Legal Aid's Paradigm Shift

Gregg Lombardi - Executive Director

I’m pleased to report that Legal Aid of Western Missouri is now officially on You Tube.

Katie Wood is putting together a series of videos explaining our clients’ basic legal rights. The first of these to be available on-line features Legal Aid attorney Lynn Fullenkamp explaining the spenddown system for people who are on Medicaid. Spenddown is similar to a deductible for people who receive Medicaid benefits, but with a few complicated and confusing differences—such as the fact that if a Medicaid recipient does not provide proof that they have met their spenddown requirements in a given month, then Medicaid will not pay for any of their medical expenses for that month.

Lynn does a great job of describing how the system works in four minutes. You can see her presentation here. And, there’ll be plenty more of these videos to come. Thanks to Katie Wood for producing these and to Testimonial Video for filming and editing the videos and to Latricia Scott Adams for soliciting the donation of Testimonial Video’s services.

This is just one of several major technological advances that Legal Aid is working on these days. James Smith, our Tech Director (and Litigation Director), is planning several other major advances that we hope to have in place in the coming months. One of the biggest of these will be the new Legal Aid website, which will have a bunch of great features. Kelley Carpenter, our Development Director, and Karen Cutliff, our Marketing Coordinator, will be working with Legal Aid’s staff to develop the content for the website.