SENIOR CITIZENS, especially those with little income and savings, can be a vulnerable population. A 77-year-old widow living alone on a fixed income is an easy target for a telemarketing scam that robs her of her meager savings. Health care costs could become exorbitant for an elderly couple unaware of the Medicare and Medicaid benefits available to them. Tenants owing back rent can take advantage of their 81-year-old landlord's kindness-and forgetfulness-by saying, "We'll have the rent soon, we promise," month after month.

When low-income senior citizens find themselves in need of legal advice, the SCLP Advice Line is there to answer the call. The advice line is an initiative of the Senior Citizens Law Project (SCLP) of New Hampshire Legal Assistance (NHLA). Since its inception two years ago, the advice line has served over 3,000 NH citizens.

The SCLP Advice Line provides legal advice, brief services and referrals on a wide range of civil legal matters to NH residents at least 60 years old. Although NHLA provides civil legal services only to low-income clients, there are no financial eligibility guidelines for the SCLP or its Advice Line program. Advice Line attorneys find that the state's low-income seniors are often the most in need of legal assistance, however. "People who have lot of money don't usually call legal services organizations for help," said Velma McClure, Advice Line's managing attorney.

According to McClure, legal services for NH seniors are very limited-in fact, the SCLP and its Advice Line are the only free programs in the state aimed specifically at addressing the legal needs of senior citizens. Other organizations often point their older clients to the advice line as a first stop in finding legal advice or representation. "We send everything to Velma," said Connie Boyles Lane, the executive director of Legal Advice & Referral Center.

The SCLP Advice Line is staffed by non-attorney intake coordinators, managing attorney McClure and staff attorney Cheryl Driscoll. Weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., the two attorneys take calls from seniors on a wide variety of legal issues. If either is not available to answer a call, the intake coordinator schedules an appointment for a callback. During its hours of operation, Advice Line's clients deal with a live person rather than an automated system.

McClure and Driscoll offer a range of services to seniors, from legal counseling and advice to lawyer referrals for those in need of an attorney. They sometimes write letters and make phone calls on behalf of clients, review documents and conduct research as part of those services. They have the benefit of NHLA's 21 attorneys statewide to help in the search for an answer to a client's legal questions. "Within NHLA, they have access to real experts in a variety of areas, including housing and benefits," said Ann Butenhof, the directing attorney of the Senior Citizens Law Project.

When it comes to matters outside NHLA's usual practice areas, the SCLP and Advice Line are soliciting attorneys across the state for expert advice on and analysis of particular legal issues. Volunteer attorneys make themselves available for pro bono assistance to Advice Line attorneys over the telephone a few times a month. According to McClure, it's one way that attorneys who can't commit to taking full cases with the Bar's Pro Bono Program can participate indirectly in Pro Bono. Virginia Martin, the Bar's associate executive director for Legal Services, stressed, however, that there is still a great need for attorneys to take on regular Pro Bono cases, especially since Advice Line has increased the number of low-income senior citizen clients being served by Pro Bono.

The most common issues Advice Line's attorneys deal with involve health care, Medicaid and Medicare, consumer/debt, housing and estate planning. Health care matters are perhaps the most prevalent, according to Butenhof. Low-income seniors seek advice on what to do when the cost of prescriptions, hospital visits or nursing home care for a spouse results in dire straits financially, despite insurance coverage. That's when Advice Line attorneys offer information on Medicaid rules for nursing home care, state and Medicaid benefits and other rights seniors have when it comes to medical coverage.

Low-income seniors also present a variety of housing issues, said McClure. Some examples she has seen recently: An elderly woman is being evicted from her apartment for having a dog, but the dog has lived in the apartment with her for the last seven years. Another senior living on a fixed income is being subject to a $55-a-week rent increase. And a woman in her 70s allowed relatives to put two mobile homes on her land, but those relatives are not paying her the rent they agreed to. "That's very typical-an elderly landlord with a tenant taking advantage of her somehow," said McClure.

Driscoll also pointed to credit issues and debt collection as major problems for low-income seniors. Many elderly people living on fixed incomes use credit cards to pay for expensive prescriptions, for example, and end up with huge credit card debt and creditors after them. "When they find themselves in situations like that, they don't know what to do," said Driscoll. According to Martin, Pro Bono attorneys are often called on to assist needier seniors being harassed by creditors.

And there are seniors who find themselves the target of individuals who prey on their vulnerability. "Almost all senior citizens have some form of income and savings. Those who are lonely and vulnerable are easy targets for relatives with financial difficulties and consumer scams," said Butenhof.

Butenhof said that because attorneys staff the Advice Line, they are able to determine if clients' needs warrant advice and counsel over the phone or full legal representation. Advice Line staff conducts a financial screening and those clients who need a lawyer are referred to the Bar's Pro Bono or Reduced Fee program or Lawyer Referral Service, to the general SCLP program and an NHLA attorney or to a private attorney. Clients are also sometimes referred to Franklin Pierce Law Center clinics.

McClure said that the SCLP Advice Line is an excellent entryway for seniors to access whatever legal services they need. "The advice line is a good starting place for people. We steer them in the right direction, to the service that can accommodate their needs, and if for some reason they hit a dead end, they can come back to us," said McClure.

Butenhof added that the Advice Line is also a broader avenue into NHLA's Senior Citizens Law Project. The requirements for actual representation by an SCLP attorney are more "narrow," said Butenhof, but the advice line allows low-income seniors to get help without meeting the requirements for full legal representation.

The SCLP has been in existence for about 20 years, according to Butenhof. She has been its director for four years; John Tobin, NHLA's current executive director, served as SCLP director before her for 11 years.

The project was created to meet the need for a statewide legal services program for seniors. In order for NH to get federal funding through the Older Americans Act, the state is required to provide some form of legal services to senior citizens throughout the state. According to Butenhof, many states contract through a legal services organization to meet that need, as was done with NHLA in creating the SCLP.

There are about nine staff members in NHLA's offices across the state dedicated to the SCLP, although any NHLA staff attorney might take an SCLP case through his or her role within the organization. Like the Advice Line, cases taken through the SCLP involve a wide variety of issues, from housing and income maintenance to healthcare, nursing home and consumer-related matters.

In addition to providing civil legal representation for seniors, the SCLP is also involved in policy work and education. Tobin has been instrumental in getting key legislation passed involving senior issues and has undertaken important educational initiatives, like the development of a regularly updated Medicaid pamphlet on which many rely.

In 1999, the SCLP won a major victory when staff attorneys negotiated a settlement of a class-action suit brought against the state Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to prevent the agency from filing liens on homes owned by the elderly spouses of Medicaid recipients. DesFosses v. Shumway provided reimbursements to spouses and widows affected by DHHS's collection policies dating back to June 1, 1992. It was the first known broad-based settlement of such claims.

Although the Advice Line has "greatly expanded our ability to provide counsel and advice, information and referral to seniors," McClure said, the SCLP can not address all the legal needs of senior citizens. There are still a number of stumbling blocks to finding legal assistance for elderly, low-income clients, the biggest being a lack of affordable advocates. Although the Advice Line has increased the number of senior clients being referred to the Pro Bono or Reduced Fee programs for help, many clients do not qualify because of income and savings. They find themselves caught in the middle, with too much money to qualify for Reduced-Fee or Pro Bono, but unable to afford a full-fee attorney. "A lot of these clients are on fixed, tiny incomes and have managed some savings, but we don't want them to use up that money to take care of an injustice," said Butenhof.

If the SCLP had additional funding, it would likely go toward more advocates and education, said Butenhof. By educating lawyers and the public about the legal needs of low-income seniors and how they can be met, many of these clients' more intensive legal problems could be avoided, she said. For example, more attorneys could offer fixed-fee services to meet these clients' basic legal needs, such as simple wills and durable powers of attorney, which the Advice Line attorneys get a lot of calls about.

According to the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, "the US will experience the most rapid increase in its older adult population in the next 10 years as the baby boom generation approaches 65." As the population grows, the need to advocate for low-income seniors will certainly not fade. "People's consciousness needs to be raised that for these clients, there is a component of dignity and peace of mind. The bottom line is we need people who can provide them with appropriate legal representation," said McClure.

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