About Us

Who is this site for?

This website is for members of the military, veterans, their families and advocates. Our goal is to help you:

• access benefits
• find free legal help, and
• better understand your legal issues

Many websites provide information for military households or veterans.  Here our goal is to index the best legal information available in one easy-to-use site. We have also added our own interactive forms, videos, and legal analysis.  We try to deliver answers to your questions using Plain English. More about our content and website features [6].

How are we doing? Please help us improve our site by using the feedback form [7]. 

Who is behind it?

Two primary partnering organizations have worked together to create the Stateside Legal website. These organizations are Pine Tree Legal Assistance of Maine [8] and the Arkansas Legal Services Partnership. [9] In addition, the website has received help from many volunteers, including private attorneys, members of the Judge Advocate General [JAG] Corps, civilian Legal Assistance Attorneys, and veteran service officers. See a list of our advisors [10].

Who pays for it?

The Legal Services Corporation, www.lsc.gov [11] provided the initial funding.

To maintain and expand this website will require additional and ongoing funding.

• If you would like to support this effort as an individual on a tax-deductible basis, click here [12]. 
• If you are interested in getting more information about ways to support this effort as a business or organization, please contact Pine Tree Legal Assistance Executive Director Nan Heald at 207-774-4753.

What about local help that I'm not finding here?

This is a national website focusing initially on federal programs. Many laws vary from state to state.  We hope to expand our state-specific information as time goes on.  If you are aware of resources in your State that should be included in this site, please let us know [7]. 

Also, you may be able to find more state-specific information on your statewide legal services website [13].

Other important contributors

We are grateful to trademark specialist attorney James Keenan in the Portland Maine law firm of Bernstein Shur [14] for donating his expertise to the project on a pro bono basis.

Also many thanks to PERCH [15] for their website design talents and bdsworks [16] for everything technical and more.  And to the Corporation for National and Community Service [17] for its VISTA progam, providing us with energetic "capacity building" volunteers.

Many members of the military community have contributed - too numerous to name. Thank you.