“People need continuous and easy access to quality legal advice.”
This explanation pretty much sums up why Navigate Law Group in Vancouver decided to launch a free weekly virtual legal clinic in response to the impact of COVID-19 in the Clark County area.
“The Stay Home, Stay Healthy executive order is preventing our normal efforts of community outreach to people with legal needs, and it is imperative this work continues,” said Amber Rush, attorney and managing member with Navigate Law Group. “Navigate Law Group has always actively tried to improve access to the justice system for everyone. Statistically, 80% of legal needs in the nation go unmet or without any legal advice. A lot of people with legal needs don’t know where to start, feel very overwhelmed and shut down, or just have a small question or two and would like to get some direction before they talk to a private law firm.”
In response to everything going on with COVID-19 in the area, last week Navigate Law Firm launched their very first free weekly virtual legal clinic. The virtual legal clinic will be hosted every Thursday, from 5-7 p.m. Rush said people can sign up for their 20-minute time slot to speak one-on-one with a local attorney at https://lawchat.navigatelawgroup.com/. Those wishing to participate can ask questions and seek advice in all areas of law – Washington state law, and Oregon state law upon request.
“Last week was our first virtual legal clinic and it was a huge success – lots of legal questions answered (family, employment, small business, estate, probate, criminal, etc.),” Rush said. “So far, it has really been across the board. People are struggling and needing answers for a wide variety of topics with all this uncertainty in the air … Some additional topics that a lot of people are seeking advice about right now are business, real estate, civil disputes, domestic violence, medical debit, other consumer issues (credit card debt, general debt issues, transactions gone bad), landlord/tenant, guardianship, issues with construction, etc.”
Rush said that all of the Navigate Law Group attorneys are participating in the free weekly clinic, which she said is great because they cover a wide variety of legal topics between them. She said they also have some non-Navigate attorneys that will be participating as well, as the need grows. Rush also said there is no limit on the number of times that people can sign up to seek advice at the virtual free legal clinic – they could seek advice each week if they needed.
Navigate Law Group founded and participates in a number of free legal advice events each month that provide easy access to legal help. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, all of these free events were in-person.
“Our firm really values social justice work, giving back to the community, as well as our private practice legal work,” Rush said. “All of our clinics and tabling are usually well-attended and appreciated by the community. It directly provides people easy access to the justice system. We are no longer able to host any of them while the Stay Home, Stay Healthy executive order is in place. Therefore, we immediately started wiring up the virtual legal clinic to make sure everyone has the ability to speak with a lawyer during these uncertain times. Attorney Eli Marchbanks at our firm actually built the legal clinic website and intake – he is a bit of a developer on the side.”
In order to sign up for the free weekly virtual legal clinic on Thursdays, people can go to the sign-up page, https://lawchat.navigatelawgroup.com/, enter their contact information, legal issue and identify other parties involved, and they will receive confirmation with an assigned attorney and time slot for their legal advice call. The attorney will then call the person with the legal issue at the reserved time on Thursdays between 5-7 p.m. and provide advice.
