Norfolk-based firm makes donation to legal aid society

As demand for legal aid services grows following the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, a Norfolk-based personal injury firm has continued to aid in the cause.

Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers donated $5,000 to the Norfolk-based Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia on Nov. 7, according to a press release from the firm. The donation is the largest single donation made by the firm to the society.

“The Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia has provided a vital service to our community for decades,” Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers founding partner Jim Hurley said via press release. “Without it, vulnerable people would slip through the legal safety net.”

In the last decade, Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers has donated nearly $20,000 to the Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia.

Hurley presented the check to Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia Executive Director Ray Hartz in a November ceremony. During a previous check donation ceremony, Hartz stated that funding at the society was cut “by over a third a few years ago during the years of the recession.”

“While we have had some increases, we are nowhere near where we were five or 10 years ago,” Hartz said. “We have relied on the community to keep us going.”

The Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia is a non-profit law firm founded in 1966 to provide representation in civil matters to low-income residents in the Hampton Roads region. According to their website, the society deals in cases across a wide range of subject matters, including landlord/tenant issues, family law, estate planning, domestic violence, and civil rights and discrimination matters, among other areas.

“In a variety of civil matters we provide free lawyers so that people are treated fairly in the courts here in Virginia,” Hartz said via release.

The society’s current initiatives include the Campaign to Reduce Evictions, where the society is present at public housing dockets at several cities across the region. The society is also partnered with Equal Justice Works in the Housing Justice Fellowship Program, which “fight[s] for safe, sanitary, and affordable housing in partnership with our client communities in Portsmouth, South Norfolk and the East End of Newport News,” according to the society’s website.