Bar Leader Toolkit: July 2007

When American Bar Association members gathered at the Midyear Meeting in Miami, their agenda included two recommendations to the House of Delegates from the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Legal Assistance for Military Personnel (LAMP).

These recommendations are of interest to members of the (local bar association) because they demonstrate the ways in which we and your ABA support the men and women on active duty with our nation's military. They also indicate ways that we can, when possible in our own practices, ensure that we are giving advice and counsel to any military clients we may have with consistency across the country.

The first of these recommendations (108A) concerns mandatory legal assistance to all low-income, active-duty service men and women in pay grades E-6 and below. Current legislation states that individual service branches "may provide legal assistance [to active-duty service personnel] in connection with their personnel (sic) legal affairs...subject to the availability of legal staff resources."

Currently the increased demand for military legal services in military justice, administrative discharge proceedings and claims investigations has taken resources and personnel away from providing legal services to individual service men and service women. Wartime budget pressures have also undermined legal assistance resources.

The second recommendation (108B) urges federal, territorial, state and local lawmakers to respond to the increasing social and family support needs of the young and teenage children of deployed American military members. There are just under 2 million dependent children whose parents are serving in the Armed Forces, including the Reserves and National Guard, according to the Military Child Education Coalition.

Approximately ten percent have a parent deployed away from home, and in many cases are living with a non-parent caregiver. The ABA supports legislation that would allow these surrogate parents to use their accrued sick or personal time to care for these children as if the children were their own. The ABA also encourages all states to work together in ensuring that children can attend public school in the district in which their non-parent caregiver lives during the time of their parent's deployment.

You can read these Recommendations at www.abanet.org/leadership/2007/midyear/docs/
SUMMARYOFRECOMMENDATIONS/SUMOFRECS.doc.

Also included here are two additional items, a proclamation in support of military personnel that you can encourage your community government to pass as well as a PowerPoint presentation that gives background on numbers of children affected by their parent's deployment.

This season, when we celebrate our nation's flag and our independence, marks a time when we should ensure that the men and women in our nation's military have traditional rights to representation and care for children that exist for us all.

Sincerely,

Name
Local Bar Association