Administrative Law Section to support those with disabilities.

Amid all the budgetary hand-wringing that characterized this year's legislative session, the average person might not have noticed many changes lawmakers made to the administrative rules governing state agencies. Luckily, after more than 30 years in existence, that's something The Florida Bar's Administrative Law Section attorneys have gotten good at.

Several administrative attorneys took notice in 2007, for example, when the Legislature eliminated some services it provided to the state's disabled population and imposed strict new caps on other services; and in 2008, when it slashed the rate it pays to the providers of those services.

It also didn't escape their notice that the road to solving any disputes adults with disabilities might have with the agencies serving them got rockier in 2006, after J.M. v. Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities was decided. Before J.M., disabled adults protesting denial of benefits or lowering of service levels could tell their stories in informal agency hearings. After J.M., their cases had to go before a before a judge in the Department of Administrative Hearings.

Florida Legal Services Deputy Director Anne Swerlick said her office started seeing an increase in families needing help with the DOAH process almost immediately following J.M.

"As the budget gets worse and the state finds more and more ways to reduce costs, [services for persons with disabilities] has been one of the targets. And as the legislature keeps changing criteria for services, it's a moving target," Swerlick said. "It's a shifting landscape and it becomes very hard for families to keep up with. There are a lot of legal issues."

Swerlick said that while DOAH judges have "really bent over backwards to help people handle this pro se," the rules, paperwork, and generally much more formal process mean that many families need legal help or they risk reductions in services that can mean the difference between being able to live independently or being forced to live in a nursing home.

"It can be a scary process for individuals who are trying to, or need to, represent themselves," says Elizabeth McArthur, Administrative Law Section chair.

McArthur said the state's dwindling access to services for persons with disabilties put her and other section attorneys in mind of their longtime mentor, the late Pat Dore, the Florida State University...