2015-16 Pro Bono Publico Award Winner, Lark Mulligan

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

Last week, the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award Merit Distinction honorees guest blogged about their law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. Today, we’re featuring our 2015-2016 Pro Bono Publico Award Winner and DePaul University College of Law student Lark Mulligan, a multi-talented advocate dedicated to transgender rights.

Prison Abolition for Transgender Liberation
Lark Mulligan, PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award Winner, 2015-2016 (DePaul University College of Law)

I met her in Cook County Jail, where she was awaiting trial for felony charges.[1] A Black transgender woman from Chicago’s south side, our client spent her late teens and early twenties in and out of prison and jail. Incarceration is an especially dangerous and traumatic experience for transgender people because they are almost exclusively housed according to their gender as assigned at birth, meaning that trans women, like my client, are housed in men’s facilities. Like many other incarcerated trans people, she was placed in “protective custody,” a misleading name for what others might call “solitary confinement.” It was a small cell where she sat in isolation and experienced daily threats, harassment, and slurs from correctional staff. While she was in protective custody, jail staff denied her HIV medications, gender-affirming feminine products like bras and makeup, and hormone therapy, which she had been taking as prescribed for over a decade.

Eventually she was convicted, served two years in a men’s prison, and was paroled out on house arrest to an all-men halfway home. Having been kicked out of her mother’s house after coming out as trans as a teenager, she was no stranger to gender-segregated shelters and public housing, and she knew the risks of presenting her true gender in such an environment. After feeling it out for a week, she began presenting more in line with her female gender identity, wearing feminine clothing, makeup, wigs, etc. But she immediately felt unsafe when the other residents and house staff harassed her for her appearance, calling her names, and threatening to sexually assault her.

She tried to get a job so she could move into her own apartment, but everything was working against her. Because of her ankle bracelet, she was only able to leave the house for a few hours every day. She didn’t have a diploma or GED because she dropped out in tenth grade when administrators forced her to use the men’s room, students harassed and attacked her, and teachers would only refer to her as “he”. When she was able to get her foot in the door with an employer, she would bring in her state ID and birth certificate to fill out the new hire paperwork. However, because of an Illinois law that prohibits someone with a felony conviction from changing their legal name until ten years have elapsed since the termination of their sentence,[2] her documents unfortunately still displayed her masculine-sounding former name and identified her as “male.” Employers would take one look those documents, shoot her some strange glances, ask a few invasive questions about her identity and genitalia, and later she would receive a call saying they “decided to go with an internal hire.” When she was finally hired, she was quickly fired after refusing to wear the men’s uniform.

After a few months of struggling, she returned to her halfway house one day to find all of her belongings on the sidewalk. The Illinois Department of Corrections only pays rent for people on parole for three or four months, and her time limit had expired. Because she had nowhere else to live, that evening her ankle bracelet automatically notified her probation officer that she missed curfew, and the next day she was arrested on a warrant for probation violation and taken back to Cook County Jail.

The United States is experiencing an urgent crisis of hyper-policing and mass incarceration of poor people of color, in particular Black people, and the criminal legal system ensnares people in impossible situations. Transgender people of color living in poverty are impacted by these trends in specific ways; over 50% of Black transgender women can expect to be arrested at some point in their lives, and because the world is so gendered and hostile to people who fall outside gender norms, they face numerous barriers to returning to a stable life. One reason trans people are overrepresented in the criminal legal system is that they experience disproportionate rates of poverty and homelessness resulting from barriers to housing, education, and employment. As a result, trans people might commit survival crimes like retail theft, sex work, or trespassing into a building to sleep at night. Without stable housing and under the burden of a criminal record, it is almost impossible to find a job, and the cycle of poverty and incarceration continues.

Even if they are not committing any crimes, the mass media has very effectively taught police, judges, states attorneys, and the rest of us to assume that trans women of color occupying public space are sex workers. Many transgender women of color report being arrested and charged with prostitution while they were simply walking down the street – a phenomenon some have termed “walking while trans.”

Transgender people are also being murdered at staggering rates, with over 21 murders in the U.S. in 2015 alone, the vast majority were women of color, and many of them went uninvestigated. The global average lifespan of a transgender person is around 23 years. By failing to hold anybody accountable for these deaths, the legal system passively condones this violence and the notion that trans people of color are disposable. Further, transgender people who try to defend themselves from racist and transphobic violence, as in the cases of CeCe McDonald and Eisha Love, are often arrested and prosecuted while their attackers go free.

In short, the criminal legal system is not working for transgender people.

To address some of these injustices, in 2008 a group of prison abolitionist activists, social workers, and lawyers founded the Transformative Justice Law Project (TJLP), which provides free holistic legal services and support for trans people who are criminalized in Chicago and throughout prisons in Illinois. Among other things, we currently help trans people change their legal names, advocate for trans prisoners, conduct workshops and trainings, and publish writing and artwork from trans prisoners in our ‘zine publication Hidden Expressions. After moving to Chicago by way of Vermont in 2011, I became a TJLP Collective Member and have worked on various projects ever since.

Since joining TJLP, I have learned that lawyers can only do so much for criminalized trans people caught in an inherently violent, transphobic, and racist system.  While lawyers have an important role to play in reducing the harm that the legal system inflicts, I believe that the only long-term solution to mass incarceration is a grassroots movement to abolish the prison-industrial complex.

Prison abolition is a movement to dismantle all systems of incarceration, surveillance, and policing, and to build a world that has no need for prisons or police by eradicating the root causes of violence, inequality, and oppression in our communities. Instead of reacting to violence and conflict with more police and more prisons, which do not make society safer but rather cause more violence and poverty and racism, an abolitionist approach would address the root causes of violence by investing in free public education, community empowerment, reparations, healing and restorative practices, non-punitive drug treatment programs, open dialogue, accessible and affordable healthcare, and food justice. Rather than trying to reform an inherently violent system, like conducting police sensitivity trainings, I think the only way to actually make the world safe and affirming for trans people – and for all people – is to get rid of police and prisons altogether.

Prison abolition does not necessarily mean that I want to walk over to the nearest jail and let everyone out. Instead, abolition means recognizing the ways in which systems of racism and transphobia mutually reinforce and are reinforced by the prison-industrial complex, and then taking steps to eradicate them all. Rather than asking the penological question “what do we do with people who commit crimes,” prison abolitionists ask much more fundamental questions like “why do people commit crimes in the first place?” and “how can we prevent people from causing harm to others?” Prison abolition teaches that people often commit crimes because they are poor and need to survive, or because they are reproducing violence that was done to them in the past; they are trying to survive and cope in an oppressive world that criminalizes their existence, and therefore all systems of oppression must be dismantled in order to prevent harms. In the words of abolitionist Alexander Lee, “The absence of prisons is only one way of describing a society free of systems of inequity – white supremacy, male supremacy and the gender binary, capitalism, ableism, among other things – which produce violence, desperation, hatred, and suffering. Such a society would laugh off the outrageous idea of putting people into cages.”

Working with criminalized transgender people has convinced me of the necessity of prison abolition. In 2010, I started as an intern at TJLP. When friends would ask me what I was doing there, I would say “I’m working with trans people who have been wrongfully convicted.” Over time I saw that the reality of our clients’ lives was much more complicated – that regardless of guilt or innocence or whether someone “actually” committed a crime, their very survival was being policed, punished, and extinguished. Eventually it clicked that the term “wrongfully convicted” assumes that some people deserve to be punished and other people don’t, that guilty people deserve to be in cages and innocent people don’t. While many people are incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit – particularly in Chicago, the false confession capital – not every trans person is in prison because of police profiling. Yet regardless of what they may have done in the past, none of the people whom I have met in Illinois’ prison system deserve to endure the abuse, isolation, violence, and fundamentally oppressive environment of incarceration.

Seeing the harsh realities of incarceration for transgender people also challenged me to reframe my concept of community safety. The expansion of the prison system is often justified on the grounds of keeping people safe: the state builds new prisons, police are given tanks and assault rifles, neighbors call 911 when they see a “suspicious” person in their neighborhood – all in the name of community safety. While working with trans people in prison, I realized that we rarely think about the safety of people in prisons and jails; are they not also members of a community who also deserve to be safe? But when I tried to think of ways to make prisons safe for trans people – for example, housing trans women in women’s facilities – I realized that, while such reforms might reduce the harm in some ways, they wouldn’t actually help trans people live longer fuller lives, and they wouldn’t stop trans people from being arrested in the first place. Incarceration and contact with the police cannot be a safe experience for trans people because prisons and police are inherently violent, isolating institutions. How can you be safe when you’re locked in a cage, completely subject to the authority of people who hate you? At the end of the day, the safest thing for trans people – and for all people – is to be free from the threat of incarceration and policing altogether.

The current era of mass incarceration requires that we all ask ourselves fundamental questions about safety, punishment, race, gender, and oppression. Given the authority and knowledge that the legal system has granted to lawyers, we all have a responsibility to think critically about how we can contribute to a more just, safe, and affirming world for everyone whom the criminal legal system fails.

Footnotes:

[1] The following story is being shared with permission, and the facts have been modified to protect anonymity.

[2] 735 ILCS 5/21-101 (2007).

2015-16 Merit Distinction Honoree, Courtney Brown

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

This week, the 2015-16 PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award Merit Distinction honorees are guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. Today, we’re featuring Merit Distinction honoree and Golden Gate University School of Law student Courtney Brown, a multi-talented advocate dedicated to the eviction and housing crises facing San Francisco.

Inspiration to Fight Evictions
Courtney Brown, PSJD Pro Bono Publico Merit Distinction Honoree, 2015-2016 (Golden Gate University School of Law)

Having a home is deeply rooted in one’s sense of stability and security; however, too often it can be taken away for the financial benefit of others, especially in San Francisco. San Francisco is currently facing the worst housing crisis in recent history. Here, income and housing inequality is growing rapidly. Increasing rents and evictions displace thousands of tenants, many of whom are low-income senior and/or disabled people. Eviction often displaces people from their long-term homes and San Francisco completely. With each eviction, San Francisco loses more of its culture and history.

Clients are the Inspiration

My clients’ desire and strength to fight for their homes and resist the most powerful eviction push in recent history inspires me every day to continue to do this work. Their inspiration is the driving force behind my late night study sessions, what gets me up in the morning after very little sleep, and what pushes me to stand up in front of often hostile judges to strongly advocate for my clients.

I am blessed every day to work alongside clients who have made San Francisco the city it is known to be. It is difficult to imagine the profound loss my clients feel when they lose not only their homes but also the communities in which they have lived for decades. I see just a fraction of the pain and stress in their eyes when they talk about leaving the community in which they grew up and raised their children and grandchildren. From artists and veterans, to seniors and people with disabilities, our city is being “cleansed” of everyone that gives this city the personality that makes it so unique. And yet, these people persevere in the face of struggle. And so do I.

As I continue my career in tenants’ rights law, I will continue to meet amazing people who helped build this city. While assisting clients in the battle to enforce their rights, I am inspired by their stories and their strength in the face of adversity.

One of my first clients was facing an Ellis Action eviction. In short, the Ellis Act is a California law that allows landlords to exit the rental business by evicting all of the tenants at the rental property. Unfortunately, this law that was put in place to assist “mom and pop” landlords, is now being abused by real estate speculators, who use the law to flip the rental property so they can make a profit. This client was a 69-year old Vietnam War Veteran who suffered from PTSD. Due to his condition, he was unable to leave the house for long periods of time, so when I needed to talk to him about his case or have him sign papers, I would always go to his house. He would tell me stories about the war and about the special unit he was assigned to, and no matter how many times we lost a motion in court regarding his eviction he was always looking for the bright side. Luckily, through our perseverance, the landlord, notorious in San Francisco for using the Ellis Act to flip properties, decided the fight was not worth it and dismissed the eviction action.

We Need You to Get Involved

San Francisco’s Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Ordinance regulates rent increases, evictions, and habitability standards to protect tenants from unlawful actions by their landlords. However, San Francisco tenants are unable to enforce the protections provided by the Rent Ordinance due to the lack of legal representation available for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. Few evictions occur because tenants lose an unlawful detainer action, but of the few, many are lost on procedural grounds. Instead, the vast majority of evictions in San Francisco occur because tenants are unable to find necessary representation when they are faced with eviction notices alleging false claims or when their landlords harass and intimidate them to leave without a fight.

Landlords in San Francisco have power due to income inequality, limited affordable housing, and lack of legal representation for tenants. The power differential allows landlords to use oral notices or serve eviction notices based on exaggerations and lies. For example, in San Francisco landlords have started using 3-day notices alleging nuisances to quickly evict tenants from their homes. The law surrounding nuisance evictions is very grey which allows for landlords to exaggerate allegations in the eviction notice. When tenants fight evictions through legal representation, they generally stop the eviction. However, many tenants are coerced through lack of resources into leaving their long-term homes without a fight. Additionally, many San Francisco tenants’ rights organizations do not provide tenants with the full-scope representation needed to fight these evictions, and instead provide limited-scope representation which has been found to be less effective in ensuring the tenants retain possession. Full-scope representation is when a client is represented throughout the entire eviction process, and the attorney handles every party of the case from the eviction notice to the trial or appeal of the case. Limited-scope representation is generally ghost-writing of documents for the tenants, including answers, and possibly attending a mandatory settlement conference with the tenant. Evictions can be dramatically reduced if more lawyers provide full-scope representation to low- and moderate-income tenants facing evictions.

There is a desperate need for law students and attorneys to provide full-scope representation to tenants facing evictions in San Francisco. The outcome differential between tenants provided with limited-scope representation and tenants provided with full-scope representation during an eviction is substantial. A study entitled In Pursuit of Justice? Case Outcomes and the Delivery of Unbundled Legal Services by Jessica K. Steinberg published in The Georgetown Journal of Poverty Law and Policy found that unrepresented tenants only retained possession 14% of the time and tenants who received limited-scope or unbundled representation only retained possession 18% of the time, while 55% of fully represented tenants were able to retain possession of their homes. The study also found that tenants receiving limited-scope representation did not secure more actual relief when fighting the eviction than the unrepresented tenants. To decrease the number of evictions in San Francisco, tenants must be provided with the full-scope representation necessary.

San Francisco continues to lose tenants every day as the city becomes more gentrified. These tenants want to stop this, and they have the desire and strength to push back against the evictions that are taking their homes. However, for them to be able to fully fight back and enforce the protections they are provided under the Rental Ordinance, they need attorney allies who can provide the necessary representation. Full-scope representation can only be provided if law students and attorneys contribute pro bono services in housing law.

Communities across the country need you to help us stop evictions and community fragmentation by getting involved with eviction defense work during law school. It will not only provide representation to someone facing eviction, it will also provide you with valuable experience, skill, and inspiration to carry forward into your career.

2015-16 Merit Distinction Honoree, Emily Bock

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

This week, the 2015-16 PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award Merit Distinction honorees will be guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. (This year’s Pro Bono Publico Award recipient, Lark Mulligan, will be published the following week.) Today, we’re featuring Merit Distinction honoree and Temple University Beasley School of Law student Emily Bock, a multi-talented advocate dedicated to criminal record expungement you can read more in their profile.

Opening Doors for Students and Clients: Temple Law Students and Criminal Record Expungements in Philadelphia
Emily Bock, PSJD Pro Bono Publico Merit Distinction Honoree, 2015-2016 (Temple University Beasley School of Law)

In Pennsylvania, there are 11.1 African Americans and 6 Hispanics in federal or state prison for every White prisoner.[1] Nationally, there are more than twice as many people on probation or parole than there are incarcerated.[2] One in three United States adults will have been arrested by the age of 23.[3] The magnitude of the problem of criminal records is hard to comprehend, especially when we factor in people who are arrested, charged with crimes, and never convicted. In many cities, low-income communities of color are disproportionately policed as compared to higher-income, white communities.[4] This means that residents of low-income neighborhoods often have more criminal records,  adding more barriers to escaping poverty.[5] Around 87% of employers conduct criminal background checks during the hiring process, which makes any criminal record (conviction or otherwise) a potential barrier.[6] Philadelphia has the highest per capita incarceration rate of the 10 largest U.S. cities, with almost 7 out of every thousand citizens behind bars.[7] Additionally, Philadelphia is one of the poorest major cities in the United States, so when we consider the impact of criminal records on those who are most vulnerable, we must understand the extent of the devastation that our criminal legal system has wrought on poor people, especially poor people of color.[8]

Community Legal Services of Philadelphia has been a pioneer in the practice of representing people with criminal records. I was very fortunate to learn from them as a Haverford House Fellow and paralegal for their Employment Unit, where I worked almost exclusively on criminal record expungement and pardon cases. When I was a 1L at Temple Law, I was fortunate again to work with their Employment Unit as we developed a new project for taking criminal expungement clinics to neighborhoods with high numbers of arrests without convictions. Since September 2014, the Temple National Lawyers Guild Expungement Project has worked with Community Legal Services to hold 9 clinics in different parts of the city – in Center City, Germantown, West Philadelphia, Kensington, Spring Garden, and Olney. We have interviewed approximately 165 potential clients, accepted 111 clients for representation, and filed almost 400 expungement petitions. During this time, over 100 law student volunteers have been trained to interview clients at the clinics.

Many students are surprised when they learn that in Pennsylvania, arrests without conviction remain on a person’s criminal record until they file an expungement petition. Students are also shocked when they hear that old convictions, especially minor convictions, cannot be expunged. In Pennsylvania, many misdemeanors and all felony convictions are not eligible for expungement or sealing, which leaves those with old convictions only one option for trying to clear their criminal records – applying for a pardon.[9]  However, there has been some progress. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf recently signed a bill into law that would permit sealing of minor (misdemeanor) convictions under certain circumstances.[10] This new law is huge step in the right direction for a state like Pennsylvania where the law on criminal records is fairly conservative.

This year we were lucky to have two first-year law student representatives working with our committee. Here is what they had to say about their work in our expungement clinics:

“I remember sitting with my first client at an expungement clinic. It was early Saturday morning and we were in a part of Philadelphia I had never been to before, that people reference with a certain tone of voice. The client I met with had a low-level conviction when he was very young, then about 10 years later he was arrested and charged with something more serious that he didn’t do. Even though those charges were dropped, he struggled to find a job after that. He currently works full time, and makes the same amount of money I did when I waitressed part time in high school. He supports a family—he has children my age, and several grandchildren. This expungement will mean that he can get a higher-paying job so that his hard work will take him farther.

It has been important to me to put a face to the population that people talk about in class, sometimes in less than respectful ways. It helps me see what a different world I live in than people I inevitably pass on the street every day, and to wonder if people I went to high school with would have such prestigious jobs if we grew up in a different place. I actually keep this client’s initials at the top of my law school to do list to remind me why I’m here and to keep me motivated so I can do as much good as I can.” – Liz, 1L Representative

“I had a very meaningful experience during my first clinic at the church in Germantown. It was an older woman who came in with her daughter. She was incredibly sweet — it was hard to imagine her having ever been in trouble with the law. But one incident about 30 years ago left her record with one conviction and several non-conviction records. I forget whether she was seeking housing assistance or employment; either way, this decades-old conviction was a major roadblock in her life. We told her that she could get the non-convictions expunged. Further, because she was arrest-free for so long, we said that she probably could also get the conviction pardoned. She and her daughter were so happy. It was amazing to me that this woman had lived for so many years with this burden, and we were able to so quickly help her. It was also gratifying to, in one case, employ the several legal tools we have available — expungements and pardons — to help this woman clean up her decades-old record and move forward with her life.” – Aaron, 1L Representative

When I do any work related to the criminal legal system, whether it is working with people who are incarcerated, people with criminal records, or people charged with crimes, I always make sure to emphasize that they are people first. Many people who are charged with crimes are never convicted of the crime, but are left with an arrest record that can create the same challenges as a conviction. They deserve the presumption of innocence that our criminal legal system affords them. I firmly believe that all people deserve a fundamental level of dignity and respect, not conditioned upon whether they have been convicted of a crime or have gone to prison. As one of my heroes, Bryan Stevenson said, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”[11]

I am grateful that Temple Law School can now offer many opportunities to its students to see these words in practice – whether through the Temple NLG Expungement Project, or through any of its other excellent clinical offerings.

Citations:

[1] Christopher Harney and Linh Vuong Created Equal: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the US Criminal Justice System (National Council on Crime and Delinquency, March 2009).

[2] U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Probation and Parole in the United States, 2008, NCJ 228230 (Dec. 2009), at 3.

[3] http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/cc_HiT_CriminalRecords_profile_1.pdf

[4] JPI Report: http://www.justicepolicy.org/news/1909

[5] https://clsphila.org/sites/default/files/get-help/RESOURCE%20-%20Employment%20and%20Crim%20Records%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

[6] http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/cc_HiT_CriminalRecords_profile_1.pdf

[7] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/a-reckoning-in-philadelphia/472092/?utm_source=SFFB

[8] http://articles.philly.com/2015-10-01/news/67015543_1_poverty-rate-deep-poverty-philadelphians

[9] https://clsphila.org/sites/default/files/get-help/Pardon%20Guide%20NEW.pdf

[10] https://www.governor.pa.gov/governor-wolf-signs-criminal-history-sealing-expansion-bill-into-law/

[11] www.amazon.com/Just-Mercy-Story-Justice-Redemption/dp/081298496X

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

Today, Christina is in Philadelphia presenting the Pro Bono Publico award to our 2014-15 recipient, Alex Dutton.  Alex, a student at Temple University Beasley School of Law, receives this year’s award for his work supporting Youth Court programs throughout the city of Philadelphia, beginning with his involvement at Strawberry Mansion High School. 

Restorative Justice at Strawberry Mansion High
Alex Dutton, PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award Recipient, 2014-2015
(Temple University Beasley School of Law)–

Strawberry Mansion High School, “Mansion” as it’s known in the community, is a behemoth of a building that consumes several city blocks at the corner of 31st Street and Ridge Avenue in North Philadelphia.  Across the street are abandoned rowhomes, collapsing in upon themselves.  Students, dressed in collared shirts and khakis, scurry over jagged sidewalks under the shadows of the school’s immense façade.  Walking past the police car eternally parked on Ridge Avenue in front of the school, they file in through the front doors.  They wait to be screened by the metal detector.  Some of the students make it to the courtroom on the third floor on time, others straggle in late.  Always, the law students and attorneys are there, waiting, in this gem of a room (fitted with a jury box, witness stand, and bench) in the corner of a forgotten school in a forgotten neighborhood.  From the jury box, one can just barely make out the top of the William Penn statute that stands atop Philadelphia’s City Hall.  Eventually, a diminutive young lady, cloaked in a long black robe, adjourns the court.

No Right to Be Heard: Suspension Law and Due Process

Pennsylvania law provides effectively zero process for students suspended for three days or less.  In contrast, state law, pursuant to the Federal Constitution, requires school districts to provide formal process to students at risk of expulsion. 22 Pa. Code § 12.8(b).  In Philadelphia, a consent decree compels the School District of Philadelphia (“the District”) to provide similar procedural rights to students at risk of transfer to a disciplinary school. Dunmore v. School Dist. of Philadelphia, No. 72-43 (E.D. Pa, Feb. 14, 1973).  That same consent decree requires the District to hold a conference with students suspended on a short-term basis.  This conference is meant to provide staff, by speaking with the student, an opportunity to identify the student’s problematic behaviors and implement corrective techniques.  (Recall: this is still more than most students get in Pennsylvania, because of Dunmore.)

There are nearly 200,000 students in Philadelphia.  Cuts at the state level critically reduced funding for educational support staff, including guidance counselors and conflict resolution specialists.  As a result, these student conferences are perfunctory, if they are happening at all.  (I’m careful not to place blame with the District here; the District has done—and continues to do—a tremendous job reforming the process it provides students who are at risk of disciplinary transfer.)  Most students are just sent home with suspension paperwork and told to come back in a day or two.  In addition, many students are constantly funneled through in-school suspension—as damaging as a traditional exclusion—without any meaningful process or opportunity to be heard.

While this gap in due process may seem insignificant, it means schools suspend significantly more students than they might if each case were more carefully considered.  Research has long demonstrated that students who are suspended fare much worse than their peers.  Short-term suspensions are the entry point to the school-to-prison pipeline.  Suspensions lead to more suspensions, which precipitate expulsions and dropout, eventually pushing students into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.  What’s more, recent research posits that students who remain in the classroom when their peers are suspended are worse off, too.[1]  Youth courts purport to fill this gap in due process, staffed with the greatest resource in the District: students.

Youth Courts and Restorative Justice

There are various models for youth courts.  Some use a traditional adversarial approach, assigning students to the roles of prosecutor and defense counsel.  Others use restorative justice techniques.  Restorative justice de-emphasizes school exclusion and challenges students to think constructively about conflict resolution.  At Strawberry Mansion, we used a restorative model.

When we first introduced restorative justice principles, our students were lost.  During a “mock” hearing, the jury wanted to force their peer “respondent” to clean the bathroom with a toothbrush for talking back to a teacher.  This, coming from students whose families had been ripped apart by the criminal and family justice systems?  (Just weeks earlier a student told a federal prosecutor that “all prosecutors and judges should burn in hell!”)  I couldn’t believe it.  I took a step back and thought to myself: Alex, you’re so naïve.  How could you ever expect anyone to respond in any other way other than what they’ve been taught, what they’ve learned through experience?  Our students were raised on punitive discipline.  In school, they were suspended and expelled.  On the streets, they were arrested and sent away.  So when we elevated our students to figures of authority, they reflected these punitive inclinations.

It was up to us to help our students question their assumptions about justice and conflict resolution.  We pressed our students to think about the impact of rules and the policies behind them.  Specifically, we encouraged them to consider the purposes of punishment, with a sharp focus on rehabilitation and restoration.  Why is making a student clean the bathroom an appropriate punishment for acting out in class?  How does the punishment relate to the harm the student caused to his classmates?  They applied these concepts in the hearings.

Our far-reaching goal is that students will apply these principles to their daily lives, in school and in their communities.  In the meantime, the youth court provided an opportunity for student-respondents, previously silenced under more primitive discipline regimes, to be heard.  In addition to providing process, the youth court destabilized the school-to-prison pipeline at Mansion: if the respondent completed his restorative assignment, the offense would be wiped from his record.  More importantly, he stayed in school.  Rather than being alienated from his peers, he engaged with them.

A Day in the Life of the Strawberry Mansion Youth Court: Lawyering Skills Alive in the Classroom

Student-respondents who appear before their peers must admit responsibility for violating the school code.  (And, really, these are minor infractions: cell phone use, uniform violations, talking in class, walking the halls, refusing to do school work, arguing with another student, arriving late to class.)  Effectively, the youth court process is a dispositional hearing; peer questioning exposes facts relevant to determining an appropriate punishment—the restorative assignment.

Prior to the hearing, the respondent meets with his “youth advocate,” a high school student trained to defend him.  With the assistance of a law student, the youth advocate interviews her peer-client.  She listens to him.  She inquires as to his motivations and what he thinks the appropriate punishment should be.  She levels with him when he is unreasonable.  Then, she presents this information to the jury: an opening statement.  Through this process, students learn crucial listening skills and gain exposure to public speaking.

Next, the judge opens the floor for questions from the jury.  To facilitate greater class participation, the jurors ask their peer-respondent questions.  The jurors proceed, guided by the Mansion Court’s mantra: FACTS.  HARM.  FIX IT.  Through questioning, the jurors attempt to uncover the facts of the case, the harm caused to the community by their peer’s conduct, and possible constructive solutions.  By uncovering the facts of what happened, the students assessed his culpability.  By inquiring into harm, the jurors determined the segments of the community that were affected and ripe for restoration.  As they go, the students fill out charts labeled: FACTS.  HARM.  FIX IT.  Their questions forced their peer to critically examine the consequences of his actions and included the him in the restorative process: “now that you have identified the harm caused, if any, what can you do to repair that harm, to restore our school community?”

We provided the high school students with the skills they needed to conduct this process.  We trained them in questioning techniques: open-ended and closed-ended questions, funneling, etc.  We exposed them to principles of restorative justice.  And we trained them to be good listeners.  (These are all skills that are often overlooked in law school.)

Together, the students guide their peers through the restorative process, making objections and requesting sidebars–concepts the Youth Court program staff never taught.
(Photo courtesy of Alex Dutton)

Together, the students guide their peers through the restorative process.  Every now and then, the youth advocate stands up: “Your Honor, they keep asking my client the same questions; make them move on to a solution.”  An objection!  The foreman disagrees: “we are trying to get to the bottom of what happened.”  The judge is concerned: “can you two come over here to talk with me.”  A sidebar!  We never taught these concepts.  The students, empowered with the skills to resolve disputes, improvised.  Advocates called out unfairness; jurors objected because they were untangling important and difficult aspects of the case; judges adjusted to ensure civility and efficiency.  All of this to ensure that their peer received his day in their courtroom.

Eventually, the jury returns a verdict: a parent conference so that the school knows the student’s father plans to call the school in the morning to make sure his daughter arrived safely.  Why?  She had been stepping out of the classroom each morning to pick up her father’s call.

Final Remarks

Of course, youth courts are far from the only solution to the school pushout problem.  In my view, school districts should adopt a variety of interventions—some restorative, some not—that would collectively transform schools from punitive institutions to compassionate, empowering communities.  Our schools expend so much energy excluding students from school, just to kick the can down the road—to another school, or worse, to our public dependency systems, including prison.  Why not spend this energy empowering our students?

My charge to future law students and lawyers is this: be creative, be bold!  Youth courts provide a platform for young people to reform their schools; a legal education is your platform to improve your community.

Shannon Johnson, 2014-2015 Merit Distinction Honoree
(Photo courtesy of Boston College Law School)

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

This week, the 2014-15 PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award Merit Distinction honorees will be guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. (This year’s Pro Bono Publico Award recipient, Alex Dutton, will publish his blog next week when he receives his award.) Today, we’re featuring Merit Distinction honoree and Boston College Law School student Shannon Johnson, a multi-talented advocate single-mindedly dedicated to immigrant youth and the inaugural student in Boston College Law School’s hybrid immigration and juvenile clinic.

Being Proximate–A Holistic Approach to Youth Advoacy
Shannon Johnson, PSJD Pro Bono Publico Merit Distinction Honoree, 2014-2015 (Boston College Law School)–

I will never forget the night I heard Bryan Stevenson’s keynote address at the “Rebellious Lawyering” Conference for aspiring public interest attorneys. (As you may know, Bryan Stevenson does prolific civil rights work in the south.) I was in my first year of law school and already felt alienated from my public service goals.  I had pursued a legal education to work with immigrant youth and domestic violence survivors. I hoped to grow into a community lawyer, but actually lost my community connections while shuffling from torts class to legal research seminars. In my disconnected state, I was still able to latch onto something Bryan said during his talk. He urged us to seek to be proximate to the communities that we desired to serve.  In other words, true social justice advocates must leave our comfort zones to meet community needs. We had to challenge the confines of prestige found even in the public interest community (i.e. the pressure to accept prestigious fellowships in world-class cities).

I internalized Bryan’s words.  What did it mean to be proximate to a community when I was immersed in a world that felt so alienating? I struggled with this understanding, especially after living and working as a domestic violence advocate in East Los Angeles.  There, I had an understanding of the community that was much deeper than my connections to my new home in Boston.    For me, it meant seeking to understand the community in which you wanted to work and not just look to be understood. It meant building personal relationships and partnering with communities.  It meant applying humility to advocacy and listening to what a community asks of you (if anything) rather than speaking to what you think a community needs.

I had to challenge my faulty assumptions that ample advocacy opportunities existed in my New Boston home. After working in Los Angeles, I thought that I was working on the forefront of issues facing immigrant teens and undocumented people. After hearing Bryan speak, I knew I needed to listen a little more closely. I knew that my job was to seek understanding of my new greater community, rather than to expect it to first understand (and embrace) me. And as I scratched the surface, I found equivalent concerns and need in Boston as existed in Los Angeles, especially concerning immigrant juveniles.

Since then, the stories I have encountered engaging in clinics and community work have since jolted me out of my first year slump:

A foster youth nearing 18 wants leave the confines of juvenile detention and enter a supportive home placement.  A teenager must decide whether to live with a guardian— a stranger to him—or reconcile with his abusive father in order to obtain a visa and subsequent green card. A young man flees his home country for the U.S., where he has no friends or family, in order to escape threats against his life.  An undocumented young woman survives rape in the U.S. and has the opportunity to obtain legal status and reunite with her family—but still needs to emotionally heal from her trauma in order to talk about her immigration case. An undocumented teen parent fights for more time with her son but fears entering family court because of her legal status.

As I engaged more with clinics and community work in Boston, scenarios like these made apparent to me the pressing need for holistic legal services to tackle the very adult concerns facing immigrant youth.  The youth I served must make very adult decisions while at a developmentally critical stage in life. Immigration concerns, such as being in removal proceedings, navigating life without legal status, or fearing the deportation of a loved one, only exacerbate their trauma.  Language barriers also prevent young people from accessing the help they need or effectively advocating for themselves. Many immigrant youth experience trauma from exposure to violence in the U.S. and their home countries or from unstable family situations or intimate partner relationships.  Youth also are vulnerable to sex trafficking and other forms of exploitation.

The challenges that many young people face—I quickly realized— required advocates willing to connect youth to supportive services, versed in immigration law, and informed about other civil legal systems.  Most importantly, systems-involved youth with immigration issues need advocates to foster a trusting relationship and provide client-centered services that educate and empower youth.

One of the ways that I was able to address young people’s need for holistic services was by  partnering  with Professor Mary Holper (Director of the Boston College Immigration Clinic) and Francine Sherman (Director of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project) to develop an immigration and juvenile hybrid clinic.  The goal of this clinic, in part, was to provide holistic advocacy for systems-involved youth with immigration issues.

My goal for the clinic, developed with the mentorship of Professors Holper and Sherman, was to intensively work with young clients to 1) identify their ‘big picture’ goals; 2) counsel youth on their legal options and strategize with them the approach they wanted to take to solve their legal issues or achieve their goals; 3) empower youth by making them stakeholders invested in their case; 4) empower them through education on their legal options; and 5) connect youth with supportive services and collaborate with social workers as needed. Most frequently, the young person and I would navigate their immigration issues along with the family and juvenile court systems.  The hybrid clinic has continued this year, hosting two students representing young people in immigration and juvenile cases. My work in the clinic demonstrated the tremendous need for immigration reform, especially for young people. I also had the chance to engage in similar work during my summer internships and other volunteer work which confirmed this.

Taking a youth-centered and holistic approach to advocacy is also my way of growing proximate to the community.  It streamlines complicated processes, like family court, foster care, and delinquency proceedings, when one advocate understands the interplay between these systems. Moreover, working with service providers to ensure access to supportive resources stabilizes a young person’s life in order to successfully pursue legal forms of relief.

My experience has taught me the undeniable importance of legal status for systems-involved youth. Obtaining a work permit or Lawful Permanent Residency creates life-altering (and positive) changes in the life of a vulnerable young person.  Suddenly a young person can work and have access to income to support themselves of their families. A young person facing intimate partner violence might no longer fear calling the police during an incident of violence. College becomes a feasible goal because financial aid is available. A parenting teen can more confidently enter family court to request child custody or child support thereby creating a better life for the teen’s child. The options for youth to obtain legal status must continue to reach every young person.  Solving immigration needs, along with a holistic approach to youth advocacy, is one positive step in the direction of creating stable lives for systems involved youth navigating their complex lives.  It is being proximate to the realities facing this community.

Alexander Gamez, 2014-2015 Merit Distinction Honoree
(Photo courtesy of Southwestern Law School)

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

This week, the 2014-15 PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award Merit Distinction honorees will be guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. (This year’s Pro Bono Publico Award recipient, Alex Dutton, will publish his blog next week when he receives his award.) Today, we’re featuring Merit Distinction honoree and Southwestern Law School student Alexander Gamez, an advocate for undocumented immigrant children who recruited an unprecedented number of students to volunteer for the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, and without whom Esperanza believes it “would not have been able to respond to the surge of demand for legal screenings for unaccompanied children.”

How a Few Steps Can Lead to a Fulfilling Journey in Pro Bono Work
Alexander Gamez, PSJD Pro Bono Publico Merit Distinction Honoree, 2014-2015 (Southwestern Law School)–

Attorneys and law students alike put in an obscene number of work hours week in-week out. The legal profession’s insatiable demand can make us frantic, cold, and exhausted, with little or no time for anything else once we are done with our work. With this in mind, many of us ask, how is it possible for me to get involved in pro bono work? Empathetic individuals who desire to do pro bono work may often find themselves conflicted when confronted with the task of striking a balance between their work and pro bono work. But have no fear! To ease this anxiety I propose the following six simple steps that have allowed me to find a healthy balance between my school/work obligations and pro bono opportunities.

Step 1. Realize & Prioritize. Pro bono work does not take up as much time as you would think. This of course varies with the sort of volunteer work you do, but in my experience volunteering may take one to three hours at a time. To put it in perspective, there are 168 hours in a week. Taking three hours out of a week once every few weeks or even once a month will not have much of an impact on your time. It will, however, have a tremendous impact on a client/applicant in need. Thus, I feel it is necessary to accept that volunteering does not have to be immensely time consuming and to make those occasional few hours of volunteering a priority. Are you extremely busy? I suggest being more productive during the times you set aside to do your work, i.e., stay away from social media. I also find it helpful to reward myself if I am able to accomplish the tasks I have set within a block of time, i.e., I get to watch a show on Netflix or have ice cream if I finish my work before 10:30.

Step 2. Volunteer with Friends. Probably the most difficult part of getting involved in pro bono work is actually signing up. In Los Angeles, there are plenty of nonprofits and a huge population of individuals that are in dire need of assistance so the issue isn’t really finding opportunities, it’s actually committing to them. It’s easy to say you’re going to sign up for a volunteer opportunity but once you take that bold step and confirm with an organization you’re going to volunteer, it’s almost as if there is no turning back because a no show may put your reputation in jeopardy.

When I began considering doing public interest work, this initial step was certainly the most difficult thing for me because of the angst I had relating to my other obligations with school. But, I found that by signing up with friends who have similar obligations, the volunteering process seemed effortless. Not only did we make a commitment to the organization, but we also made unspoken commitments to each other that we would not back out. If they could do it I could do it. By volunteering with friends you will reduce the anxiety of going into this alone and will also bring in more people to do pro bono work. Everybody wins!

Step 3. Lose the Ego. Okay, so I’m signed up, I have attended the training, and I am on my way to volunteer. Once this realization hits, anxiety pours over me. Doubts begin to surface: do I even have time to volunteer? Did I prepare enough beforehand? Should I look at the training material again? Is my Spanish up to par? Will I be able to help the client? Do I know where I’m going?

Although I have these thoughts because I want to ensure I do a good job for the applicant/client, I have come to find they are egoistic. Here I am on the verge of an anxiety attack but I never took a step back to think about the applicant/client’s concerns. In the context of interviewing unaccompanied minors facing the possibility of deportation, many of these individuals’ ages range from 6 to 18 years old. They’re children. Not only are they children but in most cases they’re thousands of miles away from their families, have been subjected to unimaginable circumstances such as sexual assault, trafficking, and near death experiences.

Like most other law students, I have lived a life of comfort compared to the person I am assisting.  When this realization hits, ego goes right out the window and I gain composure. In this context it is integral that volunteers convey strength and compassion to the youths. This will instill confidence and trust in the person you are assisting which will result in them providing you with the necessary information to obtain their legal relief.

Step 5. Reflect & Repeat. It is by taking part in pro bono work that one comes to appreciate humanity and becomes determined that more must be done to ensure that humanity persists. After I complete my pro bono assignments I am humbled, distressed, and yet gratified because, despite the troubles my pro bono clients/applicants have endured, troubles which I will never fully understand, they still have the courage to share their stories and share laughs and tears with complete strangers like myself in the hopes that I will help them find some sort of legal reprieve. I just imagine what the client would do had our services not been there. They would not stand a chance. Knowing that I was there to let them know that someone is willing to listen to their story, show them they are not insignificant, and that they are human beings brings me hope. This is what drives me to come back and volunteer again.

Step 6. Surround Yourself with a Support Group. The ability to participate in pro bono work becomes even more realistic if you’re surrounded by an amazing support group. I have been tremendously fortunate to have professors that have motivated, encouraged and found ways for me to get involved with pro bono work. Moreover, I have an amazing fiancée who also supports me every step of the way and has also done pro bono work alongside me and on her own. Lastly, I have friends inside and outside of law school who have been incredibly understanding when my law related activities have kept me away. This group’s support was and continues to be a vital force in my pro bono work.

By following these six steps my law school pro bono experience been tremendously satisfying. If you’ve ever had any qualms about finding a balance between school/work obligations and taking advantage of pro bono opportunities I hope these six steps will quash those concerns and lead you on a fulfilling journey in pro bono work.

We are very pleased to announce the 2014 Pro Bono Publico Award Winner: Alex Dutton from Temple University Beasley School of Law.  This year we selected 6 finalists and then had to choose a winner from a VERY competitive pool.  It was so tough, we’ve also selected two Merit Distinction recipients as well.  All three will be guest bloggers for the PSJD Blog.

In addition, we will be presenting Alex with his award (and his $1,000) at Temple.  I look forward to meeting him, his family, and all those who helped him create the Youth Court Program at Strawberry Mansion High School.

Here is the full announcement, with all the great finalists.  We are so grateful to them for their incredible work!!!

This prestigious award honors one law student nationwide for their pro bono contributions to society, and recognizes the significant contributions that law students make to underserved populations, the public interest community, and legal education through public service work.

WINNER

Alex Dutton

Temple University Beasley School of Law

In 2012, as a 1L, Alex volunteered to assist with Philadelphia’s first Youth Court, located at Strawberry Mansion High School—the only high school on the Philadelphia School District’s list of “persistently dangerous schools. Youth Court initiatives are exercises in restorative justice, using positive peer pressure to reshape student behavior and interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline by providing an alternative to suspension for students who commit minor offenses. Philadelphia’s new program had significant expertise behind it: it was backed by the US Attorney’s Office and run by Mr. Greg Volz, a seasoned practitioner who had already implemented Youth Courts successfully elsewhere. Even among such company, Alex distinguished himself by teaching as much as he learned. In order to reach students overtly distrustful of anyone associated with the criminal justice system, he convinced his supervisor to set aside the Court manual temporarily and meet with students in small groups so the students could take the lead and educate the program staff and volunteers about their lives and their values. (Alex later added to the manual and helped create new curricula.) Alex’s involvement with the program has continued throughout his law school career, as he has successfully attracted other law students from all six Philadelphia region law schools to support the city’s burgeoning Youth Court programs.

In his letter of recommendation, Mr. Volz summarized best the impact of Alex’s contribution to the Youth Court program and to the Philadelphia community: “Alex[‘s] efforts have sparked a potential paradigm shift in law school pro bono activity and shown how youth courts help disadvantaged youth help themselves.” 

MERIT DISTINCTION

Shannon Johnson

Boston College Law School

Shannon is a multi-talented advocate single-mindedly dedicated to immigrant youth—a group whose concerns she has been addressing in one way or another since she first encountered them at age 18. As the inaugural student in Boston College Law School’s hybrid crimmigration clinic, she assisted her clinical supervisors as they developed the program into an official course at Boston College. Shannon’s recommenders focused on her ability to adapt her strategy and tactics to the idiosyncrasies of a wide range of legal fora and to the changing wishes and circumstances of her clients. They speak of her “enormous respect” for her clients, and her “incredible ability” to understand their complicated lives and serve them in a holistic fashion. In addition to her work helping develop Boston College Law’s new clinical program, Shannon partnered with the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project to create a pro bono project in which law students of all levels represent detained non-citizens requesting releases on bond.

Alexander Gamez

Southwestern Law School

Alexander leads by example. As a 2L, he recruited 50 other students (an unprecedented number) to consistently volunteer as part of the Children’s Deportation Defense Project (CDDP), a pro bono program he founded in collaboration with the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project. Esperanza attorneys have been able to screen five times as many children in sessions in which they have the CDDP’s help. Alexander is himself the CDDP’s most prolific volunteer. Without Alexander’s personal and structural contributions to their work, Ms. Carolina Garza De Luna, Esperanza’s Pro Bono Coordinator believes her organization “would not have been able to respond to the surge of demand for legal screenings for unaccompanied alien children.” Alexander also heads Southwestern Law School’s chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild, through which he trained and recruited many students to participate in the NLG’s new Immigration Court Watch Program. The NLG’s Mr. James Lafferty believes that Southwestern owes its status as one of the Guild’s most active chapters in the L.A. area to Alexander’s “inspirational leadership.”

Alexander best expressed the source of his own inspiration: “My parents went through all of the hurdles of obtaining legal status and eventually obtained US citizenship. Now, although people can still question their immigration status, they cannot, however, take it away from them…Each of my clients has had a profound effect on my legal capacity to assist others and my attitude towards life by giving me a newfound appreciation on what it means to live without the constant fear of being taken away at [any] second.”

OTHER FINALISTS

Matt Brooks, Boston College Law School.

Revived Boston College’s chapter of the Foreclosure Taskforce. Created a housing search workshop for Greater Boston Legal Services.

Katherine Collins, California Western School of Law

Worked over 500 hours of uncredited, unpaid pro bono service for Human Rights Watch.

Kristine Cruz, SMU Dedman School of Law [Nominated by Mosaic Family Services]

Went beyond the terms of her internship to design training materials for legal interns and pro bono attorneys, resulting in large-scale, systemic impact on Mosaic’s work.

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

This week, the 2013-14 PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award winners have been guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. Today, we’re featuring the grand prize winner and Emory University School of Law student Martin Bunt, a veterans’ rights advocate who co-founded the student-run Volunteer Clinic for Veterans.

Read Martin’s take on why veterans’ service organizations need to unite and work together below!

I recently went to a briefing in Atlanta on state and federal funding available for veterans and the organizations that benefit them with Sion New, the next student director of the Emory Law Volunteer Clinic for Veterans. Also present at the briefing were churches, summer camps, medical organizations, mental health organizations, veteran job training organization, veteran general support organizations, the American Red Cross.

This was not the first time I had attended a get-together of this type. To see the amount of organizations serving veterans is truly heartening. There are so many people who wish to serve veterans. However, what others and I realized at the meeting is that the amount of organizations serving veterans creates both an opportunity and a problem. The opportunity is the ability of organizations serving veterans to partner with each other to provide “whole package” services to veterans in need. The problem is how do organizations become aware of all the other organizations in their area that they should partner with to serve veterans?

Organizations that serve veterans and other organizations need to solve this problem. We cannot fully accomplish our goal of helping those we serve without working together.

Each service an organization provides is a piece of a puzzle. For example, the VCV provides legal services in the areas of discharge upgrades and VA benefits. But we only provide legal services.

The following hypothetical explains how this could fail to fully help a veteran who comes to us:

A veteran named Brad, for example purposes only, comes to our Clinic for help appealing a denied VA rating for PTSD. Brad believes that his PTSD is connected to his two tours in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. Since Brad was discharged he got married and has two kids. After service Brad realized that his temper flared easily and he often woke with nightmares of a battle where he lost three of his friends to mortar and RPG fire. Brad works at a job that underutilizes the skills he learned as a soldier and therefore he does not enjoy going to work. His temper and lack of sleep recently caused him to lose his job and has severely strained his marriage. From interviews with Brad, it is clear that he has struggled as a veteran to find a purpose and the structured lifestyle that the military gave him.

The VCV can advocate on Brad’s behalf and win a PTSD rating for him from the VA. But monthly disability checks will not help Brad get his life where he truly wants it. He needs a purpose, he needs counseling, and he needs help with his family. Just from the community of organizations I met this past week in Atlanta, Brad can get all the help he needs.

Purpose

A new organization in Atlanta, the Phoenix Patriot Foundation, individually tailors programs that get veterans involved in serving their community and learning new skills to provide these services. Brad will discover a niche in helping his community with a skill he already possesses or will learn. This service will in turn lead him down a path to a job that he truly enjoys.

Counseling

Multiple organizations present at the briefing provided individual PTSD counseling. These private organizations are effective and needed supplements to the VA’s efforts to provide PTSD counseling to veterans. Brad would receive individual counseling and mentoring on different methods to manage his tempers and sleep better at night.

Family

Camp Twin Lakes is a Georgia based organization that has a Wounded Warrior program that offers weekend getaways for veterans and their families at Camp Twin Lakes different camps around Georgia. During these getaways veterans and their families not only get a wonderful vacation but attend marriage and family counseling.

After Brad receives all of the services offered by these organizations he would truly be a different man: He would be receiving the VA benefits he has earned; he would have a new purpose by utilizing his skill sets to serve his local community and in turn discovering a new, more suitable career; He would learn to control his temper and sleep better at night; His marriage would be on a much better footing. Brad would find all the pieces to the puzzle of life falling into place.

This example demonstrates why service organizations must work together in a community to aid those they serve. I believe a great solution to service organizations discovering each other is to create a central website that lists all service organizations by targeted population and services offered. This does not yet exist in Atlanta, but I believe it will happen soon. Leaders of all service organizations have a duty to work together to help those that we serve receive the “whole package,” we are failing them if we do not.

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

This week, the 2013-14 PSJD Pro Bono Publico (PBP) Award honorees will be guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. Today, we’re featuring  Emory Law student Rachel Erdman, who helped PBP Award winner Martin Bunt create a student-run veterans’ rights clinic.

My name is Rachel Erdman, and together with Martin Bunt I co-founded the Emory Law Volunteer Clinic for Veterans. When people hear about my work with the Clinic, they generally assume that like Martin, I want to work in military law or in the public sector. When I explain that I’m going into intellectual property law at a large firm, I get confused looks. I’m often asked, “But then why are you so involved with pro bono work in veteran law?” The answer is simple: Attorneys aren’t limited by their area of law or firm size. Pro bono work is for everyone!

I did not seek out my biggest pro bono project, the Volunteer Clinic for Veterans. Instead, the Clinic found me. When Martin approached me at the end of 1L year, I had already accepted two other officer positions in extremely active student groups, and I knew that I would likely be on journal.  “I want to start this Clinic, but I can’t do it alone,” he said. “Will you help me?” There were a thousand reasons to say no. I didn’t have the time, it wasn’t in my area of focus, and we didn’t have a clear idea as to how I could even contribute. But in the end, pro bono work relies on us being able to open our hearts and say yes. You will always be glad that you did.

As attorneys and law students, we have the unique skill-set to help people in need, no matter what our background. Oddly enough, it was my background in science and systems that proved invaluable to the Clinic. Unlike Martin, I do not possess the admirable ability to walk into a room and immediately engage people in conversation. I typically end up turning red and mumbling something vaguely offensive, so I left the networking up to my co-founder. Instead, I quietly created the student-side infrastructure that one of the largest veteran’s clinics in the country needed to operate, all entirely for free. No matter what your background, you’ll always find an area that needs your skills.

Going into the private sector doesn’t mean that we can’t also volunteer. When I decided to pursue a job in Big Law, my public-sector law friends joked that I had turned to the dark side. But Big Law attorneys can play a critical role as pro bono advocates. Pro bono work is a never-ending flood of people in need. The attorneys that dedicate their lives to helping others simply can’t do it alone. They need allies in firms of all sizes and in every field of law.

Think of the Salvation Army standing outside of a store, ringing their bells with the big red buckets during Christmastime. If just one person in a group of people walking past these buckets tosses in their change, other people in the group are more likely to follow. The same applies to a firm. When people are involved in pro bono work, other attorneys in the firm are more likely to be interested. If pro bono interest is strong enough, the firm will even change its policies to make volunteering easier, such as allowing some pro bono hours to count towards the billable hour requirement, or organizing fundraising and charity events. Pro bono advocates in the private sector can therefore play a huge rule in shaping the pro bono community.

So next time you find yourself wondering whether you should take on a pro bono project, don’t be discouraged by your background or your area of law. The pro bono community is full of attorneys that would be more than happy to guide and mentor you. And most importantly, the people that you help don’t care about your background or if you’re in Big Law or from a tiny firm – they’re just happy that you said yes.

* Photo taken by Atlanta photographers LeahAndMark & Co.

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

This week, the 2013-14 PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award winners will be guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. Today, we’re featuring Merit Distinction honoree and Seton Hall University School of Law student Karol Ruiz, an advocate for undocumented immigrant children who helps host of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) clinics for her community.

Read below for Karol’s post on community lawyering and how she uses it to help undocumented immigrant students.

Many attorneys and law students enter the profession of law to answer a call to serve from deep within ourselves.  In my work, I follow the wisdom of Lao Tzu, who said, “A leader is best when people barely know she exists, when her work is done, her aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”  I first learned this valuable lesson from my mentor, Wind of The Spirit Immigrant Resource Center co-founder Diana Mejia, a humble yet commanding community leader.  She never uttered Lao Tzu’s words; she lived them.  The best teachers lead by example.

Following in her footsteps, I joined the struggle to end the discriminatory practice of barring admission to undocumented immigrant students at my alma mater, the County College of Morris.  As a former undocumented student, my lobbying began in 2008 with the painful sharing of my personal story before the college board of trustees.  With the help of then New York University law student interns, Camilo Romero and Sara Cullinane, my advocacy evolved to include the legal and economic arguments against the college’s discriminatory practices.  Soon after, others galvanized to share their own stories.  In 2010, immigrants and allies from all over New Jersey filled the college gymnasium, clamoring for immigrants’ rights to higher education before the board, the county freeholders, the press, and even the anti-immigrant groups opposing the end to the discriminatory practice. We succeeded not only in changing the policy, but in raising awareness in our community and building a network of activists.  The law students involved in the movement inspired me to apply to law school.  Together, we inspired our entire community to work toward reform of state and national immigration laws.  It takes a village.

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