Tara Veazey

2003

Tara Veazey

Eastern Montana Self-Help Law Project

http://www.montanalawhelp.org

Helena, Montana, United States

Civil and Human Rights, Legal Advocacy

The Bold Idea:

Enabling residents of Eastern Montana to defend their rights by providing them with technology, legal aid, and volunteers.

The large size of eastern Montana, combined with its high poverty rate and low population density, has made delivery of legal services to the area increasingly difficult. As a result, low-income residents of the region are denied virtually any meaningful access to the civil justice system. MontanaLawHelp.org is a project of the Montana Legal Services Association. It is funded in part by the national Legal Services Corporation. The Montana Legal Services Association, the State Bar of Montana and the Montana Supreme Court Equal Justice Task Force work together to find, create and organize the information on MontanaLawHelp.org. The project supports residents of Montana by combining technology with volunteer attorneys and paralegals and community volunteers to empower people with the legal education, advice and self-help materials they need to competently and confidently represent themselves in civil proceedings.

Biography:

Ms. Veazey studied law at Yale University, and in 2004 she was awarded a grant from the Initiative for Public Interest Law at Yale to develop the Eastern Montana Self-Help Law Project. She now works in Montana as the director of this project, which grew out of the Montana Legal Service Association (MLSA).