The Mount Sinai Medical Legal Partnership (MSMLP)

The MSMLP breast cancer clinic is a $100,000 project that was partially funded by a grant from the Judges and Lawyers Breast Cancer Alert. Lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group's LegalHealth Division will assist patients at Mount Sinai's Dubin Breast Center with unemployment issues, housing issues, social security benefits, and end-of-life documents and directives.

The clinic was created to help patients who find themselves in need due to a variety of reasons, including being unable to go to work during intensive treatments, needing help with housing or public benefits, or needing help with wills or guardianship. The MSMLP breast cancer clinic screens patients virtually or onsite at the Dubin Breast Center to determine their needs and either give legal advice or fully represent them, depending on their case. Medical staff and social workers will refer patients to the clinic based on their needs. MSMLP estimates that hundreds of patients who come to the Dubin Breast Center may need legal aid.

MSMLP was founded in 2016 to provide the most vulnerable of Mount Sinai's patients with free legal services in eight legal clinics throughout the Health System, in order to prevent and remedy the social and environmental conditions that can negatively affect a patient's overall well-being. MSMLP brings together lawyers and health care teams to holistically care for Mount Sinai's patients by giving them legal help in areas including housing, education, benefits, family law issues, wills, and immigration. Lawyers work alongside Mount Sinai clinicians to end the vicious cycle in which illness and disease are both cause and consequence of poverty.

How Legal Services Can Help People with Breast Cancer
Ideally, when individuals are diagnosed with cancer, they should be able to focus fully on their health treatment and spend more time with loved ones. But often such is not the case. Individuals with breast cancer often must deal with many hardships throughout the course of their illness, including burdensome legal problems. 

The legal needs of low-income breast cancer patients and their families are wide-ranging. They include: insurance issues, patient’s rights, employment, finances (including public benefits), advance directives (healthcare proxies, wills & powers of attorney), permanency planning, and immigration-related issues, among others.