Christine Jordan Sexton
Rima Nathan is the first ever recipient of the AARP Florida Fraud Fighter Award.
She isn’t a law enforcement officer, lawmaker or other well-recognized state official. But she is making a difference in helping low-income Florida seniors (aged 60 and older) settle their legal woes, or avoid them altogether, as well as train a future legal workforce on elder care law.
Nathan is an FSU law professor and creator of The Claude Pepper Elder Law Clinic, now in its second year of operations. The clinic focuses on helping low-income older adults through legal advocacy and community education and better training a future legal workforce on how to deal with a burgeoning aging population.
Students have held educational clinics at senior centers and other locations in Leon and Wakulla counties, speaking to hundreds of people about living wills, estate planning and health care power of attorney.
More than 30 students have participated in the clinic since its establishment in 2022. In that time, FSU law school students have provided direct legal help, closing 16 cases and are continuing to work another 20.
Students enrolled in the clinic learn the basics of elder law while also working directly on legal cases.
“\We are the only legal clinic in the state of Florida that focuses exclusively on elderly law,” she said.
For Nathan, the idea of creating a legal clinic focusing on elder care issues was somewhat of a no-brainer given that FSU houses the Claude Pepper Foundation, the Claude Pepper Library, the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy, the Mildred and Claude Pepper Eminent Scholar Chair and the Claude Pepper Center.
The work undertaken by the Foundation serves Florida’s growing elderly population as well as seniors nationwide. It’s all named after former U.S. Sen. Claude Denson Pepper, who rose from small town Perry lawyer to a member of the Florida Legislature to joining Congress.
Nathan secured a three-year grant from the Claude Pepper Foundation in 2022. And she is hopeful that the grant, currently being reviewed, will be continued forward beyond 2025.
“It’s such a growing need. I think elder law encompasses so much. It’s not like personal injury law where it’s like, ‘we do car accidents,’” Nathan said.
“Elder law is really just any legal issue in our clinic specifically to help people age 60 and older. But as we age there are all these different intersections of the law that we start to face,” she added. “It’s health care, it’s consumer protection issues. And while dealing with all those issues, older folks are also facing age discrimination and discrimination that happens when older folks try to stand up for themselves and maintain their dignity. We have a different lens when we are thinking of older folks, unfortunately.
Nathan said there’s “more of a need for legal help there” for older people. “As people age, it’s more and more difficult for them to say ‘Hey I need you to take me seriously. I need help. This is the situation I’m dealing with and I need you to take me seriously.’”
Students spend half their time in the classroom and the other half working in the legal clinic.
“In light of Claude Pepper’s legacy and everything he did to promote aging issues we teach our course in a way that helps students become more aware of how ageism can intersect all these issues to hopefully train the next generation of lawyers to be more empathetic to a lot of the issues that seniors face which we think is extremely important because our aging population is rapidly increasing,” Nathan said.
“There are going to be more and more folks in the 60 and older age group that are in need of legal services. So we really need to make sure our legal community is prepared to help those folks and to have that level of empathy and understanding to help folks in that category.”
AARP offices across the country honored those who are engaged in keeping people and their money safe with similar Community Fraud Fighter awards.
“No matter your age or income, Floridians are under attack each and every day from fraud and deceptive business practices. They need strong allies like Rima involved in this fight,” said Jeff Johnson, AARP Florida State Director.
Nathan is the first recipient of the award, but she won’t be the last. The organization is planning on recognizing another winner in early August.
