Consumer legal cases are increasing, nonprofit law firms are working to keep up
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Maria Duvuvuei
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WASHINGTON – Leaders of nonprofit law firms in Florida, Massachusetts and Michigan discussed the rise in consumer legal issues on a new episode of the “Talk Justice” podcast.
The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) has seen that the number of consumer legal cases are growing across the 129 legal services organizations that it funds nationally. From 2024 to 2025, the volume of consumer and finance cases increased by nearly 14%.
Attorneys at these organizations are helping clients fight fraud, challenge predatory lending or unfair debt collection, and navigate bankruptcy and other financial disputes.
Leticia Medina-Richman, Executive Director of Florida Rural Legal Services (FRLS); Christopher Oldi, Executive Director of South Coastal Counties Legal Services (SCCLS) in Massachusetts; and Ashley Lowe, Executive Director of Lakeshore Legal Aid in Michigan, spoke to LSC Program Counsel Danielle Chappel on the podcast.
“One of the things that I have learned in paying more attention to these consumer cases is that it's often a crisis situation and a complicated system,” said Lowe. “And those two things together end up creating significant debt for somebody even when they're trying really hard to do all the right things and they're willing to pay what they owe.”
Lowe recalled a case where the client had incurred a debt from an ambulance ride for her son. Ambulances don’t bill insurance companies, Lowe explained, so the client received the bill and gave her insurance information, knowing that she should only owe 10% of the $1,700 under her policy. But the ambulance company kept billing her for the incorrect amount and misspelling her son’s name. Five years later, the company sued her for collections. A Lakeshore attorney was able to negotiate that the client pay only the original 10% she owed.
“She was willing to pay it all the way along, but it was the system and really a situation in her life that kept her from jumping in [to fix it] right away because she had this child who was experiencing a really serious medical situation,” Lowe said. “Without an attorney to help explain her rights and negotiate, she would have been in a much more difficult situation.”
Medina-Richman explained that many people are unaware that federal and state laws exist that protect certain forms of income, like Social Security or veterans' benefits, from collection and garnishment, and in some places, personal property like a home or vehicle may also be protected.
“All of these things are designed to help people continue to be able to pay the basic necessities,” Medina-Richman said. “It might be for money they genuinely owe, but at this point in time, the choice is: do we make somebody destitute so that they can't even eat or pay their rent, or do we continue to have a creditor wait to be paid for what they're owed?”
Without knowledge of these protections or access to legal representation, people can agree to make payments that they would be legally exempt from, she said. So, it is important that they have access to legal help, or at the very least, access to education about their rights and how these legal proceedings work.
Oldi explained that consumer and financial cases can be tied to other issues that SCCLS and other legal services providers help with, like domestic violence.
“Our team has certainly worked with a number of DV survivors in which their abuser has taken credit cards out in their name... And then all of a sudden, they have thousands and thousands of dollars of debt that they didn't even know about,” Oldi said.
Oldi also explained that SCCLS runs a “Lawyer for the Day” program in partnership with two Massachusetts courts. An SCCLS attorney is stationed in the courthouse to assist people who are facing a legal issue without representation. He said that this type of on-the-day legal assistance is often effective in debt collections cases.
“So many times, the people that are bringing the court action don't know where the debt came from or maybe it wasn't served properly,” said Oldi. “And just by saying that there's an attorney there and they're going to go into court, we are able to get dismissals or at least [are] able to get more satisfactory settlements.”
To hear the rest of this conversation, listen to the full episode of Talk Justice online, on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Council.