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Causes: Crime & Law, Legal Services
Mission: The mission of acadiana legal service corporation is to make hope, dignity, and justice available primarily to low-income, disadvantaged, children in need of care, and other eligible residents through high quality and aggresive civil (non-criminal) legal assistance and education. These services are available to an estimated 650,000 persons in alsc's forty-two parish service area. Statistics for 2017 include 20,000+ encounters, 7,818 cases opened, and 7,376 cases closed.
Programs: The organization utilizes a specialized approach to delivery of services through the following units: administrative law unit handles cases involving tanf, social security disability, food stamps, veteran's benefits, medicaid, medicare, etc. In 2017, $1. 6 million in benefits were recovered on behalf of clients of the administrative law unit under the capable leadership of the senior attorney/unit leader. Litigation unit handles cases involving bankruptcy/debtor relief, collection, contracts, unfair or deceptive sales and practices, landlord/tenant issues, discrimination, predatory lending, wage claims, wills, etc. Family law unit handles cases involving divorce, child support, intra-family adoptions, visitation, domestic violence, name change, etc. Children in need of care unit handles cases involving abuse and/or neglect of children under the leadership of the senior attorney of the unit. Alsc designs and distributes numerous brochures on general legal topics for use by the public. Staff attorneys and paralegals regularly conduct community education presentations stressing preventative law to the general public and to staffs of social services agencies who work with the poor. Each year thousands of disadvantaged citizens benefit from the information disseminated at these events.