New Orleans may be a popular spring break location, but this year, visitors’ activities will be unique.
A group of Georgetown Law Center students will travel to the Big Easy next week to provide legal support and clean-up aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
“This is the biggest natural disaster to hit us in who knows how long, and a lot of people need legal help,” Yvette Liebesman (COL ‘86, L ‘06), one of the students coordinating the trip, said.
The group of 25 is just one of many student groups nationwide that will spend its spring break in New Orleans. The law students, however, will be volunteering their legal expertise with the Pro Bono Project of New Orleans, Liebesman said.
Many Louisiana residents need assistance to clear up legal issues before they can receive FEMA benefits. Put simply, residents are ineligible to receive the government checks until they can prove owership of their homes, which require legal assistance.
“We’ll help clear titled property to help people get their Federal Emergency Management Association checks,” Liebesman said.
Much of the work, however, involves issues surrounding probate, the process of settling the estate of a deceased person, known in Louisiana as succession.
“You have people who have lived in the same family house for generations and may not have probated when previous generations died,” Rubinstein said. “Now they can’t collect their relief money because the title to the property is not in their name.”
The group will focus on this aspect of law in part because it’s within the abilities of a first-year law student, Benjamin Rubinstein (L’08), who is helping to organize the trip, said.
“We’ve also been in contact with a local judge who handles Social Security to help people get those benefits,” she said.
Plans for the spring break trip have been in the works since December, when first-year law students Rubinstein and Andrew Doss (L’08) spent a week helping clean up ruined homes and neighborhoods in New Orleans with a smaller group of Georgetown Law students.
“It was a last-minute trip to work with Habitat for Humanity over break,” Rubinstein said. “Andrew, who’s from the area, had been pushing for a bigger spring break trip.”
A few students will also be helping to clean up homes with the Association of Community Organizations to Reform Now, Rubinstein said. In addition to these projects, students may have an opportunity to work with the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, a non-profit organization founded by Jesse Jackson.
“Right now we’re in the confirmation stage of everything, and because of Mardi Gras it’s been a bit of a logistical problem,” he said.
The group has been coordinating its trip with other universities and the Student Hurricane Network, but most costs will be paid out-of-pocket.
“We got about $5000 from the Georgetown Law Student Bar Association, but that will barely cover our airfare to New Orleans,” Liebesman said.
The official death toll from Katrina is over 1,300, with hundreds more missing. The more affluent have returned to the city because they can afford to have legal issues resolved; those with little legal recourse are unable to come back because they cannot claim their homes, Rubinstein said.
“Even the people who got off easily still lived in a tent for a month. I hope the work we’re doing will help motivate people to come back,” Rubinstein said.
