Law students aid veterans
Contributed by USC School of Law

Brian D. Robertson, director of the Veterans Consortium Pro bono Program in Washington, D.C., presents a $5,000 check to W. Lewis Burke, director of Clinical Legal Education at the South Carolina School of Law. The Consortium's donation was in recognition of the law school's efforts to provide much needed legal assistance to our country's military veterans.

The USC School of Law is helping U.S. veterans legal assistance. Through the efforts of Adjunct Professor Douglas Rosinski and Professor W. Lewis Burke, the Veterans' Rights Clinic was created to advocate on behalf of individual veterans and the veterans' community as a whole. The law school recognized the need to help the growing numbers of veterans suffering from injuries and disease caused by military service.

"There are 25,000,000 U.S. military veterans today," explained Professor Burke, "At any given time there are 700,000 initial claims for benefits and 350,000 demands being processed by the Department of Veterans affairs. Thousands of veterans from WWII still fight for benefits so with the new wave of Iraqi War vets, the system is flooded."

In the 2006 fall semester, ten third- year law students represented individual veterans under the supervision of Professor Rosinski. In the 2007 spring semester, five students will continue their efforts on behalf of veterans.

The Veterans Right's Clinic has a full caseload. The USC law students are actively engaged in representing their veteran clients. These pro bono cases provide students an opportunity to interview clients, investigate their cases, research and write legal briefs, and sometimes argue the cases before a federal appellate court. Because of the complexity of these cases, the clinical program will continue to provide assistance to veterans in the spring as well as next year.

The clinic received an anonymous $1250 donation in honor of deceased veteran Jesse G. Brasher, to fund a research assistant.

Professors Rosinski and Burke plan to continue representing veterans and write a Law Review article on the evolving rights of veterans.

Professor Rosinski is counsel with the Ogletree Deakins law firm in their Columbia, S.C. office. He is a cum laude graduate of USC. He was on the law review and was Order of the Coif. He is nationally recognized for his pro bono work on behalf of veterans.

Professor Burke has taught at USC for 28 years and is director of the Clinical Law Office at the School of Law.

In addition to the clinic, the law school hosted a Continuing Legal Education Seminar taught by the staff of The Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program. In exchange for the free C.L.E., the lawyers agreed to handle one veteran's case pro bono in the next year.