Finding Text
Finding 2024-006 CSR Handbook § 3.3 Timely Closing of Cases Grantor: Legal Services Corporation Program Name: Legal Services Corporation Basic Field Grant CFDA No.: 09.952000 Award No.: Basic Field Grant Award Year: 2024 Repeat Finding From Prior Audit? No Finding Type: Significant deficiency Criteria: Per CSR Handbook § 3.3 Timely Closing of Cases, to ensure accurate case service reporting for each grant term, LSC recipients are required to close cases in a timely manner, LSC recipients should close cases in the grant year in which legal assistance has ceased, although there are limited exceptions to this provision. Condition: Based on our testing of the cases, 5 out of 142 cases or 3.5% of the cases we selected, the cases were not closed on time. Here are the case numbers. 13E-7000131-1 20E-7017958-1 17E-6000738-1 22E-6000296-1 21E-5010550-1 Cause : MLSC did not monitor many of the cases and track the case status to ensure the cases are closed on time. Finding 2024-006 CSR Handbook § 3.3 Timely Closing of Cases, continued Effect: Failure to close cases in the year legal assistance ended results in noncompliance with CSR Handbook § 3.3 and increases the risk of inaccurate case service reporting to LSC. Untimely case closures can lead to overstated active caseloads, misreported service volumes, and reduced reliability of MLSC’s CSR data, which may affect LSC’s assessment of MLSC’s program performance and compliance. Recommendation: MLSC should follow the CSR Handbook § 3.3 Timely Closing of Cases. Management’s Response and Corrective Action Plan: Management agrees. Management will address this as follows: Responsible person: Lee Pliscou The cases identified in the audit as not having been closed on time do not reflect any pattern—the cases are from different offices, with different staff assigned to each, and with differing, unique fact situations which lead to the office keeping them open. Management will provide training to the regional office directing attorneys on following protocols to review open cases in each office to ensure cases are timely closed. Management will provide follow up supervision for each of the directing attorneys by running reports from our case management system to identify cases in their respective offices that may need attention to ensure they are timely closed. Anticipated completion date: February 28, 2026