CONNIE BOYLES LANE, executive director of the Legal Advice & Referral Center since its inception in late 1995, has left the legal services agency to spend more time with her family and to act as a consultant to similar agencies elsewhere in the country. Lane's last day at LARC was May 31.

(Marilyn B. McNamara, an Amherst attorney and chair of the Bar's Pro Bono Governing Board, recently was named to replace Lane. See more on McNamara's appointment in an upcoming issue of Bar News.)

Lane, who speaks with a gentle Georgia lilt, is bemused by the twisting turns her career has taken since she came to New Hampshire in 1986 and began working, primarily on business and real estate matters, for the McLane law firm in Manchester. Through the years and the transitions she has learned the importance of embracing change-inevitable for legal services organizations struggling for funding and essential in a constantly changing legal services environment.

"If you told me 10 years ago that now I would be running a legal hotline, I would have said, 'You're crazy,'" said Lane, interviewed before her departure from LARC. "But each step I've taken has felt right, and now the path I'm on is leading me to consulting on legal services."

Steven Camerino, an attorney at McLane who has been president of LARC's board of directors since its creation in 1995, praises Lane as a risk-taker. In 1995, legal services advocates in New Hampshire were reeling from the implications of strict limits on activities by legal services agencies funded by LSC-limits that effectively excluded the Bar Association's Pro Bono program and NHLA from receiving federal funding. LARC was created to provide a level of services that wouldn't run afoul of LSC's bans on class-action, lobbying or certain kinds of benefits cases, but would help with the staggering load of everyday legal problems disadvantaged families encounter.

The solution-LARC, providing brief advice and eligibility screening for the other agencies, particularly Pro Bono-was an unproven strategy, but Lane jumped in to make it work. "We owe her a deep debt of gratitude," said Camerino. "Connie was working as the director of the Bar's Pro Bono program and took the LARC job at a time when it wasn't clear whether LARC would have a continued existence, or even if it would be approved for LSC funding. She helped implement a vision for legal services at a time of real crisis."

LARC's 14-member staff is the first point of contact for most low-income individuals seeking help with civil legal needs such as divorce, landlord-tenant or housing issues, or consumer problems. LARC, the only recipient in New Hampshire of direct funding from the federal Legal Services Corp., provides advice and counsel to hundreds of people each week, primarily over the telephone. The work of its advocates includes counseling clients who may represent themselves pro se and conducting screening and intake for referrals to volunteer attorneys through the Bar's Pro Bono Referral Program.

LARC's hotline and pro se assistance approach was unconventional when the organization began, but it was the only practical solution, Lane said. "The stark fact is that the amount of need so far outstrips the supply of attorneys available to represent the clients," Lane said.

The brief legal aid that LARC initially provides over the phone often develops into more extensive assistance. "We are providing much more in-depth service since we can't always provide a referral to a lawyer," Lane said.

LARC is constantly on the lookout for new ways of delivering its services to clients. It has developed a Web site, www.larcnh.org, which offers a variety of pamphlets and information, and is in the process of developing a CD-ROM (in collaboration with Franklin Pierce Law Center) that clients could use to seek modifications of child support orders.

At one point, LARC brought together state officials from DHHS's Child Support Services office, court officials, legal services advocates and private attorneys to form a "Child Support Roundtable" to work on common issues. Periodically, using volunteer attorneys and NH Legal Assistance field offices, LARC has sponsored "Fresh Start" clinics to explain bankruptcy options to low-income clients.

LARC and the other major legal services agencies in New Hampshire, NHLA and the Pro Bono program, were recently recognized by LSC for the extraordinary level of cooperation they have exhibited in maintaining an integrated legal services network while complying with the activity limitations imposed on LARC by LSC. For example, many of the same members sit on the boards of both LARC and NHLA, thereby increasing the chance for cooperation and avoiding duplication of services. Along with Pro Bono, the legal services providers have collaborated on statewide planning and needs assessments and technology acquisition (the programs use the same case-management software and telephone systems), and often participate in collaboratively planned trainings. The organizations have always coordinated fundraising efforts when applying to funders such as the United Way and the New Hampshire Bar Foundation, and this year the groups have joined forces to conduct a common fundraising campaign, the Community Campaign for Legal Services (see page 3).

Lane said that the size of the state, and the closeness of the legal community, have facilitated the success of the state's coordinated legal services approach. "LARC, the Bar Foundation, NHLA, Pro Bono-we have all been supportive of each other. It's been like a family. Sometimes we squabble among ourselves, but when we've faced challenges, we have closed ranks and worked together. That's part of being in a small state-no one is anonymous in New Hampshire, and we have always been able to make things happen quickly," she said.

In legal services, the needs are enormous and the satisfactions for LARC's advocates are elusive. "These jobs are not plums. You are hearing people's crises all day. What's difficult is that we don't know what happens to most of the callers. We are constantly searching for ways to get feedback on the work that we do," Lane said.

Lane takes pride in the kind of organization LARC has developed into. "We have seen an enormous amount of change here at LARC in five-and-a-half years," Lane said, sitting next to her battered wooden desk in the no-frills office suite LARC occupies in Concord. "But we have a small organization with an extremely flexible group of people. We have always been willing to try to do things differently, to find a better way."

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