Helena, MT – The Treacy Foundation recently awarded $5,000 to the Montana Legal Services Association (MLSA) to purchase five cubicle walls for use by MLSA’s Intake Staff in Helena. Purchasing these new cubicles allowed MLSA to expand its Helena office into additional office space while still protecting client confidentiality.
The Treacy Foundation’s support meant that MLSA was able to move staff into office space that is more centrally located to MLSA’s main office space, and that has been recently updated. However, because the space has an open floor plan, MLSA needed additional funding to purchase cubicle walls. The Treacy Foundation’s support gave MLSA the resources needed to maintain confidentiality for clients and to reduce noise pollution between office spaces.
Client confidentiality is a top priority for MLSA and its clients, and the purchase of these cubicles helps ensure that MLSA’s intake staff are able to continue to conduct interviews and answer phone calls from clients efficiently and confidentially. MLSA considers the purchase of these cubicles to be an essential investment in our client services because MLSA’s intake staff play a vital role in the providing legal services to clients – they are often the first point of contact for our clients and are responsible for ensuring that each client’s case is reviewed thoroughly and efficiently.
Every year, MLSA’s intake staff process more than 6,000 applications, resulting in MLSA taking on more than 3,000 civil legal cases ranging from orders of protection and marriage dissolutions to eviction and housing cases to tax credits and other tax problems that threaten to disrupt a low income family’s precarious stability. In 2017 alone, 7,879 people contacted MLSA for legal assistance, and MLSA was able to take on 3,865 cases that helped more than 9,000 individuals and their family members live safer, more stable lives.