Tracy Hightower-Henne: Hello, everyone. On today’s podcast, we have Deanna Piña, an attorney at Hightower Reff Law, and we also have with us Megan Mosslander from the legal aid of Nebraska. Hello. Welcome both of you. Happy to be here. So excited. So we’re going to talk about legal aid of Nebraska. That’s what this episode is about. So, of course, we had to have Megan from Legal Aid. Thank you. I mean, we can talk about legal aid because we love legal aid. But like, it’s great to have Megan here to tell us all the things that we don’t know because we have found out that we don’t know a lot about legal aid in Nebraska.
Megan Moslander: A lot of people don’t know a lot about legal aid.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yes. So then now they can listen to this podcast and just know everything. That’s right.
Megan Moslander: Yeah, we all know everything about legal aid in Nebraska.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yes. So, Megan, tell us about you who you are and like what you do with legal aid of Nebraska.
Megan Moslander: So I am the chief of development and external relations at Legal Aid. I have been there. I was a year in July. I absolutely love my job. I’ve been in doing development fundraising since I was a long time. We’ll just go with a long time over 15 years. So my heart really is in social justice and like making the world like leaving an impact, I would say. So that’s hugely important and it’s just me and my dog. And so my dog loves legal aid too. Of course, I keep saying we need some legal aid. Doggy swag. Yeah.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And you almost brought your dog with you today.
Megan Moslander: Well, I would like to bring my dog everywhere, but
Deanna Piña: Laws
Tracy Hightower-Henne: The stupid laws anyway. I used to always want to bring my dog everywhere with me to my 100 pound Great Dane. And she’s, you know, she yeah. And she gets like a lot of attention and I’m like, OK, but I don’t have time to like, stop. Every time someone wants to pet, you have to add time
Megan Moslander: Onto your like, yes, errands when the puppies are with you. Yes. Yes. And I always hate the puppy. And so I feel very weird because I say the puppy. I don’t ever talk in a normal human voice when I talk about my dog.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh, but is your dog a puppy?
Megan Moslander: She’s a year. Oh, OK,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So she’s still a puppy puppy? Yes. Yes. Ok, so like when you say social justice, that truly is. That’s the image that I get when I think about legal aid of Nebraska. So tell us about the services that legal aid of Nebraska covers for people.
Megan Moslander: So when I came to legal aid, I thought I knew about legal aid because one of my friends is an attorney there and has been for several years. I was so surprised at the amount of work that we do. So legal aid of Nebraska is over fifty seven years old. You know, we were created on the premise of ensuring fairness in the justice system. So we provide civil legal services to our most vulnerable Nebraskans, people that are low income and really struggling. What I like to tell people when they say, well, what is a typical typical client they are are hardworking people that have kept us going, especially through the last, you know, two years that are working those low wages.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: What happened in the last two years?
Megan Moslander: Nothing, just nothing. We have as we have masks here on the table. Yeah. But you know, they really kept us going. So they’re working those jobs that a simple tire blowing can mess up everything. And that’s when they need to call legal aid. So you can call legal aid for several different reasons. And when I say low income, you know, we really look at a poverty people that live about one hundred and twenty five percent at or below the poverty line. However, that being said, when people call, just call us right, because there’s ways that we look at your income and assets and really try to help you with that. And when I say civil legal services, so most people can have an attorney for a criminal trial, you don’t have access to that right and no offense everyone in this room. But attorneys can be expensive. Very. And we know that justice gap is huge. So people can turn to us for our four main priorities are housing, children and families, income and benefits and debt and finance. That means anything from housing. We know that’s been huge evictions to struggling with a public assistance benefits like snap unemployment. You have a garnishment happening, custody, divorce protection orders. Last year, legal aid served over twelve thousand Nebraskans.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Wow, that’s great. Yeah, that’s amazing.
Megan Moslander: And we receive anywhere between twelve hundred and fourteen hundred requests for assistance a month.
Deanna Piña: There’s legal aid branches all over the state, right, I know there’s one in Scotts Bluff.
Megan Moslander: We are in seven cities. Bancroft is not. That’s more of our farm and ranch. So we have Scotts bluff. We have North Platte. We have Lincoln, we have Omaha, we have Norfolk. And why can’t I remember the last one?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: You’re looking at me like, I know, I don’t even know where Bancroft is.
Megan Moslander: So, oh, wow, OK, I fail it
Deanna Piña: On the way. It’s on the website, y’all. Check out the website.
Megan Moslander: Yeah, right? Normally I have it all down, right?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Normally, yeah. Hey, you got six out of the seven niland.
Megan Moslander: Oh my gosh, I know I was supposed to go to Grand Island today and I’m
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Here instead of going to Grand Canyon.
Megan Moslander: Oh, come later.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re like, No,
Megan Moslander: Go talk about us later. I just like, I’ll bring treats when I come later.
Deanna Piña: That’s great. So yeah, no, no. So there’s the different priority areas. So what are other programs that legally does in order to, you know, support those four priority areas?
Megan Moslander: That is one thing. Like I said, I was completely blown away by the amount of work that we do. So we have our main priority areas and then we have a lot of projects and programs that feed in to those areas, eg worker rights. Huge, important, hugely important. We’ve been super active with that, especially through the pandemic, with outreach making sure people have no one, they can get their vaccines. I’m really proud of that team. They worked incredibly hard. That’s also about making sure you’re getting wages right and, you know, employment discrimination safe.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Working placement. Yeah.
Megan Moslander: So we did, especially in the summer when it’s so hot and we know that our agricultural workers. Are so important to our state, all of our employees are, but we really and the team is bilingual, so they go out to a lot of events. They brought in educational events with doctors that are bilingual. We really pushed the information throughout COVID. So small but mighty team, but great. And then we have a medical legal partnership with hospitals in the area. Lincoln Omaha a couple out St. also Charles Drew.
Deanna Piña: So what does the medical legal partnership do? I remember when I was an intern they helped with like getting wills and powers of attorney is, is there more or guardianships?
Megan Moslander: I can tell one personal story. I had a friend whose son was injured in a fire. He was 20. He was incapacitated, incapacitated. She called unbeknownst to me, and they did. We did the guardianship. And that was hugely important for that mom who had to immediately try to get everything settled for her son in the hospital. And we also just started a program at the VA. Oh, so that has been fantastic. The one thing about that program is, you know, a guy can provide a have a contract with this VA cannot give us that money. So we’ve had to privately raise that money and that’s where I come in. It’s a great program and we also have a domestic violence program called Reach that is outstate. When I say outstate, don’t be offended anyone, it’s how we have to phrase it. But outside of Lincoln and Omaha type area, so everywhere, from Beatrice to Scotts Bluff, you know, all around,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Here’s my experience with outstate. So I’m from Omaha. Prior to going to college, I didn’t know anything other than Omaha Lincoln. So then I went to Doanh College in Crete, Nebraska, and everyone that went to Don College didn’t go to Omaha or Lincoln. So I started to learn about Burwell and Grand Island, and literally, like I didn’t even know Grand Island existed. So I think that was my like experience of opening the world to outstate. Sure. So I get I get it. Yeah, I
Megan Moslander: Was fortunate because my brother lives in alliance. He’s a rancher, and so I spent time driving back and forth. I spent a summer out there. That was an eye opening experience. Yes. And my parents really always just said, let’s learn about it. So I spent summer at Fort Robinson.
Deanna Piña: Cool. Have you seen car henge? That’s on my bucket list?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Oh yeah, we grew up going to car hench like on the summer vacation,
Megan Moslander: And I’m from Beatrice. So, yeah, yeah, right? Which is a great first lady orange right here, an orange with legs and arms.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Is that the
Megan Moslander: Masai? That’s what the female mosquito like the fruit? Yes. But then the boys is William of Orange. We won’t talk about the history of William of Orange because it’s not.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I feel like there’s a thing there that is not appropriate.
Megan Moslander: I have a very interesting family because my brother is a police officer and I’m into social justice. My other brother is, I would say, opposite politically. And then my sister is the most amazing lesbian I know.
Deanna Piña: Awesome.
Megan Moslander: So I, my parents were phenomenal.
Deanna Piña: Like, I think it’s like a common thread. So like, I’m from central Texas and my family is very conservative, but we all just make a significant effort to just try to meet each other where we’re at. I mean, we’re from the Fort Hood area. So even though I’m have my own political views, I love the military and I love veterans and things like that. So it’s just there are different, you know, the divides are not as big as we think that they are. They can really be bridged.
Megan Moslander: Yeah. And my parents are the reason why I do this work well.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And there’s so much good conversation, though, around this work. And, you know, as long as people can just sit down and like respect and listen and learn, it’s right, it can be a very eye-opening thing to talk about things that you don’t you don’t even know about, right?
Megan Moslander: Especially one of the things that I talk about as someone in fundraising is when we can help if you provide money to legal aid and our return on investment is really huge because we hear time and time again from a client. When we help them solve their legal barriers, they can get a better job. Yeah, they can have better housing.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: There’s the slow process,
Megan Moslander: Their self-sufficiency and I was looking. One of the areas we need is additional money around family law because we need more family law attorneys. And unfortunately, when a victim of domestic violence, you know, continues to have to go to the hospital or because they don’t have an attorney, that they can turn to the cost to states and cities is large per year. So help us, we can do if you fund. So for a woman, the average is right around one hundred and ten thousand dollars. That’s some of the research I pulled. That’s what we need to find one attorney,
Tracy Hightower-Henne: So that’s like the economic statuses, yeah, and justice impact is huge. The things that people don’t think about like and I think the other thing that I want to go back and point out to because not all, all of our listeners understand the difference between criminal and civil, right? Right. So like as a criminal defendant, so that means you’ve been charged with a crime, you’re entitled to a public defender. Right? Or you can hire your own attorney or you could do that process meaning on your own if you want to. But on the civil side, you have no constitutional right to an attorney. But there’s all these effects that can happen, you know, in your civil case, like you can have garnishments, you can be evicted, you can have your children taken away. Yes, yes. And it’s like so much bigger.
Deanna Piña: Well, we get calls all the time from people who try to do their divorce on their own. And then we’re looking at the paperwork and it’s like, you know, I’m trying to help someone right now who she thought that she was awarded the house. And the documentation does not say that in any. And so she’s been paying this house for 12 years that she doesn’t own, and now she’s trying to sell it and she can’t because of, you know, these like technicalities and all this stuff. And it’s like, you know, you attorneys are so necessary for so many different parts of life that,
Megan Moslander: You know, but oftentimes so out of reach for a lot of people. No offense to any of them, right?
Deanna Piña: But which is why we referred to legal aid. Right.
Megan Moslander: And that’s why legal aid is so important. And I think there is a myth that we support, you know, you supporting legal aid, we’re helping people that are out of work and, you know, all those bad, terrible mess. But the majority of our clients work like they are hard working people that are often working one or two jobs. But it’s that one thing. Yes. Right. Right now you get COVID, you’re off work, then you can’t pay your rent. Maybe you’ve already used emergency rental assistance because you can only get it once. Like then what you know? And we had a speaker, Matthew Desmond, who wrote the book Evicted and he made such an incredible point. And he said, when we think about like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or basic needs, housing is at the bottom shelter. You know, that’s the most important. Like, you need safe shelter. Like if you don’t have that, your kids have to leave their school, you lose even their favorite toy. Maybe we have to get rid of that because you have to move quickly. Like, there’s so many things that that is impactful. So we really need to look at how we can help people in these areas, and that’s why legal aid is so important.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Ok, so on the housing note, because tell us about the Tenant Housing Assistance program that legal aid is partnering on, right and how that has become so important during COVID.
Megan Moslander: So the Tenant Assistance Project was started by Professor Ryan Sullivan. Shout out to him, he’s amazing. He’s with the UNL Law College. And that’s where I went. Yeah, the volunteer lawyers project out of Nebraska State Bar Association. Legal Aid is a partner of that, and it was started in Lancaster County. And really, it is helping people around not getting evicted. Eviction was a crisis pre-pandemic. Yes, but it’s blowing up, and now there’s not a moratorium. And even during the moratorium, we had people trying to slip through. It’s still happening. Yes, and now without that, yes, there is emergency rental assistance. But so I went to observe eviction court and there was a woman who’d already ran through emergency rental assistance. So what do you do now?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Right? And so eviction, the issue of eviction and housing in general and being able to pay your rent has become such a big, more important thing during COVID because people lost their jobs, taking time off during or if they have COVID and not getting that regular paycheck. And if that is the paycheck that they need to pay their rent, then the landlords are saying, Well, you, you can’t pay your rent. So at some point we had a moratorium and there was all these exceptions that it was, I think, a thing to be able to get through the hoops to get the eviction still. So then what a
Megan Moslander: Lot of those I’m very proud of, our staff had
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Great. So when we say eviction court, you know, it’s it’s kind of a day that all the evictions are set on, right? And so how does the Tenant Assistance project help on that day in court?
Megan Moslander: You go someone who has an eviction now it’s best. It is one hundred and ten percent best if someone calls legal aid of Nebraska and you can find the number on our line, all of that are on on the website. But if you call, then we can kind of maybe negotiate with the landlord first. Otherwise, you come and there’s an attorney there to assist you in the courtroom. Yes, you have volunteers from that have been coordinated through volunteer lawyers project or known as VLP, and they really try to walk you through that process and. Hopefully get you to be able to stay in your home, sometimes a win is you get another week or another month to move out
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And then also avoiding an eviction on your record too. So if if the attorney can negotiate with the landlord either before the court hearing or during the court hearing and maybe, hey, I need four more days, I will get out. I have a place. I’m going to move into that and then maybe the landlord agrees, OK, I’m not going to continue with the eviction because that can be a huge damper on future housing, right? No one
Deanna Piña: Will
Megan Moslander: Rent to you. Yeah, right. I also found out during this that there is a database that a landlord can look in and find your name. They could look up Megan Mars lander to see if I have an eviction. Yes. And also, those evictions don’t fall off. It’s not like a bankruptcy that eventually falls off your record. They stay. So when you get that letter, don’t just ignore it. Call us. Come to the courthouse. The VLP folks always have red suit jackets on if you’re in Douglas County or Lancaster County, but
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I didn’t know that. Yeah, yeah, because I think joy has been going to court.
Deanna Piña: So, Joey, from our office?
Megan Moslander: Yeah, and very frequently, it’s disheartening. It’s sad. But then when we have, you know, some wins when we’re there like, Oh my goodness, like, yeah, it’s so amazing. And the thing that people need to know is eviction. Court never stopped the criminal proceedings. Some criminal proceedings stopped during the pandemic. That’s right. Our attorneys, despite, you know, the pandemic, especially in the big throes of when there was no vaccine, they were still going to court. And so I really that’s one thing I tell people is the staff of legal aid are incredibly inspiring fighters, passionate and intelligent people, but also really fun.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like you, that’s why you’re here. Yeah.
Deanna Piña: So there’s the Housing Justice Project. What are some other programs that you think it’s important that the public know about?
Megan Moslander: We have a Native American program. Does that very a crew of incredible attorneys and outreach coordinator named Kirby. They are represent people on every reservation here in Nebraska. Wonderfully smart about tribal law. They also work with, like at the Ponca House, the new beautiful Ponca Health Center in Lincoln. Just brilliant people and people don’t realize that right, like tribal law and regular law is a little different, right?
Tracy Hightower-Henne: What are the unique circumstances that the attorneys in that program help with Native Americans?
Megan Moslander: You’re asking a non attorney for that question.
Deanna Piña: But but like completely different systems and there’s different, you know, even the law itself is different. I remember when I was an intern at Legal Aid, someone came in who had a notice from a tribal court and we couldn’t even explain what it was because we were so nervous about interpreting it incorrectly, even though it seemed on the surface simple. It was like, We don’t know, you know, how this court works. It’s like if you wanted to go do law in Spain and you don’t know how the pleading works and what, what a judge is called and what court is. It’s and it’s a totally different system.
Megan Moslander: I also believe you have to like, you know, how you I don’t know the proper wording because I’m not an attorney, but when you you are licensed to practice in Nebraska, I believe you have to do
Tracy Hightower-Henne: A pro hoc feature, right?
Megan Moslander: Yeah, because there’s like a tribal court in Winnebago, there’s a tribal court in Santee. The reason why I know that is because my good friend is actually a tribal officer in Santee. And so I learned about the Santee Court.
Deanna Piña: So you had
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Two different nations in different,
Deanna Piña: Different. Oh my God. Yeah. So yeah, it’s very I mean, they’re sovereigns, you know, it’s as if to be a different country.
Megan Moslander: So and some of our attorneys that live here, I know, are the judges for Winnipeg. But so they’re a great group, but also our outreach coordinator. There does a lot around domestic violence, so that’s been really fascinating for me to learn a lot about. We also in Lancaster County, we have a juvenile justice contract. So that’s, you know, a lot around juvenile justice. That’s some hard work. Yes, we have a community luring project in Lincoln called the Uplift, which is phenomenal. So we actually work within centers El Centro, Good Neighbor and the Asian Center. Our attorney goes there and provides lowering services there with the help of an advocate. Most of our clients do not speak English. And so we have an advocate that translates. That’s been three years thanks to the Woods Foundation, and Lincoln funded that as a breakthrough. So really great. Exciting. We do some stuff around disaster relief around the floods. Somebody came running up to me the other day and was like, You work to help me, help me so much during the floods. And I was like, That was before my time, OK? But sure. And I also wasn’t like ready to hug, like because I’m like, Are we hugging? Are we? They were like this, and I was like. Is that a hug, you know, I’m waving my arms around. Sometimes I forget I’m on a microphone, but that is one thing that is really cool about my job is when I do meet people that we have helped. Yeah, it’s so impactful for them. And as someone who does the fundraising, I will take anybody like majority of people’s money. I will take right because there is a huge need. But when we get that five or 10 dollar donation from a former client that says, thank you, that’s awesome. That was one of the first donations. I got illegal aid and they were just like, Thank you for helping me.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And yeah, that’s where.
Megan Moslander: For those of you that are already donors, thank you. But like our holiday appeal was about someone that came to one of our clean slate clinics, which I know you’re going to quickly talk about, but that now she works out legally.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah, that’s great. Well, yeah, tell us about it. Yeah. So clean slate, because that is such a huge access to justice issue.
Megan Moslander: Our Clean Slate clinics are held a couple of times a year, and we work with people who have criminal convictions. There are some guidelines around them around who we can help, but we will help set aside their criminal conviction. So you can’t have serve time in prison. It’s less than a year, and
Tracy Hightower-Henne: That’s by state law. Yeah, yeah.
Megan Moslander: But we don’t offer expungement, but these are set aside, so it’s the next best thing and they really help people for housing jobs, that kind of thing, because you have to have it signed off by a judge. Mm hmm. But we’re happy to do that or we’re going to have some clinics coming up. So follow our social media, check our website.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And not only because like when you can get a criminal conviction set aside off your record, obviously that has the same snowball effect. You can get a job that you may not be able to get with your criminal record and things like that. So that’s also extremely important for all of those basic needs to.
Deanna Piña: So that clean slate clinic. A lot of these legal aid clinics are things that private attorneys can volunteer with in on their own as well. Correct.
Megan Moslander: Yes, we need volunteer attorneys.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Ok, so on this, I really want to talk about the transfer on death deeds clinic DNA. And I went to Susan was there. That was so amazing. So transfer on death, disease and you can tell me if I’m wrong because I learned about it. There is when an individual owns a home and they may not have a whole estate plan or a will, but making sure that that home stays with who they want after they die. So it’s basically a way to say, OK, if I die, the house that is in my name is going to this person. Yeah, you like bypass the whole probate? Yeah. And yes, and it’s a really quick document.
Deanna Piña: Yeah, yeah, I loved it because the majority so it was held at the Habitat for Humanity and the Volunteers Project and Legal Aid, we’re all, you know, coordinating. And, you know, obviously I love immigrants more than anything in the world, and the majority of people that I helped were refugees from Sudan or from Myanmar, and it was just so great to see that they were actually getting to realize the American dream like they were able to own homes and they were able to keep that wealth in their family and create generational wealth, you know, opportunities that are hard to come by when you’re born here, you know, we were able to help them carry on their family legacy. And you know, it was just it was so, so, so great to be able to do that work.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: And it was so organized and like, it was so easy for someone. You know, my primary practice is divorce world and not even knowing what a transfer in death did. We had a form we were able to, you know, chat with the the client and and partnering with Habitat for Humanity because the clients coming in were like, you know, we got this home through Habitat for Humanity. And like, it’s so great to know that it’s going to stay with me and with my family.
Megan Moslander: They announced that day that we kept six million dollars worth of wealth in North Omaha.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: That’s amazing.
Megan Moslander: And it was around 40 clients and everybody volunteered like total three hours, but you had to leave a little bit early. And I think that’s what’s really important for people that are interested in volunteering is you do not have to know you don’t have to do how no housing law, you don’t have to know the type of law that we’re doing because we provide that training. And it’s not like hours and hours and hours of training. No, I mean, you honestly could say, I’m going to volunteer for one clinic a month. It’s maybe total with training that day, like four hours and maybe maybe once a year like, we’re not holding you to anything. Yes, we just need volunteers. The need is so great and we can’t do our work without volunteers, and these clinics are so impactful. We do a name change clinic, so people that are transitioning, but not just people that are transitioning. Maybe you were a refugee or immigrant and your birth certificate doesn’t match this and that. And so we fix it, right? Like, we work with that or you’re a domestic violence victim and you want something change safety reasons. Yeah. So we do all of those things, and they’re one offs. And but then we also have our API work, which so we if you want to come to legally and do take some cases for a reduced rate, it’s 90 dollars an hour. We need we’ll a lot of the stuff is family law.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: What’s I mean?
Megan Moslander: Private attorney involvement? Yes.
Deanna Piña: This is a quiz show. Yeah.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Four Meghan was
Megan Moslander: Really great, so you don’t want to volunteer your time. You need some the money for it. We’re happy to do that. Yes, please call us. So we actually you can email pro bono at Legal Aid of Nebraska Dawg. You can. I’m on the website, not my smiling face, but you can always email me directly. But we’re happy to have more volunteers and also tell people about legal aid, right? Yes.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: I think the one thing that we have really appreciated with our work with legal aid is that any time any of our attorneys are going to come to the clinics, you all make it so easy for us, you know, like the Rural Divorce Clinic. We are coming on to a zoom right now with a client and helping them walk through the forms that you provide in these forms for us or like things that we can do in our sleep. And you know, it’s so easy for us, but for the person on the computer screen, this is like life-changing. Important thing for them. Yeah. So I think that’s what I’m grateful for is that legal aid makes it so easy for attorneys to volunteer.
Deanna Piña: So and there’s always someone like on site who so at the transplant clinic, I had questions about like there were names that were wrong and I was like, I’m not necessarily a contract lawyer. Like, I’m not sure if this is going to like, void this entire deed. And there were attorneys there that I could talk to and, you know, fix the problem. And that was such a relief to know that like, if I have a question, there’s someone here that’s going to answer it so that this person can actually still get help.
Megan Moslander: And I think we’ve had both of you learn stuff in those clinics, but we’ve also had new attorneys that are like, Wow, I can take this back to my practice or yes, so and think an hour or three hours once a year, even if you choose not to do it monthly, can be so impactful on someone else and hugely impactful to legal aid as well.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Yeah. So on that note, you know, as we kind of wrap up and one of the things I want to mention is there will be a link to all of this information in our show notes. So check that out as you’re listening to this podcast. But you talk about money, you are the director of development, so tell us what you need like, where to donate and who can donate, and what’s the most important thing for legal aid?
Megan Moslander: On the top of our website, there is a donate button so they can click that and make a donation. Can always send a check to our office, our Omaha office. Really, if you want to donate five dollars, if you want to donate five million, I mean, every dollar matters
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Shoot for the five million.
Megan Moslander: That’s so great. We have a huge need. I would say we get most of our calls around family law, so there’s always a huge need for family law support, and that could be someone even doing the P.I. work because we do some of the we have to place out some cases that we can’t deal with, but we’d love to be able to hire our another family law attorney for both the Omaha and Lincoln Office, which you know, is not cheap. Yeah, so we’d love that. But really, every single dollar counts. Also, we are happy to come in if you have a law firm that wants to know more about legal aid because we have so many programs and programs, we didn’t even cover everything today. Yes. And we do lunch and learns we love that.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: That’s what so we’re going to do a lunch and learn to just so we want to do this. Yeah. So our office will know to like, Oh, OK, someone comes in with a question or an issue that we can’t help with, but we know, oh, that’s right, you know, Meghan told us that legally does that. And so I think also being a partner with legal aid as private attorneys, knowing, you know, when is the best time and way to refer you clients to is super helpful for us because we hate when someone calls them, we’re like, Oh, we can’t help you. I’m sorry, we want to say, but we’re going to send you here, right? We want to be helpful.
Megan Moslander: So and we have a huge staff. But the need is I keep saying the need is so great because I hate saying no to people are poor people on the intake line. You know, when you call for help that have to say No, that stinks. No one wants to have to do that. But we can’t help more people without more people helping us. I mean, it’s and I can assure you, we’re good stewards of your money. And the return on investment is huge, not just impactful, but life changing. I mean, it really does change someone’s life. Yes.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Well, thank you so much for coming today. This was amazing. So next time, next time, bring your dog. I will.
Megan Moslander: Ok, little Yuri.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: But thank you. This was super educational even more. Yeah, so I I really appreciate you taking your time and I always talk
Deanna Piña: With and promoting legally.
Tracy Hightower-Henne: Ok, bye.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to the lady Lawyer League Podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts, if you would like to learn more about our firm, Hightower-Reff Law, please visit us at H r Law Omaha.com. We’ll see you next week.
