Lone Star Legal Aid staff members Velimir Rasic, Minette Mukum and Anam Mehtab are pictured at a community outreach event in Pasadena, Texas, earlier this year. The organization is among legal services providers offering help for people affected by the nation's opioid crisis. (Courtesy of Lone Star Legal Aid)
He was struggling with what to do when the director of his treatment program gave him the number of the Houston-based Lone Star Legal Aid. He recently connected with a lawyer there, bringing a sense of relief.
"It brought a lot of stress off of me — having somebody else kind of take care of this in a proper way," said Austin, whose last name is being withheld for privacy reasons.
Lone Star Legal Aid is among a growing number of legal aid providers with programs tailored to clients affected by substance use disorder. Around the country, different groups, some using money paid to state and local governments as part of opioid litigation settlements, have expanded these legal services and increased outreach to recovery organizations.
At Lone Star Legal Aid, the Rise to Recovery initiative launched last year in response to the opioid crisis and offers a range of services, including assistance with housing disputes, family law matters, public benefits, bankruptcies and clearing criminal records.
Civil legal problems can pose significant challenges for people trying to get their lives back on track from substance abuse, whether they're facing eviction because of financial troubles, or lacking transportation to get to 12-step meetings because their license is suspended for unpaid fees.
"We used to just [say], 'You're out of luck for the next couple years. You just need to find some rides," said Indiana recovery advocate Brandon George, who is chief strategy officer at the treatment provider and consulting agency Ascension Recovery Services and served on an opioid task force formed by the Legal Services Corp., the independent nonprofit established by Congress that funds legal aid organizations around the country. "And now we view that as a legal problem with a legal solution."
Many legal aid programs aimed at substance use disorder work not only with people in recovery, but also with their family members. For instance, a grandparent who has custody of their grandchildren because of the parents' addiction may need help navigating public benefits or school services.
"It's the kind of problem that impacts not just the person, but the family, in ways that other legal problems may not," said Betty Balli Torres, executive director of the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, which obtained $5 million from the state's opioid settlements to help support programs such as Lone Star Legal Aid's Rise to Recovery.
While state opioid settlements have provided a relatively new funding source for some initiatives, federal grant programs have supported other programs. Other government and private sources have also directed money to this area.
In Ohio, for instance, the most recent state budget doubled funding to the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation for legal aid related to issues arising from substance use disorder, to $500,000 annually. The funds come from general state dollars, said Camille Gill, the foundation's programs and grants counsel, who applauded lawmakers' move as a recognition of the impact on communities.
In another initiative, Equal Justice Works, a nonprofit focused on public interest law, is set to launch a new legal fellowship program later this year in response to the opioid crisis. The program, supported by a $1.4 million grant from the private Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts, will place six early-career lawyers at legal aid organizations in several states for two-year fellowships.
'Meeting People Where They Are'
Austin told Law360 he did "almost every drug under the sun" before entering his recovery program and was addicted to methamphetamine for about six years.
"I was living a life of crime," he said.
He said he enrolled in a Christian-based program last year after losing custody of his baby daughter. The child's mother also used drugs, he said.
"Having my daughter taken away was like the last straw for me, because of how much I love her," said Austin, whose child is now being cared for by family members.
As he prepares to graduate from his program, Austin said he needs to get a bank account, but that not having a license is standing in the way.
His Lone Star Legal Aid attorney, Velimir Rasic, said warrants had been issued for Austin's arrest when Austin did not show up for a hearing on three traffic citations issued in 2021, and his license was suspended because of the warrants and unpaid tickets. Austin told Law360 he's been wanting to take care of the tickets, but because of the warrants, he worries he will be arrested if he goes to a state service center to pay them.
"Getting arrested in any kind of way is not going to look good on me," said Austin, who is employed doing maintenance and repairs at a farm that has an event venue and bed and breakfast.
Rasic is working to resolve the issue through a motion to lift the warrant and set a court date.
Attorneys said driver's license issues are common for clients in recovery and make it difficult for people to obtain jobs.
"Getting a valid driver's license, a valid ID, is the first step to really reintegrating into society," Rasic said.
In addition to Lone Star Legal Aid, six other organizations have received funding from the $5 million allocation the Texas Access to Justice Foundation received from the state's opioid settlements.
Among them is Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas, which used the money to launch the Path Beyond Opioids project. Susan, a client who did not want her last name to be used, told Law360 she has been in recovery for years and received help from the organization with reinstating her driver's license, as well as with a housing dispute.
"Without them, I really would have been put in a bind," said Susan, who works as a daycare teacher. "I didn't have the money to be able to afford the help I needed … They treated me like a client. They treated me like I paid for it myself."
In 2019, a report from the Legal Services Corp.'s opioid task force highlighted the role of legal aid providers in responding to the nation's addiction epidemic, saying they are "uniquely situated to reduce legal barriers to care for people" with opioid use disorder.
Attorneys told Law360 they see many kinds of civil legal problems that can get in the way of people finding stable housing and employment to help get back on their feet at a time when their relationships with loved ones may be strained.
"Maybe they weren't able to pay their rent or utilities because they were incarcerated, or they were in substance use treatment," said Rachael Specht, an attorney with Project Renew, an initiative in Kentucky that helps people with a range of civil legal issues related to recovery. "Well, not having a home to go back to puts them right back on the streets and right back into those same environments that they had previously been in."
Project Renew is a collaboration between four legal aid organizations in Kentucky and has received funding from the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission, the agency that provides grants from the state's opioid settlements.
When someone lacks basic needs, "it can really pose a challenge to fully engage in treatment, because your mind is on survival," said Elizabeth Bard, a psychologist with the Child Study Center at Oklahoma Children's Hospital. The resulting stress and lack of support can potentially lead to relapse, she said.
The center, an outpatient clinic, is home to a medical-legal partnership — an arrangement in which attorneys work in a healthcare setting — with Legal Services of Oklahoma, which aims to help families dealing with substance use disorder. It's currently funded by a Foundation on Opioid Response Efforts grant, but program leaders are seeking other sources because the grant ends this summer, Bard said.
Many families don't know legal help exists, Bard said. Having an attorney and paralegal on site also helps ensure that therapists "aren't spinning our wheels trying to figure out resources."
"We're not legal experts, so it's been just so nice to be able to really focus on treatment with the families," she said.
In one case that Bard recalled, the young mother of a newborn couldn't find housing, so she moved in with a relative who was not sober, impeding her own recovery. Legal Services of Oklahoma helped her secure housing, Bard said.
In another case, a woman was separated from her husband, but could not afford to get a divorce, Bard said. An attorney helped the woman with both the divorce and resolving debt that was tied to her ex-husband's property.
"She was able to feel more financially stable and clearly that also helps with recovery," Bard said.
Another such collaboration is the Recovery Medical-Legal Partnership in West Virginia, which leads the nation in overdose deaths per capita, according to 2022 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The medical-legal joint effort embeds attorneys and paralegals from Legal Aid of West Virginia into recovery residences and outpatient rural health clinics.
"It's community-based lawyering — meeting people where they are," said Brendan Wood, a Legal Aid of West Virginia attorney who runs the program. "I think it takes a lot of the stress of coming to the law office off the table."
For Wood, who grew up in Wheeling, a city along the Ohio River in West Virginia's northern panhandle, the work is personal. When he was in eighth grade, his older brother overdosed. He survived, but the experience left a profound mark on Wood.
"I think that motivates me every day, just knowing that all of our clients kind of went through something like that," he said. "They've all had that worst day."
Wood had started his work in 2019 through a fellowship with Equal Justice Works. Since then, the program has expanded, first regionally through a grant from the private Pallottine Foundation of Huntington and then statewide through the federal government's State Opioid Response grant program.
For the lawyers handling the cases, the work can be rewarding and challenging — and disappointing at times.
Some told Law360 they have lost contact with clients in the midst of their cases because of relapses.
For some clients, the fear of their past being brought up at a court hearing can trigger a lot of stress, said Angela Echols, an attorney with the Beyond Opioids Project, a statewide project led by Center for Arkansas Legal Services and Legal Aid of Arkansas.
"I've attended several hearings where I'm waiting on the client, and the client never even comes, and it's heart-wrenching," Echols said. "You may even talk to a client the day before, and they seem ready to come and advocate for themselves with our assistance. And then, the day of, they can't do it."
It can be hard to build trust with clients because of their past experiences with the justice system, noted Helen Gratil, director of the Beyond Opioids Project, which launched in 2020 with funding from the federal Rural Communities Opioid Response Program. Because of stigmatization, she said, "people don't even ask for help because they want to hide the root of the problem."
Clients are "trying to function in a system that is stacked against you, that punishes you, as opposed to a therapeutic place," Gratil said. Beyond Opioids, on the other hand, represents "a shift in the paradigm where we basically say, 'OK, we realize this is a chronic disease.'"
Wood, the attorney in West Virginia, said he rarely wears a suit jacket when he goes to meet clients "just because most folks' interactions with the legal system have been overwhelmingly negative."
"I don't want to make them feel like they're getting less adequate representation, but I want them to not see me as threatening," he added.
Resolving legal issues can make a tangible difference in clients' lives.
For instance, "they're able to get their license back, and they call us super excited and happy about a job they've got lined up," Wood said. "When I hear about somebody doubling their income as the result of an expungement, for me, that's more rewarding than a big lawsuit in a lot of ways."
Legal help can be a source of optimism for clients, Echols of the Beyond Opioids Project in Arkansas said.
"Once you do build the trust with the client ... we have a lot of really positive outcomes," Echols said. "We provide that hope for them, and that hope — that's what keeps me going as well."
Austin, the Lone Star Legal Aid client, said he plans to attend trade school to become an HVAC technician after he finishes his rehabilitation program later this summer. His daughter is his motivation, he said.
"I'm blessed to have her, and she's my drive to keep going this way that I am," Austin said.
--Editing by Lakshna Mehta.
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