Medical-Legal Partnerships: Attorneys and Healthcare Providers Working Together to Help Veterans and Other Patients

Rose Carmen Goldberg is a Skadden Fellow at Swords to Plowshares. She is the legal director of a Medical-Legal Partnership with the Oakland Vet Center, a partnership that integrates legal services and mental health treatment for veterans. Her background includes health policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and legislative assistance at the Senate Judiciary Committee.

KRISTA M. SELNAU is a staff attorney with Pine Tree Legal Assistance and co-chair of the Veterans’ Law Section of the Maine State Bar Association. She is licensed in Arkansas.

Mr. Scudder graduated from the Franklin Pierce Law School in 1983, was in private practice for a short time and then became director of the New Hampshire Pro Bono Program.

For 10 years he led that program and the Bar’s other lawyer referral and public service initiatives. Mr. Scudder had been doing consulting for the ABA Center for Pro Bono since 1986 and in 1994 was hired as the Center’s director. In 1996 he became Counsel to the ABA’s Pro Bono Committee. During the past 16 years he has led many successful national pro bono initiatives, has spoken and written extensively about pro bono, and has provided extensive consultation to programs across the country. Mr. Scudder is a recipient of the New Hampshire Bar Association’s L. Jonathan Ross Award for Outstanding Commitment to Legal Services (2011) and the National Association of Pro Bono’s William Reece Smith Jr. Special Services to Pro Bono Award (2008[s1] ).