Legal Aid Society Wins $300,000 Family-Law Grant

The Legal Aid Society of Orange County was awarded a $300,000 grant Friday for a pilot program that will enable the organization to substantially increase legal services for indigent families in Westminster, Huntington Beach and parts of the south county.

The grant was presented to Legal Aid Society Director Robert Cohen by Peter Broccoletti, director of field services for the Legal Services Corp. in Washington.

Cohen said the legal aid societies of Orange County and Jacksonville, Fla., were picked to conduct the yearlong pilot program, which will focus on the legal representation of indigents in family-law cases. The Legal Services Corp. is a private nonprofit organization, supported in part by the federal government, that provides support, through a number of programs, to those who cannot afford lawyers.

“This program will allow us to significantly increase the services we provide in these three areas,” Cohen said.

Jerry Witter, a spokesman for the Legal Aid Society, said the program will be monitored to “find the cheapest and best way to deal with problems that come under family law. The program will try and coordinate legal aid with private attorneys for specific handling of family law matters. We have found that there isn’t a great deal of indigent representation in these areas.”

Witter said private lawyers’ response to the program will be the key to its success. “How well private attorneys cooperate will be very important. The less money private attorneys charge us, the more people we’ll be able to help. This study will look at how much representation we can have for the least money,” Witter said.

The cases to be handled under the program, he said, will range from child custody matters to child abuse.

Members of families with incomes of less than $14,400 a year are eligible for assistance from the society.

In 1984, the Legal Aid Society provided legal assistance to about 12,000 people in Orange County with a budget of $1.6 million.