By MATT CHANDLER
Buffalo Law Journal

After spending more than a quarter of a century working for the same national financial company, Buffalo resident Julia Suttle suddenly found herself in an unfamiliar place last fall: the unemployment line. She said she was "absolutely devastated," and that it was scary, after 26 years in the same job, to have to find another in a shrinking employment market.

Then her claim for unemployment insurance benefits was denied, despite what she called a career spent as a "conscientious, productive employee."

She was referred to the Volunteer Lawyers Project, a Buffalo nonprofit agency that provides civil legal services for low-income clients. A representative from the VLP reviewed Suttle's case, and the agency agreed to represent her at no charge.

On Feb. 13, a few months after things seemed hopeless, she stood alongside her volunteer lawyer and won her right to full unemployment benefits.

Suttle is one of thousands of needy Erie County residents who benefitted last year from the work of the VLP. She may have gotten that help just in time.

Budget cuts proposed by Gov. David Paterson call for state funding for civil legal services to be slashed from $16 million in 2008 to just $1 million in 2009. Those cuts will result in a 6 percent loss of funding for the VLP, and a reduction in the number of clients they can assist.

Volunteer Lawyers Project CEO Bob Elardo calls the impending cuts "an issue of great concern" and said they'll have devastating effects for the people who rely on the agency.

"Under the proposed budget, they have allocated $1 million, which amounts to 37 cents per poor person in the state," Elardo said. "As far as we can tell, that is the lowest amount that any state in the nation is giving for civil legal services."

Elardo said the other major state revenue source the VLP relies on is a grant from the IOLA Fund, or Interest on Lawyers Account, which is based on interest earned from lawyer trust-fund accounts.

"The problem is, with interest rates crashing and things bottoming out, that money is being greatly cut as well," Elardo said. In 2007, grants from the IOLA Fund reached $25 million. Projections for next year have disbursements coming in at as low as $2 million. He said that is bad news for future clients. Suttle said it would be a shame if the agency has to turn away more requests for assistance.

"Their help was very, very, very, beneficial to me," she said. "I would not have had a leg to stand on (without them), because I really didn't know what to do, and their help was a tremendous strengthening agent for me."

The VLP is one of several area civil- legal-services agencies that stands to lose out as a result of the budget cuts, including Legal Services for the Elderly, Disabled or Disadvanted of Western New York Inc. and the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo Inc. Another, Neighborhood Legal Services Inc., which serves five counties from three Western New York offices, expects to be severely impacted as well.

Executive Director Bill Hawkes said his organization has already lost $450,000 in other funding. Given that NLS' state funding for 2008 was more than $238,000, he expects big changes in the year ahead.

"We closed between 6,500 and 7,000 cases last year," he said. "We would probably not be able to keep more than 50 percent of that case load (next year)." Hawkes said he expects he'll have to cut 50 percent of his staff at the nonprofit's three unionized offices, resulting in 32 fewer people to assist its low-income and disabled clientele with their legal needs.

Like the Volunteer Lawyers group, NLS gets a significant amount of its funding from the IOLA Fund. "If we see a 70 percent reduction in our IOLA funding in the coming year, we could lose another almost $500,000."

The result of the proposed cuts will be significantly reduced services for the poor at a time when both Elardo and Hawkes said the need is greater than ever. They also said much of the agencies' work is preventative in nature, and that cutting their budgets will likely result in increased cost to the state on the back side from people they are unable to help.

Gov. David Paterson initially cut all state funding for civil legal services, but added the $1 million as an amendment.

He released a statement saying, in part, "For too long, our state government has spent more than we can afford. Given the current financial crisis, we have no choice but to make the tough choices necessary to address our record budget deficits."

"I'm going to do what I can to minimize the cuts to these agencies, but I'm not going into it with blinders on and thinking good agencies aren't going to face cuts," state Assemblyman Sam Hoyt said Friday.