Patrick Cicero, Executive Director of Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network, Inc. participated in a webinar entitled Civil Legal Aid Funding in the Time of COVID-19 on June 26, 2020. The webinar was co-sponsored by the American Bar Association Resource Center for Access to Justice Initiatives (a project of the ABA Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants) and The Justice in Government Project at American University School of Public Affairs.

Civil legal aid providers are essential front-line responders during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to health care needs, there has been a surge of COVID-19 related civil legal problems flowing from lost jobs and housing, food insecurity, debt collectors, unemployment and other public benefits, bankruptcy, increased risk of domestic violence, and more. 

But not all state and local government policymakers know that legal aid providers must be there to mitigate the economic and related challenges that COVID-19 affected individuals and families experience as a consequence of unemployment, social distancing orders, and employment-related health/safety risks. 

When Congress passed the CARES Act and appropriated funds to help state and local governments address the fallout, they gave those government decisionmakers enormous discretion about how to spend billions of dollars. This webinar discussed how some legal aid leaders persuaded those government decisionmakers to fund help for the tsunami of legal issues that are already flowing from the crisis.

The recorded webinar can be viewed below:

Panel Speakers:

• Shubi Deoras, Counsel/Director, ABA Resource Center for Access to Justice Initiatives
• Karen A. Lash, Practitioner-in-Residence and Director, The Justice in Government Project at American University School of Public Affairs
• Jim Bamberger, Director, Washington State Office of Civil Legal Aid
• Patrick Cicero, Executive Director, Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network
• Stephanie Harris, Director of Development, Ohio State Legal Services Association