Transitioning into working for the DV Civil Clinic

Working at Legal Aid this summer has been an eye opening experience.  I am still working there as a volunteer even though school has started and hope to continue volunteering until I have my baby.  I find it very rewarding to work with these clients despite some of the difficulties I may have described in other posts.  My experience also motivated me to sign up for the law school's Domestic Violence Civil Clinic.  In the civil clinic we are learning how to work with a very delicate population-- the survivors of emotional and physical abuse.  I already have some experience talking to survivors at Legal Aid and I want to learn how to relate to and help these people best.  Once of my most memorable Domestic Violence cases was a young woman who was raped multiple times by an ex-boyfriend.  The ex-boyfriend threatened her and said he would hire a fancy lawyer and destroy her reputation.  I made sure I emphasized that she did the right thing by filing a police report and coming to Legal Aid.  I think it is important to recognize how difficult it must be to talk about such a personal trauma.  I look forward to learning how to become a better advocate for these people and continuing to give back to my local community.

Handling Emotional Clients

Many clients seeking help at Legal Aid are there for a very legitimate reason.  Unfortunatley some of these people have experienced either emotional or physical abuse.  Others are in difficult situations involving family issues, housing, or finances.

This particular case stands out because it was very sad.  A daughter came to Legal Aid because her father recently passed away.  The father had re-married and the new wife made an effort to keep the children away from the father when he was sick and dying.  She also encouraged the father to change his will and give her everything.  Sometimes in difficult cases like this it was hard to remain impartial and professional. I would always make an extra effort to empathize and give the client plenty of time to tell the story.  These cases are more difficult when I relay the facts to Ralph and there is very little we can do at Legal Aid.  Since I've been a volunteer there for a longer amount of time, Ralph now asks me what I think we should do in every case.  I know our resources are limited as far as giving clients time with attorneys.  I make an extra effort to triage that precious attorney time to situations such as these.

Strange Stories Part 2

This next set of strange stories involves long distance marriage and paternity.

1)  A male in his thirties came to legal aid because he said his fiance was denied an international visa.  In his paperwork, the man's only income was $500 of food stamps.  I asked how he met his girlfriend and it turns out he has known her for five months and only over the internet.  Yet, he was convinced she was the one and went through the (expensive?) process of bringing her to the United States.  Supposedly she was stuck in Europe after a layover because her paperwork was denied.  This was a a strange situation.  Ralph's instruction was to refer him to a private immigration attorney in town.


2) One of my clients this last week was a young man approximately 25 years old.  He was he was at legal aid because he wanted to pay child support and be involved in the life of his young daughter who was only a few days old.  I congratulated him and asked how long he knew the mother and if they were still together.  He knew the mother for about seven months and they were no longer together.  I delicately asked if seven months was how long they were dating or if that was the timeline he had known her.  He was adamant that was how long he knew this woman and he relocated from Bend to raise his daughter.  I next asked him if he had a paternity test.  He seemed a bit confused but said he had not.  I then asked him how he knew it was his daughter.  His response, "she looks a lot like me."  I had a hard time gently informing him that from what he told me I did not understand how he could be the biological father of this child.  I encouraged him to take a paternity test but made sure to inform him he did not have to do this and he could choose to take the role of father in this child's life voluntarily.

Cases Regarding Money Issues

A lot of the cases I saw at Legal Aid involved debts.  These cases ranged from bankruptcy to underlying landlord tenant issues/divorces.  In many of these cases my experience working in the Small Claims Mediation Clinic two summers ago proved very helpful.  Thanks to my experience at the courthouse I knew the process a client goes through when he or she goes through the small claims process.  Most clients are not aware that they will be placed in mediation before they see the judge.  I always made sure to make an effort to describe the process and benefits of mediation.  Often this gave clients some comfort going into a small claims dispute.  One example: a woman who had no income except disability and government support had to go to small claims for a $300 bill owed to EWEB. I told her she was judgement proof and merely had to file an answer, show up, and tell the debt collector at mediation that she was judgement proof.  Most likely the debt collector would have no other choice but to forgive the debt.  This kind of assurance ensured that she filed an answer instead of trying to avoid the whole situation.  I also encouraged other clients to come into mediation with a BATNA and a WATNA.  Sometimes I spent a little extra time to walk the client through questions he or she might be asked at mediation and coached him or her on how to effectively communicate interests.

Juveniles seeking help

Some difficult clients I experienced at legal aid were juvenile cases.  Often the juvenile was accompanied by a parent or guardian.  One example that stands out was a custody battle.  A mother brought her autistic daughter to legal aid because the father, who lives out of state, insisted that the daughter stayed with him all summer.  It was written into their parenting plan.  According to the mother, the daughter refuses to see the father and has told her therapist that she would hurt herself if she was forced to go.  In this situation I chose to ask the mother to leave the room.  This way, I could speak with the juvenile without the input and influence of an adult.  I think in these cases it is important to make sure the juvenile has a say in his or her case.  Often that might be difficult when a parent is in the room doing most of the talking.  In this case, it turned out that the daughter's story matched the mother's.  My suggestion to Ralph as a result was to re-negotiate the parenting plan to more closely align with the child's interests.

Mid-term Evaluation

When I sat down to talk with Ralph about strengths and weaknesses, he was overall very thankful for all the effort and time I (as well as the other volunteers) put into helping low income people who otherwise would not have access to legal advice.  He said I have been doing very well so far.  The one suggestion he had for me was to be firm when I get a contentious client.  Sometimes, unfortunately, there is nothing we at Legal Aid can do for a client.  When I relay this information some clients get really angry.  Sometimes they don't leave and keep asking other questions.  I would be very careful to be respectful to these people so I would keep going back to Ralph's office to ask these people's questions.  Of course, this prevents me from helping other clients in the packed waiting room.  I have since then been making an effort to be kind yet firm with these difficult clients.

Non-English Speaking Clients

I think one of my greatest assets as a volunteer for legal aid is that I am fluent and/or proficient in Polish, French, and Spanish.  A large number of clients we have at legal aid speak Spanish with a varying amount of English language skill.  It is often difficult to help these clients since most volunteers do not speak Spanish.  Often they have to wait for Connie (one of the Spanish speaking receptionists) to come in the room to translate.  I volunteered to take all the Spanish speaking clients.  As someone who grew up with Polish as my native language, I know how it feels to be a non-English speaker.  Connie is fantastic and a great translator, but there is always something lost in translation.  Also, directly communicating with my client builds a greater sense of trust and connection.  Of course my Spanish skills are not flawless and I would be transparent about this fact.  Every single non-English speaker was gladly willing to be patient and work with me as we pieced together the story.  I found these to be some of the most rewarding clients I met with.  Also, I noted that not a single Spanish speaking client ever treated me rudely (unfortunately I found it common among clients I met at Legal Aid to take their frustrations out on the volunteer).  I believe there is definitely value in connecting with someone in their language and empathizing with their culture.  Sometimes this is overlooked in law; it is, however, more emphasized in ADR practice.

Landlord/tenant Problems

A lot of the clients in the last couple weeks I have met with came to legal aid with landlord/tenant issues.  Almost all of these have been the tenant.  In my weeks of working in Legal Aid, I have noticed a defined trend in these types of cases.  It seems like many of them stem from miscommunication between the landlord and tenant.  In most situations the landlord is portrayed as the rich, evil, controlling entity.  As the volunteer it is my job to ask unbiased questions that seek to find the legal issues at hand.  I have offered landlord-tenant mediation to many of the people in these situation.  Of course, I am biased a bit with my affinity for mediation, but I made an extra effort to explain not only how mediation works but also the benefits of sitting down with a landlord and discussing what is the cause of the problem.  Surprisingly I had a lot of success with people agreeing to give mediation a try!  These were probably some of the more rewarding times because I was able to integrate some of the classroom knowledge from the CRES program.

Strange stories part 1

In this post I will discuss some of the most memorable cases from the last couple weeks working as an intake volunteer.

1)  This one was overall the strangest client I have met in my entire experience.  The client was an older woman (approximately sixty years old).  She claimed she worked as an adult entertainer and found most of her work on craigslist.  In the last couple weeks she said she accepted a job from a man she did not know very well.  The client claimed the man "stole her cherries [ovaries]."  She was adamant that he had been so rough with her that she is missing parts.  When I asked if she had seen a doctor or had any record, she produced a journal of her repeated encounters with this man.  When I relayed this predicament to Ralph, he suggested that I refer her to a domestic violence representative.

2)  Another case involved a male client (also elderly-- approximately 70 years old).  He told me that about a year ago he saw a homeless woman in the parking lot of a department store.  He felt sorry for her and took her home to his house and intended to temporarily give her a place to live.  It was not his intent to have her become a permanent resident.  When he tried to evict her and told her to leave she would refuse.  The client said that he had contacted police but to no avail.  Ralph recommended that he meet with one of our volunteer attorneys.  After a certain amount of time, the woman becomes a legal tenant so evicting her becomes tricky.  I felt like the man did not give me all the details in this case.  In my experience so far, I have found this happens a lot!  I try to give clients a lot of space and freedom to talk and tell their story.  But, in many cases, clients omit details and I only get a narrowly shaded side of the story.

First Day

Today was my first day at legal aid.  I met Ralph Saltus, who is the intake volunteer director.  Ralph has held his position for forty three years!  He has seen a lot of different cases and people coming in for help.  Since it was my first day I was assigned to shadow another volunteer, Luke.  As an intake volunteer, we are required to meet each client warmly with a handshake.  Each volunteer takes his or her client to a private room and closes the door for privacy.  We tell the clients we are volunteers and that the information they tell us is confidential between the volunteer and the supervisor.  After introductions, we tell the client we will be asking them about financial information for eligibility purposes (in order to qualify for legal aid services there are maximum amounts of income allowed for certain size families).  Next, the volunteer discusses what problem brings the client to legal aid.  Once the volunteer feels he or she has gathered sufficient information, the volunteer steps out of the room and brings the sheet of paper with the information to Ralph.  We relay the information to Ralph and he advises what we should do for the client (i.e. set the client up with a volunteer attorney, send them to divorce class, refer them to the modest means program, etc).  At legal aid I had the opportunity to experience all sorts of issues (except for criminal issues- Legal Aid does not help with these).  On my first day I did not see any heart breaking cases.  That would come later.