Law School Educational Intervention Benefits Individual Underserved Patients and Safety Net Primary Care Clinic

Abstract

Medical legal partnerships have been promoted as a method of increasing collaboration between the medical and legal professions. The Medical-Legal partnership between the Florida State University College of Law and the Neighborhood Medical Center allowed law students to provide our patients assistance with legal matters. We wanted to see what community, patient and clinic benefit our partnership could provide. We tracked law student referrals over a three-year period from 2010-2014, and then assessed the outcomes of those referrals. We then performed a cost benefit analysis to determine benefit to the clinic, the community and individual patients. The MLP accepted 48% (99/203) of referrals, and of those, 34% (34/99) have verdicts. The majority (76.4%) of decided cases were favorable and resulted in a patient award of disability benefits or legal immigration status. The medical legal partnership cost the clinic less than $1000, but brought in revenue of approximately $11,250. It also provided at least $7200 in personal economic benefit for patients awarded disability, for a total of $191,250 in community benefit. This legal intervention provides tangible community benefit with limited community investment. It may be a way to build relationships of trust with underserved communities, and further promote participation in research.