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Maryland Public Interest Law Project
Grant Information
Information on Past Grantees
Community Law Center: Baltimore, MD
http://www.communitylaw.org/
Grantee: Robin Jacobs
My experience this summer was amazing. I helped community associations and nonprofits on a variety of legal issues and saw how the law can work as a tool to solve people's problems.
Greater Pine Island Civic Association, Inc.: St. James, FL
http://www.gpica.org/
Grantee: Patience Burke
I worked on land use issues in southwest Florida. My job was to assist a local civic group in determining ways to make its land use plan more environmentally protective. It is interesting working at the local level. You get to see how closely one interacts with all the key players (county commissioners, county attorneys, regulatory agencies, good guys, bad guys, the in-between...), and you get a close-up take on the "work group" phenomenon we're told about. It gave me a broader perspective of how things work, how many interests are involved, and how important it is to know how to compromise and to whom. Despite how distant it seems when we're reading cases in school, these issues involve real people, clients, attorneys, judges, secretaries, citizens, and more. Getting things done goes beyond understanding the law, but understanding people and what decisions they (individually speaking) are capable of making.
Maryland Disability Law Center: Baltimore, MD
http://www.mdlcbalto.org/
Grantee: Veronica Berruz
For my biggest project, I followed up on concerns of juveniles living in Residential Treatment Centers (RTCs) and filed complaints on their behalf to Maryland's Office of Health Care Quality (OHCQ). In response to my complaints, OHCQ found some deficiencies in the facilities and required that they make changes to their policies or practices to be in compliance with federal and state law. Another of my projects involved assisting a MDLC attorney with Rights Trainings at RTCs. These trainings were aimed at the juveniles to inform them of their legal rights while living in a treatment facility. In many of the RTCs we visited, the juveniles were excited to learn about their rights and were thankful to know that they could contact MDLC if they faced any problems. From my work on the RTCs, I learned about state and federal laws concerning patients of these facilities, as well as the function and organization of some of the state agencies charged with regulating and monitoring these facilities.
