FLH’s work with the Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program (“Consortium”) provides an excellent opportunity for young lawyers to gain valuable appellate experience while aiding America’s military veterans. Congress created the Consortium to assist veterans in appealing the government’s denial of claims for benefits. Many veterans have had claims pending for inordinately long periods, with little or no chance of successfully negotiating what has become a labyrinthine process. The Consortium tries to remedy that situation.
Participating attorneys represent veterans with an appeal pending before the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“CAVC”). Representation of veterans in the Program can involve activities as diverse as preparing the appellant’s brief, negotiating settlements with counsel for the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, or arguing the appeal before a one- or three-judge panel. In short, the Program affords participating attorneys the potential for exciting, varied, and important legal work on behalf of deserving fellow citizens.
Not all Consortium cases are resolved at the CAVC, but are further appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit—the same court FLH appears before in connection with patent litigation appeals. Accordingly, a secondary benefit of FLH’s participation in the Consortium is the potential to argue before the same bench that FLH encounters in its “usual” cases.
Involvement in Consortium matters also affords attorneys the chance to gain tremendous experience in matters outside the courtroom. FLH volunteer attorneys have worked closely with not only veterans and their families, but also social services and veterans’ organizations beyond the Consortium to gather information and materials critical to serving the veteran and advancing the appeal.
Through these efforts, our volunteer attorneys provide veterans with professional services that would not otherwise be available, by helping them plot a course through legally, logistically and, oftentimes, emotionally, difficult thickets. Our attorneys have also cultivated positive and productive client relationships and almost uniformly view this as the most rewarding aspect of their work with the Consortium.
At a time when the number of veterans’ claims is greatly outstripping the government’s capacity for processing claims—both due to the aging of many World War II and Korean War veterans, as well as the large number of troops returning from Iran and Afghanistan—the Consortium stands as an essential bulwark for the protection of our veterans and their legal rights. FLH is proud to serve that effort.