National Pro Bono Week is only three weeks away! For the past five years, the event has provided an annual, national spotlight on lawyers’ professional responsibility to those unable to pay for legal services. Hopefully, October is a month when all of us ask ourselves what else we might do to contribute in our communities, despite our busy schedules.

Some pro bono work can involve long-term commitments, but we tend to forget how much even a few moments of legal advice mean to someone unable to afford more. Isolated free evenings can make a difference.

The tricky part can be figuring out what to do with them. The legal needs of individuals unable to afford our professional rates are great, and a plethora of organizations in cities across the country need volunteer assistance as they attempt to meet them. Tools like ProBono.net’s National Pro Bono Opportunities Guide and Pro Bono Students Canada’s Community Placement Program and the Court and Tribunal Program do excellent work cataloging these programs. Unfortunately, it is sometimes unclear what these organizations need. Lawyers fill out a form or send an email without knowing where and when they might be asked to contribute.

Starting this year, PSJD would like to make it a little easier to find a use for your free moments. Once or twice a month (depending on demand) we will highlight specific opportunities in each NALP region for attorneys to turn up and get involved in pro bono work on the spot. Some of these opportunities will require activity beyond the initial starting time and date; please read each event page carefully. Also be sure to read event pages to determine whether you must pre-register for the event. Our goal is to let you know when and where your services are needed in your community.

In order for this initiative to work, we will need your help. Public interest organizations that rely on legal volunteers: please reach out to us at psjd@nalp.org if you know of orientation events, trainings, or walk-in opportunities for volunteer lawyering in your community in the coming month and we will consider including your event in the next edition of this feature.

Enjoy giving back!

— PSJD

“Practicing Public Interest Law East of the Anacostia River”: 4th Annual Summer Panel Discussion with the East of the River Casehandlers

Friday, July 18, 2014  |  12:30 pm – 2 pm Deanwood Neighborhood Library  | 1350 49th St NE, Washington DC 20019

Metro: Deanwood (Orange Line)

THE PROGRAM

The East of the River Casehandlers group invites all legal interns, summer associates, law students and pro bono attorneys to come find out more about practicing public interest law east of the Anacostia River.  This informal panel discussion will feature attorneys from DC legal services providers that serve the low-income residents of these diverse and vibrant neighborhoods.  Imoni Washington of the DC Bar Foundation will join us after the provider panel to discuss the Loan Repayment Assistance Program for public interest lawyers working in the District and the recent grants the DCBF has made to legal services providers east of the river.  We will also have information available on student internship and pro bono opportunities with EOTR legal services providers.

REGISTRATION

To register, contact Heather Hodges at 202.269.5100 or hhodges@nlsp.org. This program is intended to be highly interactive and driven by your questions.  We encourage you to submit any questions you have with your registration request.

ABOUT US

The East of the River Casehandlers meet every three months at the Anacostia Library  to share program information and discuss strategies for dealing with issues of common concern to our low-income clients in Wards 7 and 8.  We also conduct legal information programs for community members and legal services attorneys.  Our next meeting will be on August 22, 2014.  Please send an e-mail to EastoftheRiverLawyers-subscribe@mail.lawhelp.org if you would like to join our listserv.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Every day this week, the 2013-14 PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award winner and honorable mentions will be guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. Today, we’re featuring Merit Distinction honoree and University of California, Berkeley School of Law student  Ioana Tchoukleva, a prisoners’ rights advocate and creator of the student-run Post-Conviction Advocacy Project (PCAP). 

Read Ioana’s take on non-linear public interest career paths and how she balances her domestic and international legal work:

First year of law school, you are told that your 1L summer job matters — it will put you on the path to your dream job and somehow magically prepare you for the rest of law school. The following year, you are told that your 2L summer job basically determines where you will work after graduation, so you better choose carefully! In fact, throughout law school you feel a latent anxiety that underlies every move you make. For many, at the core of that anxiety lies a fear of not doing the right thing, of being behind in one way or another, of missing out on opportunities. This feeling of “not being good enough” runs deep and affects students in a variety of ways that reverberate way beyond law school.

Read the rest of this entry »

Click the link to view a flyer for the University of Baltimore Law School’s Alternative Spring Break!

Any law student can volunteer. The program runs from March 16-19th, 2014. Every day, students will work with a basic human right – the right to housing, the right to food and water, the right to representation, and the right to work.

For more info, view the posting on PSJD or contact Emily C. Rogers at ERogers@ubalt.edu.

by Ashley Matthews, PSJD Fellow

Equal Justice Works (EJW) has been working on an initiative to help law students bridge the justice gap while gaining practical skills and hands-on experience. They’re calling it Law Students for Pro Bono, and hundreds of law students, recent law grads and lawyers have already joined in on the campaign.

From the Law Students for Pro Bono site:

The ABA should amend Proposed Interpretation 303-2 to include an aspirational goal for all law schools to promote student participation in at least 50 hours of pro bono service during law school that can be fulfilled in a wide range of activities, including pro bono legal services, credit-bearing clinics, summer public interest internships, and externships that help under-served communities.

Earlier today, I sat down with EJW’s executive director David Stern to talk about the petition. David explained the inspiration for this initiative, why pro bono is important to everyone in law school including those who want to work for private firms, and what this could mean for the public interest job market.

Given the dearth of access to justice, this initiative is necessary to make sure we meet the legal needs of vulnerable populations who need help the most. The deadline to sign is this Friday, January 31, 2014.