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The San Francisco Bay Area
Volunteer Legal Services Program
 
The Volunteer Legal Services Program ("VSLP") provides free legal aid for traditionally underserved members of the San Francisco Bay Area, primarily through the use of volunteer resources, to help create positive and lasting change in clients' lives. VLSP pioneered a holistic approach for legal aid that combines the provision of legal services with supporting social services to fully address the complex array of interrelated issues these clients must resolve in order to improve their quality of life.
In 1977, attorney James Brosnahan, then president of the Bar Association of San Francisco, led a group that mobilized the City's legal community to respond to a growing, unmet need. They had come to realize that government-funded, staff-based program did not have the resources, nor the capacity, to meet all of the legal needs of the City's poor -- more was needed. Determined to help its members provide legal services for those who were being left behind, the Bar launched VLSP in April 1977, hoping it would serve as a catalyst to involve more Bar members in pro bono work for the poor.
"The problem of representing the poor is so pressing and of such a dimension," wrote Mr. Brosnahan that year, "That its resolution will require 50 hours a year by each lawyer in the city…a culture that promises 'equal justice under the law' creates an expectation of full legal representation. Not to fulfill those expectations creates structural cracks in the very foundation of our society. On each individual lawyer rests the responsibility to represent the poor."
VLSP operated as a small project of the Bar Association until it came under the direction of Tanya Neiman in 1982. As described in the program celebrating the VSLP's 25th Anniversary, "Neiman's dedication to addressing poverty and creating real change in people's lives fostered the growth of VLSP and led to a paradigm shift for legal services programs across the country. She invented the phrase 'holistic advocacy' as it applies to legal aid and is the founder of the approach to advocacy that places helping the client move forward, rather than simply overcoming a crisis."
Today, VLSP is the largest and the only fully comprehensive legal services program in San Francisco. Through its poverty programs, more than 20,000 clients annually receive advice, information and representation in virtually every area of civil law. In 2001, volunteers donated over 56,000 hours of services worth more than $10.2 million to help San Francisco's neediest.
VLSP is able to help a large number of people in need by relying upon a core staff to recruit, train, and support a pool of more than 1,400 active legal volunteers. By providing high quality one-on-one assistance, volunteers are able to make a tremendous difference in the lives of a poor family facing an illegal eviction, an abused woman wanting to create a safe home for herself and her children, a senior who finds himself the victim of fraud, a child with a disability who needs disability benefits to pay for specialized care, or a nonprofit agency that needs business assistance to help it fulfill its mission.
The VLSP's 25th Anniversary Dinner


James Brosnahan, founder of the VLSP.

Elizabeth J. Cabraser, accepting her 2002 VLSP Champion of Justice award.


San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Jr., presents a commendation to VLSP Director Tanya Neiman.


VLSP Director Tanya Neiman.
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, is proud to support VLSP in its efforts to bring about permanent change in the lives of the San Francisco Bay Areas’s most vulnerable residents. On October 9, 2002, the VSLP marked its 25th Anniversary. At the event, Teveia Barnes, the Executive Director of the San Francisco Bar Association, presented Elizabeth J. Cabraser the Bar’s first Champion of Justice Award for her financial contributions to the VSLP. To learn more about the VLSP and how to contribute to and support the program, please visit the VLSP website.
About Lieff Cabraser
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP is a fifty-plus attorney law firm that has represented plaintiffs nationwide since 1972. We have offices in San Francisco, New York and Nashville. We represent plaintiffs in class and group actions and in individual lawsuits in cases involving substantial losses. For the last five years, the National Law Journal has selected Lieff Cabraser as one of the top plaintiffs' law firms in the nation.
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