Grant Funds Free Legal Services
For Mississippi Residents

OXFORD, Miss. – Funding from the Mississippi Bar Foundation will enable students at University of Mississippi School of Law to continue to provide free legal aid to some of the thousands of lower-income Mississippi residents.
Earlier this fall, the Civil Legal Clinic received an $80,000 grant from the Mississippi Bar Foundation.
The UM Civil Legal Clinic was established in 1991 to enable second- and third-year law students involved in clinical and externship programs at the law school to offer free legal assistance to needy residents. Founded initially by a federal grant, the clinic is partially funded through the law school, firms, private donors and the Mississippi Bar Foundation.
Desiree Hensley, new director of the Civil Legal Clinic, said clinical education goes beyond a mere internship or externship experience.
“It is an opportunity to instill in young attorneys the importance of professionalism that demands lawyers help those in need,” she said. “In the clinic, we believe that being a lawyer is as much a calling as it is a job, and that we should all respond to the needs of those who cannot pay for our assistance.”
Hensley first became interested in directing the Civil Legal Clinic after discovering it to be one of a few organizations in the state that attempts to meet the crisis that poor and lower income people face when they have a legal problem. Having previously worked for AmeriCorps VISTA, and receiving an Equal Justice Works fellowship to help low-income tenants in the District of Columbia, the Georgetown graduate found herself at Ole Miss.
“I was incredibly impressed with the Civil Legal Clinic’s attorneys and the quality of work that they have consistently provided their clients and the education they have provided Ole Miss law students over a 20-year period,” Hensley said. “It has been a great honor and a privilege to get to know and work with (former director) Deborah Bell and David Calder and other clinic attorneys.”
Working in close partnership with attorneys from North Mississippi Rural Legal Services, the Civil Legal Clinic trains students and represents clients in the areas of child advocacy, housing elder law, low-income tax and street law. About 20 students per semester are able to enroll in the clinic, although many more would like to. Hensley said she hopes to expand the clinical course so that any law student who wants to enroll gets an opportunity to do so.
“We would also like to offer additional client services in the areas of consumer law, bankruptcy and family law. Despite the work we now do, there is an almost overwhelming unmet need for more help here and throughout Mississippi,” Hensley said. “It has been estimated that there are 18,000 potential low-income clients for every one legal aid attorney in the state of Mississippi. I want my students to understand that we lawyers are here to level the playing field for our clients and that there is a beauty in working to overcome those limits and injustices of the legal system even if we can’t always succeed.”
The Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts program was established by order of the Mississippi Supreme Court as a source of funding to provide legal aid to the poor, to provide law related public education programs to the public and to improve the administration of justice. Since its inception in 1984, the IOLTA program has awarded more than $11 million in grants to various entities with $715,000 of that awarded this year. For more information on the Mississippi Bar Foundation or the IOLTA program, visit http://www.msbar.org.