Practitioner Testimonial

Practitioner Roberta Chambers

Roberta Chambers is on her third career. But no matter what work she does, her main goal is always consistent: she has to help people.

This former school teacher and nurse, who immigrated here from Jamaica, is currently a practicing attorney in Queens, New York, a position she wants to hold on to and develop into the future.

"I always wanted to be a lawyer. But no matter what I did, it had to be meaningful and had to have a purpose," says Chambers, who has her own general, civil practice. "Law is a very influential position to be in," she adds. "It can change people's lives and change the outcome of a community." 

Chambers, who takes this responsibility very seriously, wants to serve her Queens community and at the same time do it her way. "The fire in me is that I had to row my own boat," she says.

Her efforts, so far, have paid off. As soon as Chambers opened the doors of her solo practice over a year ago, clients have been more than happy to enter. "Certain members of the community are glad that they don't have to travel to Manhattan anymore, and that they can go to an African-American and Caribbean attorney," says Chambers. 

Clients come to her for every problem from divorce to real estate to bankruptcy. Those who might not have been able to afford a city lawyer or who do not have a large up front retainer, now have someone to turn to. Chambers is willing to negotiate a price, take a smaller retainer or put a client on a payment plan, she says.

But rowing your own boat days on end, completely alone, can be a very isolating experience. That is why Chambers, a 1998 graduate of City University of New York School of Law, chose to participate in a practitioner network run out of her alma mater.

The practitioner networks, which were created at CUNY Law School, University of Maryland Law School and Northeastern University Law School, are part of the Law School Consortium Project. The Project aims to increase access to justice by supporting law schools to expand their educational and institutional mission beyond graduation to include support and service to solo and small-firm practitioners who are committed to serving low and moderate-income individuals and communities.

"Participating in a dialogue with other attorneys is very useful," Chambers points out. "It can help you in many different ways."

Through the CUNY network, Chambers met other lawyers who share her vision to assist her community and her passion to achieve it on her own. The network, as it is designed to do, helps Chambers do good while doing well.

"With a big group of lawyers able to help, you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time you do a new thing. It saves you so much time," she says.

For instance, through a network listserv, Chambers gets responses to any of her questions within 24 hours. Sometimes she just reads other attorneys' questions and answers on the listserv and learns a great deal from them. Her network colleagues give her such tips as what to charge for a particular service and how to put your best foot forward in front of a specific judge. "Its like a classroom environment and a mentoring process as well," she explains.

Network staff are also available to help the practitioners. For example, when Chambers picked up a computer virus from a disk, a member of the CUNY network staff came to her office to fix her computer. In addition, network staff negotiate discounted rates for WestLaw's online research and offer free continuing legal education courses to members. 

But it is the personal interaction with network lawyers that make the practitioner networks extremely important and useful to solo practitioners, she explains. "Sometimes you just need someone to clear the cobwebs or just give you a little lead. When you are having trouble seeing the forest through the trees, you really need someone else to redirect you to what really matters," she says.

Once, in an emergency, she even called one of the network lawyers for advice on a client problem, while that client waited for the answer in her conference room. "Getting this type of exposure to other colleagues in the network is invaluable," she stresses.

Written by Victoria Rivkin, a freelance writer in New York City