The most common types of cases the LRS gets are landlord-tenant, family law, people dealing with debt issues, deed and mortgage fraud and, increasingly, immigration issues.

“All attorneys are members of the bar association who have been screened by our committee and they have malpractice insurance, meeting the ABA- [American Bar Association] approved guidelines.”

Many bar associations across the city, state and country have their own version of the LRS, but Brooklyn’s is one of the biggest, serving more than just the borough, and has gained a reputation as one of the best.

Hiebert, its director for the past 10 years, and a U.S. Army veteran, is the only person to ever win ABA’s award for Most Outstanding Lawyer Referral Service with two different bar associations — the Kansas State Bar Association, for whom she used to work, and the Brooklyn Bar Association (BBA). She also now regularly travels around the country to train other bar associations.

“I go to other programs and review how they’re doing, and then make recommendations on how they can improve their services to make them viable and self-sustaining,” Hiebert said. “We look at whether they’re screening their attorneys, whether they requiring insurance, how they’re vetting their attorneys and how they’re advertising to get people to call in.”

Hiebert also runs a program — with the help of the NYC Bar Association and the NYS Bar Association — that is designed to help smaller lawyer referral service programs who can’t afford to attend the annual national conference for LRS by hosting a similar event every year in Albany.

Of course, Hiebert doesn’t answer those 20,000 phone calls by herself. She has the help of a four-person staff headed by Salaria Robinson, the LRS’s supervisory intake specialist. Robinson explained to the Brooklyn Eagle that answering the phones is almost like being a therapist sometimes.

“A lot of it is that people just don’t know what to do,” Robinson said. “They don’t even necessarily need a referral. They just want to be pointed in the right direction. Some people just want to know the steps or if they have a case at all. Learning to have patience with people in crisis is really big.”

Hiebert has taken Robinson on as a mentee, and the two often attend conferences together, or other events, including the recent Brooklyn Pride march. They work in partnership to help raise the profile of the LRS. Right now the focus is on growing the LRS’s web presence.

One of the ways they have planned to do this is by hosting a Facebook Live chat where attorneys answer questions through the social media platform. Its first live chat is slated for September with two immigration attorneys. If it is well received, Hiebert said that the group will begin hosting regular live chats via Facebook every two or three months on various subjects.

The LRS is also working on a way that it can make referrals online without any phone calls. Hiebert and Robinson explained that it’s an effort to reach those who might not know about their service.

“We’re constantly trying to find ways to focus on parts of the community that we haven’t been able to reach,” Hiebert said. “That’s why we hired two intake specialists who speak Spanish and another that speaks Creole. We’re trying to reach people through online advertising or by hosting events at senior centers.”

---

Related Articles

Brooklyn Bar Association adds a pair of new employees to staff

August 8 | By Rob Abruzzese, Legal Editor