You get a letter telling you that you are unfit to keep serving. It arrives with a deadline, too, sometimes less than a week, and it sets in motion a process that will decide whether you keep your career or not. Whether you get a severance check, a retirement, health care for your family, or nothing. Somewhere in that packet is a line about your right to consult a lawyer. In the Army, that line has led to the Office of Soldiers' Counsel, a small unit of attorneys who exist for exactly this type of thing. A growing number of soldiers are finding this line leads them to an office that says it can no longer be of assistance. The Office of Soldiers' Counsel has taken "dramatic cuts to its authorized positions over the past 12 months," according to a May 27 Army memo reviewed by Task & Purpose, which first reported the cutbacks. Since May 2025, the memo says, the office has used a phased approach to limit its services to only those that are statutory. Their scheduling website already details exactly what that means in practice. It is "unable to assist" soldiers going through the Medical Evaluation Board stage. It no longer accepts clients on the Temporary Disability Retired List. Soldiers, the notice says, "may secure private counsel for assistance at no expense to the Army." And as of July 1, according to the memo, the office stopped providing all legal services to non-active-duty National Guard and Reserve soldiers. The Army has yet to disclose how many positions were cut.