Our
nation has long recognized the great debt to those veterans and their
families who have been injured because they answered the nation's call.
Yet, our country's institutions too often fail to provide these veterans
the help they have earned through their dedicated service. The National
Veterans Legal Services Program (NVLSP) is an independent, non-profit
veterans service organization that has been assisting veterans and their
advocates for more than 25 years. NVLSP achieves its mission through
education, advocacy, litigation, training advocates who represent veterans,
and publications.
NVLSP
first focused its efforts on millions of soldiers who have emerged from
the military with less-than-fully-honorable discharges. These soldiers
with "bad paper" were (and continue to be) disproportionately
young, undereducated, and from minority backgrounds. Many have not deserved
this figurative ball and chain, which hobbles their efforts to build
careers and families and often bars them from veterans' benefits. NVLSP's
litigation and policy work led to upgrades in the discharges of thousands
of deserving veterans, making it easier for them to get good jobs and
lead productive lives, and left in place a fairer system to adjudicate
similar cases in the future.
Beginning
in the 1980s, NVLSP channeled its efforts to help disabled veterans
who had applied to the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
for disability compensation and health care, but whose claims had been
unfairly denied. This happened far too often because of Great Depression-era
legislation that prevented claimants denied VA benefits from appealing
to a court. Despite its obvious unfairness, this bar to court review
stayed on the books for more than five decades.
The
VA no longer operates beyond the reach of the law. The reform of the
VA benefits system began with the enactment of the Veterans' Judicial
Review Act of 1988, allowing veterans to appeal to a newly created U.S.
Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. NVLSP staff helped get this landmark
legislation passed. Then, to ensure that this new system succeeded,
NVLSP worked to make certain that veterans could secure counsel to represent
them on appeal. NVLSP has been in the forefront of creating a safety
net for veterans who have been unable to secure an advocate by recruiting,
training, and publishing advocacy materials for thousands of volunteer
attorneys and lay advocates who represent veterans, for free, before
the Court and the VA.
PUBLICATIONS
Publications
of advocacy materials to increase the pool of both non-lawyer and lawyer
advocates available to veterans and their families, and to empower them
in the effective representation of their clients has been a focus of
NVLSP from the outset. Beginning in 1980, NVLSP served as a national
support center for the hundreds of local offices funded by the Legal
Services Corporation (LSC) that provide legal services for free to low-income
people around the nation. With LSC funds, NVLSP produced the Military
Discharge Upgrading Manual, the only available treatise in the
country for advocates of veterans seeking an upgrade in a less than
honorable discharge from military service and other types of corrections
to their military records. LSC funded NVLSP to produce a supplement
to this manual in 1990.
VETERANS
BENEFITS MANUAL
Since
1999, the 1,900-page Veterans
Benefits Manual written by NVLSP's staff and
published by LexisNexis
has been an indispensable guide for thousands of lawyer and non-lawyer
advocates who help veterans and their families obtain VA benefits. The
Veterans Benefits Manual is revised every year and is published
in both a paper and CD format.
THE
VETERANS ADVOCATE
For
the last 14 years, NVLSP has published The
Veterans Advocate, a veterans law and advocacy
journal that covers current developments in veterans law. This journal,
now published quarterly, provides in-depth analyses and advice on issues
affecting veterans benefits entitlement.
THE
BASIC TRAINING CORRESPONDENCE COURSE
Another
type of advocacy publication is NVLSP's The
Basic Training Correspondence Course in veterans
benefits law. The course, which can be taken at home, includes a 128-page
manual, a complete set of intake forms, and a proficiency examination
that advocates may take and submit to NVLSP for grading.
SELF-HELP
GUIDES
Yet
another type of publication NVLSP has produced during the last two decades
is a series of self-help guides. Unlike the advocates' publications
discussed above, these guides empower veterans and their families by
informing them about the federal veterans benefits available and how
to navigate the complex VA adjudication system with an advocate's aid.
These guides have covered a variety of topics, including Gulf
War veterans benefits, benefits due to Agent
Orange exposure, VA
benefits available to veterans' family members, VA education benefits,
VA debt collection, VA health care, discharge upgrading and a general
guide to the VA claims process.
MENTORING
NVLSP
houses the Outreach and Education Components of the Pro
Bono Program, which recruits, trains, and mentors
private bar attorneys who have agreed to represent at least one appellant
before the Court at no cost to the appellant.
Through
the end of 2002, the Consortium
had recruited volunteer attorneys to represent more than 2,100 VA claimants
who had appealed to the Court without a representative. Each case was
screened for financial eligibility and relative merit prior to being
placed with the volunteer attorney. During the same period, NVLSP trained
more than 1,200 volunteer attorneys in veterans law, through either
a full-day training program, or training videotape.
TRAINING
A major ongoing
training effort of NVLSP involves recruiting and training volunteer
attorneys to represent veterans and their families who have filed
an appeal with the U.S.
Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, but have
been unable to find a representative. NVLSP and three other veterans
service organizations (The American Legion, the Disabled
American Veterans and Paralyzed Veterans of America)
together operate the Veterans
Consortium Pro Bono Program, which is now in its
tenth year.
REPRESENTATION/LITIGATION
The final means
by which NVLSP achieves its mission is through direct representation
of veterans and their families before the VA, Discharge Review Boards,
Boards for Correction of Military Records, the U.S. Court of Appeals
for Veterans Claims, and other federal courts. Much of NVLSP's efforts
before the federal courts focus on impact litigation—cases which,
if successful, will benefit large groups of veterans and their families.
Among NVLSP's most visible litigation successes are:
-
Forcing
the U.S. Army in 1980 to upgrade to honorable the derogatory discharges
illegally issued to more than 7,000 Vietnam veterans;
-
Requiring
the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force in 1980 to upgrade the less
than honorable discharges they had issued to hundreds of veterans
because of their purely civilian conduct while they were in the
inactive reserves, when they had no military duties other than to
keep the military apprised of their current address;
-
Obtaining
an injunction in 1987 prohibiting the VA from closing seven of its
Vet Centers, the readjustment counseling centers operated by the
VA for needy Vietnam veterans and other veterans;
-
Obtaining
a class action order from a federal court in 1989 invalidating VA
regulations calling for the denial claims of Vietnam veterans and
their families for disability and death benefits related to diseases
that scientific studies show are associated with Agent Orange exposure.
During the 1990s, this case resulted in tens of millions of dollars
paid in retroactive disability and death benefits to Vietnam veterans
who suffer or died from cancers connected to Agent Orange exposure.
-
Then,
in 1999 through 2002, NVLSP attorneys convinced federal courts the
VA had been violating the Court's previous orders in three separate
ways, resulting in two class action orders requiring payment of
more than $15 million in additional retroactive disability and death
benefits;
-
Forcing
the VA in the 1990s to pay more than $60 million in retroactive
disability benefits, plus tens of millions of dollars in increased
prospective disability benefits to more than 600 Puerto Rican veterans
with service-connected mental disorders whose total (100 percent)
disability ratings had been reduced pursuant to special rules used
by the VA in Puerto Rico, but nowhere else; rules that were far
less favorable than the rules codified in the Code of Federal Regulations
and applied by the VA outside of Puerto Rico;
-
Obtaining
a court order in 1994 invalidating a VA regulation that illegally
prohibited the VA from granting benefits to surviving family members
of deceased veterans who did not file a claim under the Restored
Entitlement Program for Survivors within 11 months of the veteran's
death; and
-
Establishing
the rule that when VA statutes or regulations change while a VA
benefits claim is being considered by the VA or a reviewing court,
the VA claimant is entitled to whichever version of the statutes
and regulations is more favorable to the claimant, unless Congress
or the Secretary have specifically provided otherwise.
LIMITATIONS
Because
of the above activities, NVLSP is not, except in unusual cases, available
to represent individual VA claimants before a VA Regional Office or
the Board of Veterans' Appeals.