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.