By MATT CHANDLER
mchandler@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1654

The first of four scheduled hearings aimed at assessing the level of unmet need for civil legal services in New York was held Wednesday in Rochester.

The hearing, chaired by New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, featured testimony from a panel of experts. They included Buffalo City Court Judge Henry Nowak and at least one current client of the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo, one of five civil legal service agencies serving Western New York.

The panel considered oral testimony and written submissions. Because of the limited time available for the hearings, however, the opportunity to offer oral testimony was by invitation only.

Karen Nicolson, CEO of Legal Services for the Elderly, Disabled or Disadvantaged of Western New York, says her organization lost approximately $132,000 in funding last year. She attended the Rochester hearing to weigh in on the growing community need.

"We are really dependent on that funding because there is really no dedicated source of state funding for civil legal services," Nicolson said.

In anticipation of the funding cuts, she laid off staff last year. Now those cuts have forced the agency to eliminate handling the estimated 150 eviction cases it took on each year.

"Those people are seniors and they have nowhere else to go because all of the programs are making similar cuts," she said. "So it isn't as though they can be absorbed by someone else."

Robert Elardo is president of the Volunteer Lawyers Project, another of Buffalo's civil legal service groups.

"We're barely hanging on," Elardo said of his organization.

And though he managed to avoid layoffs thus far, he isn't sure what the future holds without some new direction.

"It's looking at this point like we are going to take a 70 to 75 percent cut in funding, which is going to be really, really bad," he said.

The question, then, is whether the hearings will represent change or simply lip service to area groups. Nicolson said she hopes it's the former.

"I'm an optimist, probably for the first time in my 10 years as director here," she said. "I think Judge Lippman really understands the issue and he has made it a priority for his administration to address."

Buffalo attorney Vincent Doyle III says this time, things are different. As president-elect of the New York State Bar Association, he co-chaired the Rochester hearing.

"This is a new approach," said Doyle, a partner in the law firm Connors & Vilardo LLP. "These hearings are bringing in new players and new perspectives to this issue."

By bringing in people from all sides of the issue - including clients, providers and people from the legal and medical community - he said he expects substantive recommendations to come from the collective hearings.

Asked whether the cuts suffered by civil legal service agencies are simply due course for a state limping through a recession, and unavoidable, Doyle said he believes it is a matter of pay for it now or pay for it later in terms of civil legal services.

"I fully expect the hearings are going to demonstrate the many ways that these unmet legal needs are costing society," he said. "First of all, it's the right thing to do. But also, if we can find a way to meet these legal needs, we may very well save the state money in the long run."