So many returning veterans from
Afghanistan and Iraq have post-traumatic
stress. Many of them also have military
sexual trauma and because of the, in my
opinion, the over prescription of opioids,
many of them now find themselves
addicted to opioids. Hugh McClean, the
director of The Bob Parsons Veterans
Advocacy Clinic, helped create the
Baltimore City Veterans Treatment Court,
and his students both represent veterans
as defendants, as their defense counsel
in court, and they also represent
veterans for their civil legal issues
such as discharge upgrades and appeals
from denials of benefits. So they have a
great impact -- they're invaluable to our
program. At the Homeless Persons
Representation Project, one of our
special legal projects is a statewide
veterans legal assistance project. We
represent homeless and low-income
veterans in claims for VA benefits and
in discharge upgrades. And I have to say
The Bob Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic has been an excellent pipeline of
well-trained law students who become
excellent lawyers and we are delighted
to have law students from the clinic and
graduates of the clinic volunteer with
our program, representing veterans all
around Maryland. I think there's a lot of
different impacts that the clinic is
having. I think one of the biggest is
being involved in our annual veterans
conference. Having The Bob Parsons
Veterans [Advocacy] Clinic as one of our partners has really helped us in expanding the
number of volunteers we can get. Also
reaching a greater amount of veterans to
be able to let them know what their
rights are. I've also worked with Hugh at
the clinic in training the law students
to have them involved in our clinic at
the VA annex. Legal representation for veterans is
still critically needed. We have no lack of clients coming into
our statewide veterans legal assistance
project. Frankly, we see the need for
legal representation increasing. We are,
in fact, opening new legal clinics in
Montgomery County in the next few months -- and there's no question that we will
need the kind of highly trained lawyers
that are being trained in The Bob
Parsons Veterans Advocacy Clinic.
