Veterans' Clinic Director Appointed<br/>

Touro Law Center Associate Dean for Administration Kenneth Rosenblum has been appointed the director of the school’s newly revived Veterans’ & Servicemembers’ Rights Clinic, after spending a semester as interim director, revamping the curriculum and reaching out to the Long Island community to provide a wide range of legal services to veterans and their families. Rosenblum is a former US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer who served a tour in Vietnam, and is a Veterans Administration-accredited attorney.

 

Since being restarted, clinic students have been representing US military vet from the Korean War through the Afghanistan conflict, in matters including discharge review, obtaining and correcting military records, applying for veterans’ benefits, debt relief, traffic tickets and driver’s license renewals. Clinic students have negotiated debt reductions with creditors, prepared bankruptcy and child support modification petitions, and handled landlord tenant matters - in one case preventing a landlord from evicting a disabled vet because he started using a service dog.

 

In the first semester the nine clinic students, including two US Army vets, one Iraq, one Afghanistan, drafted a brochure for deploying servicemembers explaining their rights under federal law to cancel apartment and car leases, cap mortgage and credit card interest rates and delay court proceedings. Students also worked on vets advocacy, meeting with New York State Senator Lee Zeldin to seek legislation to require the State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to appoint a representative to assist vets and veterans’ service agencies cut through drivers’ license renewal red tape (frequent deployments and address changes often cause license suspension and renewalproblems), and to give judges in specialized Veterans’ Treatment Courts discretion to waive or modify mandatory surcharges for homeless or indigent vets. Students also provided legal assistance and referrals at a homeless vets “stand-down” at the Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC) in Northport, and the clinic began regular monthly legal assistance workshops at the VAMC.

 

In the current semester, the nine new clinic students are already hard at work helping vets in civil and criminal matters, including bankruptcy, income tax issues, family law matters, preparing wills and health care proxies and veterans benefits appeals.

The clinic gives priority to matters which will prevent or resolve veterans homelessness, or where military service has imposed special burdens on the veteran or his/her family.

 

For additional information about our clinical programs, please click here.