Our August 2017 Advocate of the Month is Laurie McFalls. Laurie first joined LSA as part of the Tuscaloosa office, providing legal help to tornado victims in 2010. In 2012, Laurie transferred to the Huntsville office where she currently works in a wide range of areas including: consumer, public benefits, housing and domestic law. Most recently, Laurie has joined LSA’s High Impact Litigation team as well as taking over as co-lead attorney for our education practice group. Since starting at LSA, Laurie has proved herself to be one of the hardest working and accomplished young attorneys with the program. In August, Laurie proved this once again by helping a large number of people with a wide variety of problems.
In three cases this month, Laurie was able to help children threatened with missing school, to get enrolled when their lives became disrupted due to unforeseen circumstances. In one of those cases, a school refused to enroll a child, whose mother passed away the week before, when the child’s sister attempted to enroll her for the current school year. After only a couple of calls, Laurie was able to ensure that the child would be in school on the first day of school (and would not miss any time) due to this family tragedy. In another case, Laurie was able to help a child whose father was recently imprisoned to attend school while living with a family friend.
In another case, Laurie helped a mother retain her housing when she was threatened with eviction based on the actions of a visitor. Because of Laurie’s intervention, the family avoided being homeless and the offender was placed on trespass, protecting the family from his illegal activities.
Laurie also helped an abused woman separate from her drug-addicted husband and begin a new life. In addition to securing custody of the woman’s children and support for them, Laurie was also able to get the father to agree to random drug screenings before he would be allowed to visit with the children, unsupervised.
In several other cases, including one where a client was sued for a debt they had already paid off, Laurie successfully represented clients in cases where debt-buyers attempted to receive judgments against her clients. Laurie also helped two clients avoid garnishments which would have been devastating to their families.
Lastly, Laurie was able to secure unemployment benefits for several hardworking Alabamians who lost work due to no fault of their own. In one case, a truck driver was forced to quit when he refused to drive for time periods longer than allowed by law, and was ordered to falsify legal records. During the administrative appeal process, Laurie was able to prove that, although the worker had quit, that it was forced by the actions of the employer.
LSA is very proud of Laurie, and we are so excited for the work she will continue to do. Way to go Laurie, and keep it up!
