With about 140,000 military veterans, Maine is home to the third-largest population of veterans in the country, on a per capita basis. And many of them have trouble accessing their Veterans Administration benefits. According to a survey published last year, only about a third receive the benefits to which they're entitled. A new project is attempting to address the problem. The Maine Volunteer Lawyers Project has teamed up with the American Bar Association's Young Lawyers' Division to offer veterans free legal assistance across the state.

Left to right, Tom Marczak, Rob Liscord and Neil Riley, who are all working to help Maine veterans get access to VA  benefits they are entitled to.

Lawyer at clinic: "Thank you for coming into the clinic this morning and we'll see if we can't help you with this issue about pension. I see youve already filled in the forms."

At the first clinic at the Portland Public Library, six attorneys spent several hours on a reecnt Saturday helping a steady stream of nearly two dozen Maine veterans navigate the VA's complex benefit application process.

Lawyer at clinic: "Right now, you're not getting any benefits from the VA, correct?"

Client named John: "No."

"We're just doing an application to see what I'm eligible for," says John, who does not wish to give his full name. "I don't know yet."

John is a Vietnam veteran. He says his brief service overseas with the U.S. Navy in the late 1960s left him with a host of problems. "Part of it's physical, the rest of it's mental, emotional," he says. "They diagnosed me with PTSD, so I know that."

John says he was discharged from the Navy more than 40 years ago because of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. But he says he also suffered concussion-related injuries in the service and now experiences chronic back pain. After being discharged, John says he waited more than 10 years before seeking benefits from the VA. He's had no luck so far.

"No assistance at all," he says. "Because I'm not presently active with them, they've just shunned me away."

"It's just making sure that veterans are aware of the benefits they've earned, and most aren't aware that they qualify for a wide array of varying benefits from healthcare, to education, possibly pensions," says Neil Riley, who is with the volunteer lawyers project.

Riley's a second-year law student at the University of Maine. He's also a U.S. Army veteran who has served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Riley says the most challenging cases can be veterans like John, who are making claims based on service that took place decades ago.

"You hurt your arm, you hurt your knee while you're young, it may not be bothering you. But 20, 30 years down the road, it's becoming a severe problem," Riley says. "And then it's going back to the VA, or going to the VA for the first time, I should say, and applying and saying, 'I hurt my knee on active duty.' And the VA, in certain terms, says, 'Prove it.'"

And proving it on your own is not always easy, says Rob Liscord. He's veteran legal services outreach co-ordinator at Pine Tree Legal - a non-profit offering free legal help to low-income Mainers. Liscord says the VA is overburdened with a backlog of more than 800,000 pending claims nationwide.

"From a lawyer's perspective, being able to fill out what's called the claim file, which is all the evidence to support a claim for disability, it speeds the process along," Liscord says. "It makes it easier on the VA regional offices that decide what people are eligible for, and it helps them expedite their whole program."

Liscord says the process of appealing a benefits decision is complicated, but normally worthwhile. According to the National Organization of Veteran Advocates, 70 percent of veteran benefit denials are overturned when they're appealed.

Tom Marczak is a regional organizer for the American Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division who helped set up the veterans' project in Maine. He hopes it can expand beyond Portland in the coming months.

"We hope to be able to do some more in the future and to get into some areas of the state where the veteran population is a little bit less served," Marczak says, "whether that is Androscoggin County or Franklin County or Washington County."

Marczak says the project recently secured funding to explore the use of video-conferencing technology to bring in-person legal assistance to the more remote areas of the state.

The Veterans Administration did not wish to provide comment for this story.

Learn more about the Volunteer Lawyers Project.

Photo by Tom Porter.