To the Members of the Bar in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: It is a distinct pleasure for me to support the pro bono programs though which Massachusetts lawyers contribute their professional expertise to those who are unable to afford, but who urgently need, legal representation.

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A lawyer should provide annually at least 25 hours of pro bono publico legal services for the benefit of persons of limited means. In providing these professional services, the lawyer should:

(a) provide all or most of the 25 hours of pro bono publico legal services without compensation or expectation to persons of limited means, or to charitable, religious, civic, community, governmental, and educational organizations in matters that are designed primarily to address the needs of persons of limited means. The lawyer may provide any remaining hours by delivering legal services at substantial reduced compensation to persons of limited means or by participating in activities for improving the law, the legal system, or the legal profession that are primarily intended to benefit persons of limited means; or,

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by Mary M. Connolly, Esq
Executive Director, Volunteer Lawyers Project, Boston

When Massachusetts attorneys are sworn in as members of the bar, they pledge to uphold the promise of the Massachusetts Constitution that "each citizen ought to obtain right and justice freely, and without being obliged to purchase it

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Maren Robinson, M.S.W., J.D., served as managing Attorney with the Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association for nine years.

Like any other individuals, lawyers may be involved in any number of nonprofit, volunteer endeavors from coaching children?s soccer to serving on the board of an art museum. Our focus here is the volunteerism of which lawyers alone are capable:providing pro bono legal representation to an indigent client who could not otherwise afford an attorney. It is this unique gift which, when given, gives back.

The benefits of pro bono work can be best understood by remembering that becoming a lawyer is an ongoing process. When graduating from law school, as when fresh born, one is not a finished product. The first and most obvious benefit of volunteering legal time occurs at the start of one?s legal career when the learning curve is the greatest. The training and mentoring available through organized legal aid offices are major benefits by providing vehicles for learning the basics of substantive law and procedure. An extended network of experienced legal practitioners is available to assist with queries. This is not only for the novice attorney with experience who wishes to expand his private practice into a new substantive area.

The other benefits of early-career volunteerism is the opportunity to work directly with a client. This is an ideal opportunity for the new lawyer to get exposure to the delights and difficulties of attorney-client relationships. The attorney may not only work with the low income client, but also with administrative agency bureaucrats, community contracts, and service providers. It is an ideal forum for beginning the development of skills in working with people, an important component of any legal practice, litigation or transactional.

For the young attorney to take on a pro bono client is a growth opportunity of astounding proportions. The legal issues in the case rarely involve complex financial or tax issues remain relatively straightforward, be they family law, consumer or landlord-tenant. It is, however, case handling from soup to nuts and the young attorney has to make the judgement calls, do the negotiating, listen to and communicate with the client who may have some emotional issues along with the legal problem. It is, in short, legal practice reality. It is a maturing process and to the benefit of the young attorney?s law form, as well as the individual.

A young attorney is assessing the benefits of his participation in Colorado?s "Lend-A-Lawyer" program said:

As a lawyer who often represents corporations in employment disputes, the opportunity to represent individuals gave me a greater understanding of the complexities of individuals decision making and a great appreciation for how individual employees respond in settlement negotiations, deposition, and trial. In turn, this has improved my preparations for each.

The benefits to the legal employer are confirmed by Deval Patrick, former U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights. In speaking of job applicants with legal aid experience, he said:

They have experience with the gritty business of solving people?s problems. I think what separates great lawyers from good lawyers is not primarily academic training. Of course, you have to be fluent in the law and procedure, and you have to communicate effectively. But the most intractable legal problem are rarely solved without careful, patient listening and the innovation that comes from varied experiences. Those are the skills that you develop at the [Legal Aid] Bureau.

What then are the benefits to the more advanced attorney, happily settled in his familiar practice, with plenty of experience where he needs it?

Steve Oleskey, former president of the board of directors of the Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association and a partner at Hale and Dorr, believes that continuing involvement in pro bono has multiple for the experienced attorney. Among them is a perspective and intellectual reach beyond one?s own narrow practice focus, both of which serve to make the individual and his life more interesting. Perhaps more importantly, Oleskey believes, the view into a world not as economically advantaged as that of most lawyers is healthy and serves to keep an attorney from becoming too insular. It is easy in the current legal workplace of expensive specialists to forget the more acute legal problems of preserving housing for one's family, feeding one's children or getting medical care.

This view is shared by Regina Healy of Healy, Fiske & Woodbury whose practice is exclusively in the area of family law. When she is waiting in court on a pro bono case, a prolonged, unproductive wait is noticeably difficult. She realizes with empathy what it is like for the many people who have to miss a day's work in order to come to court . This perspective is essential to any understanding and assessment of what is right and/or wrong with the court or legal process on a systemic level.

Justice Brennan, writing in 1968, was concerned about a possible schism between the private bar and the developing public interest bar if they did not share in each other's work. He warned that:

When attorneys in private practice] become increasingly removed from the social and public problems and concerns that society deems most exigent and vital, they may become narrow in point of view, unduly circumscribed by the private and parochial interests of their clients, lacking in perspective and vision.

Serving the indigent through pro bono work provides another benefit appealing to attorneys at all points of legal professional development and that is "doing good' or doing the "right thing.' For the young lawyer this touches the idealism that is frequently and appropriately part of the motivation for becoming a lawyer in the first place. Job satisfaction is enhanced when they have the opportunity to directly address an injustice or simply assist another human being in trouble. Saving the housing for a family or securing Social Security benefits for a disabled individual provides just such intense satisfaction. Additionally, it is a confidence-building and empowering experience.

This benefit touches the more experienced attorney as well. Richard T. Oshana, a solo practitioner formerly in real estate development, who has assisted innumerable pro bono clients with bankruptcies, believes that the law was originally a service profession and that the greatest fulfillment as a professional is helping those who are in need. He continues to be grateful to his former boss, now U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Henry Boroff, for exposing him to this benefit by requiring all attorneys in the firm to carry one pro bono case a year.

In the eyes of many experienced practitioners the benefit of being a fully developed professional requires giving back to the community from which one draws one's professional identity and rewards. James J. McCusker, whose family law practice spans more than thirty years, is committed to assisting not only the indigent who could not otherwise afford counsel but also to helping young attorn6ys struggling to develop their skills by being available as a mentor to them. Henry Thayer, a real estate attorney and partner at Rackemann, Sawyer & Brewster, has served indigent clients with a variety of legal problems for more than twenty years because he believes it to be an important part of his professional identity.

This concept of giving back to the community is shared by Bruce McElvenny, a solo practitioner with an M.B.A. and C.P.A. as well as a J.D., whose practice consists of 50% business law and 50% tax counseling. He suggests that because attorneys wield such power in our society they have an obligation to give something back to the community. He says: "The practice of law should involve more than the pursuit of financial remuneration. It should also involve using those unique legal skills, which vest us with a professional responsibility as attor- neys, to assist the needs of others."

David Rosenberg of Rosenberg & Schapiro, president of the board of directors of Greater Boston Legal Services, believes that the contribution to society in doing pro bono work is not only an integral part of being a legal professional but important to the image of the legal profession in the eyes of nonprofessionals. This view is echoed in the words of Jerome J. Shestack, former president of the ABA:

The final element of legal professionalism is pro bono service. There are many reasons for such service, even apart from the common decency of helping those in need. Much has been given to our profession; it seems right to give something back - indeed, it is an ethical obligation. ...if we fail to address the central and crucial needs in our society we will become more circumscribed, confined to lesser roles and entitled to lesser respect.

Perhaps the most important of the professional benefits of participating in pro bono work is the direct contribution to the principle of equal access to justice. In 1919 Reginald Heber Smith wrote:

Differences in the ability of classes to use the machinery of the law, if permitted to remain, lead inevitably to disparity between the rights of classes... And when the law recognizes and enforces a distinction between classes, revolution ensues or democracy is at an end.

Although not many attorneys today respond with a sense of alarm to the suggestion of a slippery slope leading to revolution, it remains true that equal access to justice is an essential principle of our democracy.

Tom Miller, a solo practitioner who has helped many distressed indigent clients in the areas of family law and bankruptcy, reflects that our judicial system and its structures were designed to protect the property rights of the rich, the earls fighting over Blackacre. He suggests that, although judge Richard Posner has shown this system to be a poor economic model for individual problem resolution, there has been little systemic change. Thus a system, not economically efficient for the wealthy, is virtually inaccessible to the poor. Miller posits that we, who are the instruments of that system, have an obligation to do pro bono work to keep the system working until some systemic evolution takes place." It is economically and morally self-preserving.

Cotton Mather once said: "If any man ask, Why is it so necessary to do good? I must say, it sounds not like the question of a good man." The moral pluralism of our modern society as well as the breadth and diversity of the legal profession allow attorneys fairly to ask: Why should we do pro bono? The answer from a number of legal perspectives is because it is morally and economically the right thing to do. The benefits that flow from it serve both important individual and professional goals for attorneys. Nevertheless, many attorneys regularly participating in pro bono work acknowledge that, whatever the benefits to us as legal professionals, the most satisfying benefit is derived from not turning away from another human being in need.

-Boston Bar Journal May/June 1998

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Lynn Girton is Chief Counsel of the Volunteer Lawyers Project of the Boston Bar Association. She was formerly the Senior Managing Attorney of the Employment and Welfare unit of Greater Boston Legal Services.

There is no doubt that lawyers who contribute their time on a pro bono basis derive great personal and professional satisfaction from representing clients. It is equally true that clients gain substantial benefit from such representation. In the overwhelming number of cases, clients are very impressed with the quality of lawyering. In addition, clients frequently comment on how much the lawyer's kindness and interest in their case mattered to them.

What follows is a sampling of stories of clients of the Volunteer Lawyers Project (VLP). VLP serves low income persons in the greater Boston area. Over 90% of the requests for legal services fall in one of the following categories: housing; family; consumer, including bankruptcies and public benefits. In 1997 VLP served over 1100 people. These clients were served by either staff attorneys working for VLP or by one of the attorneys providing pro bono representation. Attorneys on the panel provided over 8000 hours of representation to clients. This is equivalent to over one million dollars worth of legal services. These contributions of time and talent are of invaluable assistance to clients as reflected in the following stories based on actual VLP clients.

I. Employment Case

Ms. C is a single mom whose twelve year old son is autistic. Ms. C worked at the Post Office for nine years. For the last six to seven years, she endured relentless racial harassment. Although she made several efforts to get the harassment to stop, none of her efforts was successful. As a result of the harassment, Ms. C began to seek counseling. She also suffered medical problems that were attributable to the harassment. Additionally, she was diagnosed with depression and was hospitalized. Although she called her supervisor to explain her absence, she was ultimately fired because of the absence.

After she was terminated, Ms. C applied for unemployment benefits. She was initially denied those benefits. After calling many numbers, she finally contacted VLP for help with her unemployment benefits. Additionally, her housing situation was at risk because she was unable to pay the rent. Joanna Allison, a staff attorney with VLP, resolved her housing problem by negotiating an agreement with the landlord. Her employment case was referred to Attorney Alida Bogran-Acosta. Ms. C and Ms. Bogran-Acosta attended a lengthy unemployment hearing and prevailed. Ms. Bogran-Acosta has also agreed to help Ms. C pursue various employment discrimination claims she has. Ms. C characterized her lawyers as "very patient, incredibly thorough and very organized." Although many other lawyers told her that she had a very good case, no other lawyer was willing to take the case without charging a fee. In sum, Ms. C said that VLP and her lawyers "were there when I really needed someone." She is eager to recommend both to others.

II. Consumer

Consumers often come to VLP for legal help. For example, Ms. K purchased a used car. She gave the used car company a down payment of $2000 and financed the remainder with a finance company affiliated with the dealer. Immediately after she purchased the car, she began to have problems with it. She returned the car to the dealer on several occasions. Each time the dealer said that the car had been fixed, but the car never ran properly. Ms. K stopped making payments on her car loan and the finance company repeatedly called her at her job.

At that point, Ms. K contacted VLP who assigned her case to Attorney Dan Greenwood. Mr. Greenwood, with the assistance of VLP staff, drafted a demand letter alleging violations of the Truth in Lending Act, Chapter 93A, the Used Car Lemon Law as well as other claims. Prior to a complaint being filed, the case was settled. The down payment for the car was returned to the client, along with an additional cash payment. Ms. K said Attorney Greenwood was very patient with her and was very good at sitting down and explaining everything to her.

III. Child's SSI Case

R is a 16 year old boy who has Attention Deficit Disorder, is bipolar and has a number of learning disabilities. His mother has struggled with his care and education needs for many years. She applied for SSI for her son, but was denied at every stage. She finally called VLP and was referred to Attorney Anne Sullivan.

Ms. Sullivan worked very hard on R's case and appeared on his behalf at an Administrative Law Judge hearing. After reviewing the evidence and hearing the testimony, the ALJ found R to be eligible for SSI. His mother says that with the additional income and the Medicaid that R receives as an SSI recipient, she is able to make sure he gets the medicine and counseling that he needs.

R's mother described Anne Sullivan as simply "fantastic." She was particularly impressed that Ms.-Sullivan was able to establish such a positive relationship with R in such a brief period of time.

IV. Group Clients

The legal assistance provided by the VLP pro bono attorneys is available not only to individuals but also to eligible groups. This representation can be especially satisfying to both the attorney and the group. One such group is A.R.T.S. (Arts Reaching Through Society). The goals of this group are twofold: to set up a studio for disabled persons and their caregivers to enable them to explore all aspects of the arts. Their second goal is to establish a violence prevention curriculum in the Roxbury middle schools. This program is now in area middle schools and after school programs.

When A.R.T.S first began, they needed legal assistance in becoming incorporated and in applying for 501 (c)3 status. It was at that time that they contacted VLP who secured representation for them from Testa, Hurwitz and Thibeault. The lawyer from the firm who assisted A.R.T.S. was Mary Kuusisto. Ms. Kuusisto filed the group's 501 (c)(3) and corporate documents. Eileen Feldman, the founder of A.R.T.S., says the representation has been wonderful. They successfully completed these initial tasks and the firm has remained involved with A.R.T.S. to assist with other matters including contract negotiations with employees and a variety of tax issues. The work of A.R.T.S. was recently lauded by Patricia Smith in a Boston Globe column.

V. Housing and Family Law

Ms. G was evicted along with her two small children three days before Christmas. She lived in Newton and she complained to her landlord about a variety of housing code problems, including a flood that ruined all of her furniture. Housing inspectors visited the apartment and corroborated her complaints. Notwithstanding these problems, the landlord was able to evict Ms. G because she missed the eviction court date, due in part to her ex-husband 's abusive conduct. At around the same time, Ms. G's husband was found guilty in Superior Court of several violations of the restraining orders and other matters and he was given a nine year prison sentence. During all of this, Ms. G was trying to hold down a job at an area Thrift Shop.

After she moved into a new apartment, she was served with another complaint by her former landlord seeking $18,000 in damages. It was at this point that she began looking for a lawyer. She called lots of places but she was unsuccessful. She finally called VLP and Ms. G said that when VLP told her that her case had been accepted, 'I felt like I hit the lottery."

Ms. G's case was assigned to attorney Dan Solomon. He immediately began negotiating with the lawyer for the landlord. They eventually reached a resolution of the matter whereby the landlord dropped all of his claims against Ms. G. Having solved the housing problem, Mr. Solomon agreed to represent Ms. G. in her pending divorce action.

Conclusion

VLP sends out a form to each client who is served by either a staff attorney or to an attorney who provided pro bono representation to the client. Every form that is returned is reviewed. The reviews make two themes quite evident. First, an effective and understanding relationship between VLP and panel members is essential. Panel attorneys consistently comment on the care with which cases are reviewed and assigned as well as the support they receive from VLP staff. Similarly, the breadth and depth of the knowledge of panel members is an invaluable resource to other panel members as well as VLP staff.

Secondly, clients consistently express much gratitude and respect for the panel attorney's time. We repeatedly read comments that speak with conviction about the quality of the representation and the caring role the lawyer played in the client's life at a difficult time.

-Boston Bar Journal May/June 1998

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