[ Access Crisis ]
Moritz students develop mediation project
“It was great taking everything we learned in class and seeing it work in real life.” – Michael Cummings ’13
In the midst of the Great Recession, the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services found itself in a precarious position – budget cuts were leading to job layoffs at the county and state level at a time when requests for benefits and changes in benefits were skyrocketing. As a result, the federally mandated timeliness requirement for hearings had fallen to near 5 percent. Help was on the way from an unlikely source – two students at the Moritz College of Law. Seth Bowen ’13 and Michael Cummings ’13 were in Professor Sarah Rudolph Cole’s Mediation Clinic course when she asked if anyone was interested in working in alternative dispute resolution over the summer. The two 2Ls raised their hands. The mission was left open: Develop some sort of pre-hearing mediation project that could make sense of the thousands of pending hearing requests. ODJFS is responsible for the administration of the state’s public assistance programs, including cash, food, medical help, publicly funded child care, child support enforcement, and certain aspects of the adoption assistance program. Recipients who are denied or facing a reduction of benefits are entitled to a hearing before the ODJFS Bureau of State Hearings. When recipients receive notification of a denial or change, paperwork for an appeal is enclosed. In some instances, the changes are across-the-board rule changes, but everyone affected is entitled to a hearing under the law. In 2003, ODJFS processed 49,907 appeals, and that number increased to 115,996 in 2012. Under the project set up by Bowen and Cummings, the pre-hearing mediators scroll through hearing requests looking for cases with a lack of verification, a lack of communications, or other eligibility issues. They read the file comments and often contact the agency involved to see what action the appellant can take to rectify the situation. “There was really a lot of trial and error in determining which types of cases were best for mediation,” Bowen said. Both Bowen and Cummings continued to work on the project throughout their third year of law school. In total, the program made or attempted to make contact with individuals in 5,882 cases. In those, 992 of the contacts were not successful (17 percent), 460 required a hearing (8 percent), and 4,430 (75 percent) led to a withdrawal of the hearing request, considered a success. County involvement is optional, but, so far, 36 of Ohio’s 88 counties have joined, including three of the largest counties – Cuyahoga, Montgomery, and Hamilton. “One of the tenets of mediation is the voluntary nature, so we really let the counties decide who can be involved,” Bowen said. To start, the duo implemented the “one-piece-of-paper rule,” which meant looking for cases in which one piece of paper was missing from the file and would resolve the case. Through the use of spreadsheets, they were quickly able to find patterns in cases that were easily resolved. In one instance, Cummings worked with a mentally handicapped adult who recently moved out on his own and received a denial of benefits. Cummings and the individual quickly resolved the problem; benefits were reinstated; and the hearing request was withdrawn. The appellant’s mother initially was distraught that her son had consented to the withdraw, but in learning of the process and reinstatement, called to say how pleased she was that her son was able to handle the issue on his own with the help of Cummings. Bowen worked directly with an appellant whose Medicaid benefit was being terminated while he was in the middle of drug rehabilitation, which would have forced him to leave the program. Quick contact and action by Bowen to track down the missing document prevented a disruption in care. “This project has really taught the social responsibility aspect of the profession,” said Lewis George, chief legal counsel at ODJFS. “These benefits are the safety net for many appellants. Teaching the pro bono concept at the law school level is so important.” Both Bowen and Cummings have accepted post-graduate employment with ODJFS, and rising 3Ls Erika LaHote and Layinka Osinowo are working on the project this summer as legal interns.
Moritz College of Law | S U M M E R 2 0 1 3
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