By MATT CHANDLER
Buffalo Law Journal
What does a 78-year-old woman who is disabled and fighting to get medication that may keep her alive have in common with a bunch of golfers teeing it up at a posh country club for an afternoon of golf and steak?  
More than you might imagine.
Legal Services for the Elderly, Disabled & Disadvantaged of WNY Inc. Executive Director Karen Nicolson says staff are in crisis mode as her agency, which provides free legal services to elderly and disabled residents of Erie County, faces huge funding cuts in the coming year - cuts that, she says, make an event like its annual golf fundraiser even more critical.
At a time when public and private funding is being slashed, Nicolson said the need for their services has risen dramatically, with a 24 percent increase in their intake last year.
"As people are aging locally and younger people are leaving the Buffalo area, we are having the largest funding crisis in our history," she said.
"We knew last September, when the bottom fell out of the economy, that we were going to face some challenges," Nicolson said. The agency gets roughly 15 percent of its funding from on the state Interest on Lawyer Account Fund and, she said, "At this point we expect maybe a 70 percent cut to IOLA, which represents between $170,000 and $200,000" out of LSED's annual budget of $1.2 million.
Nicolson said her board has been proactive in seeking other means of funding. The agency last fall took the step of laying off two support staff and not replacing an attorney lost to attrition, leaving a staff of 16 to handle roughly 1,200 cases annually. In addition, they field inquiries from about 900 other people they are forced to turn away.
While the annual golf event, which for the second year in a row will team LSED with the Bar Association of Erie County, typically nets about $35,000, organizers say corporate sponsorship is down nearly 50 percent and there are still openings for the golfing, which is typically sold out by now.
It's all a sign, Nicolson says, of the flagging economy.
"I'm a lawyer, yet I am spending all of my time raising money instead of being a lawyer, and that is somewhat distressing," she said. "I wish we could spend more time servicing our clients and filling their needs."
BAEC President Giles Manias, a longtime LSED board member, calls the prospect of relying on a single golf event to fund legal services "terrifying," and notes that there is a lot of charitable competition for the golfing dollar in Western New York.
"It used to be that there were a few private clubs, and they would rotate hosting an event," he said. "Now there are so many clubs, and people realize this is a good fundraiser, and now everyone is doing it." Three other fundraising tournaments will be held thee same day as the Bar/LSED event, and Nicolson worries that the competition will undoubtedly have an impact on the bottom line.
"They (LSED) shouldn't have to rely on these type of fundraisers," Manias said. "Their impact on our community (of their services) is far too important to be left to fundraising."
The Legal Services golf outing is scheduled for Brookfield Country Club on June 29. For more information, go to lsed.org or call Executive Director Karen Nicolson at 853-3087, ext. 205.