UVA law students help veterans

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- A pro bono project is representing two veterans in their disability claims and giving University of Virginia School of Law students hands-on experience.

A group, made up of attorneys and law students, is helping veterans get their claims heard in the Veterans Administration. The project is sponsored by the law school, the student-run Virginia Law Veterans and the Charlottesville/Albemarle Bar Association.

Through a National Veterans Legal Services Program workshop last fall, lawyers and about 20 students learned how to handle disability claims. The program offered the students two cases on which they are now working. Chris Sprigman, a U.Va. law professor, said the cases tend to move slowly.

"The VA has a lot of business in terms of disability benefits adjudications," Sprigman said. "Often it takes years for [the veterans] to get benefits."

Previously, under a rule created after the Civil War, private attorneys could charge only $10 to handle disability claims before the Veterans Administration. Attorneys can now charge up to 20 percent of past-due benefits when representing eligible veterans on a contingency basis.

The students' cases involve a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Korean War and a U.S. Air Force veteran who served in the 1970s. Cooper Geraty, an attorney working on the Korean War vet's case, said the Veterans Administration had determined that his client is 100 percent disabled after several of his claims were denied. Geraty is helping the veteran get money for previous years.

The team working with the other veteran is trying to show he has a back problem that is related to his service.

Each case is assigned a senior associate -- a more experienced U.Va. student who manages junior associates on the case. Rebekah Shapiro, Geraty's senior associate, has been working with a group of junior associates to read through more than 800 pages of documents and write a brief on the case.

Shapiro, who is interested in civil litigation, said she is getting leadership and practical experience from working on the case.

"I do have to read everything, practice editing and get a crash course in a whole other body of law and court procedures," Shapiro said. "Congress has set this up as a very different area of law than those not practicing in it will ever encounter."

Sprigman, who acts as a faculty adviser to senior associates, said the project mimics a law firm.

"The lawyers are in charge of the cases, but students are there to help," Sprigman said. "Senior associates tend to focus on the case as a whole and junior associates focus on bits and pieces, at least at first."

If the pilot program is successful in its first year, Sprigman said the group would make the project permanent.