are solo practitioners. VLSP is attempting to recruit more volunteers from law firms and from government agencies. Increasing attorney participation will mean better service for the indigent, some of whom, especially family law clients, are turned away for lack of resources.

For the new attorney, performing pro bono service is an excellent way to gain experience. For all attorneys, volunteering with VLSP offers the chance to receive training in as many areas as may interest them, and provides a change of pace while enhancing their knowledge.

VLSP provides $1,000,000 in professional liability insurance per case; makes mentors available; grants discounts on MCLE seminars; extends the use of its office space and equipment; and offers access to computerized legal research, as well as access to a law library, sample pleadings and briefs, written training material, and MCLE seminars on video. Other services are also available, such as translation and interpreter services; paralegal, notary, private investigator and process server support; and reimbursement for costs associated with case handling.

The mission of VLSP is "to enhance justice for people of limited means by resolving their civil legal problems through pro bono representation, training volunteers to improve access to the legal system, and educating clients to create greater self-sufficiency." All of us in legal profession should endorse this mission. By supporting VLSP the members of the Sacramento County Bar Association honor our ethical responsibility to ensure equal access to justice and promote a positive image of the legal profession in our community.