Word: legalism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...summers later, I’ve decided to spend my time volunteering with the Legal Aid office in my home county in Ohio, with a special interest in foreclosure cases...
...Legal Aid is a nationally coordinated set of programs that provide civil legal services to people who can’t otherwise afford them. And in Lorain County, Ohio—which has been unwillingly “deindustrializing” and losing good manufacturing jobs for my entire lifetime, if not longer—there is plenty of need...
...time jury trial court rooms lie on floors three through seven, but most of Legal Aid’s cases don’t make it past the Justice Center’s second floor—Domestic Relations. The first floor, meanwhile, is the paper mill, absorbing and spitting back out the endless rounds of documentation composed, notarized, respectfully submitted, and acknowledged in cases like home foreclosure...
...ground level the legal options available in such cases are discouragingly few. Lawyers can search for inconsistencies in the documents filed with a court in a foreclosure action, creating enough extra time for a homeowner to find a job or to work out an agreement to modify the mortgage...
...foreclosures continue apace, most of the cases the office handles—as well as those we’re forced to turn away due to our limited stock of attorneys—fit less conveniently into a narrative. A few types of cases make up the bulk of Legal Aid’s work even as, according to the attorneys in the office, the mix has changed with the downturn. Lost jobs tends to mean more domestic violence-related divorces and more claims from workers who are wrongfully denied unemployment benefits, as well as a greater need for papers...