Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas –Equal Justice Volunteer Program (EJVP) of Legal Aid of North West Texas expanded it’s recruitment of private attorneys to take cases pro bono by launching “Project VCR”-Virtual Case Referral . This project was designed to refer cases through email. Potential clients are screened at the local LANWT office for financial eligibility and case merit prior to placement.

Although in the past, the use of the telephone or office visits to the private attorney’s office had been used and been quite successful, it was also somewhat time consuming on most accounts. The use of Project VCR is published in email format and the private attorney is free to choose the type of case he/she is willing to take.

Mr. J. Michael Swanson was one of the early private attorney’s to take advantage of this program. In a quick exchange of emails, I referred Mr. Swanson a client from our LANWT branch office in Odessa. The client was a 44 year old disabled woman who suffered from MS and who came to our office for a divorce. The client was wheelchair bound because of her disability, so after the case was placed to Mr. Swanson, his first response was “Can she come to my office? If not I can make other arrangements to meet with her.” Mr. Swanson is a private attorney out of Ward County, so we were able to reach a private attorney who practices in a rural city thru the ‘VCR’ project thus avoiding having to make an office visit or attempting to reach a private attorney in another city as well as in another county makes the ‘VCR’ Project work.

The divorce between the client who was the Petitioner was granted from the Respondent on the grounds of insupportability and abandonment. Because of her disability , the court found that she was eligible for financial maintenance, the client could not support herself through employment because of her physical disability and clearly lacked the earning ability in the work force. Respondent was ordered to pay $555.00 to the client per month.

(Article written by Pete Fierro, EJVP Coordinator in Legal Aid’s Midland Office.)