Legal Aid Center will open new facility to help crime victims

The Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada will create a new center to help victims of crime, located in a building adjacent to the group’s downtown headquarters, Executive Director Barbara Buckley said Friday.

Speaking at the group’s annual Pro Bono Awards Luncheon at the Wynn, Buckley said the center will be a continuation of efforts begun after Oct. 1, 2017, to assist victims of the nation’s worst mass killing. The new center will aim to help victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual exploitation and more.

It will be housed in the old U.S. Bank building at Charleston Boulevard and Gass Avenue, near the legal aid center’s current offices at 701 E. Charleston Blvd., Buckley said. The building became available when the bank closed its branch there, and Buckley reached out to the bank’s president to negotiate a deal to buy the structure.

“We are thrilled with the opportunity to expand our services,” Buckley told a packed ballroom of attorneys, judges and elected officials.

During the lunch, Buckley said the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada helped more than 150,000 children, seniors and families during 2022. The center’s two legal self-help centers saw as many as 600 people seeking assistance in a single day, she said. But the center still must turn away potential clients because of a lack of staff or resources, she said.

“The hardest part of our job is the justice gap,” she said.

With the new victims of crime center — partially underwritten by $3 million from the federal government arranged by Rep. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, and $6 million from the state of Nevada approved Thursday by the Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee — that gap will grow smaller. The center will house not only attorneys helping victims of crimes, but also behavioral health experts who partner with the center to help victims.

It’s built on the same idea as the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center, which is managed by the legal aid center and provides help and legal resources to victims of the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting.

“The resiliency center became a beacon of hope and light,” Buckley said in announcing the crime victims center.

Work on the center will start in 2023.

The announcement came after the center’s annual awards for attorneys who volunteer their time to help people in Las Vegas facing legal problems who can’t afford a lawyer on their own.

The Pro Bono Law Firm of the Year was Ballard Spahr LLP, where attorneys donated more than 470 hours of time to help clients. Marjorie Guymon of the eponymous firm Goldsmith and Guymon, P.C. was named the Pro Bono Attorney of the Year. Advertising firm R&R Partners — which helped the center with a rebranding campaign — received the William S. Boyd Award of Excellence. And retiring Nevada Supreme Court Justice James Hardesty — who was instrumental in the successful public vote to create the Court of Appeals in 2014 — received the Justice Nancy Becker Pro Bono Award of Judicial Excellence.

A full list of pro bono award winners can be found on the center’s website.

Contact Steve Sebelius at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253. Follow @SteveSebelius on Twitter.