Practitioner Testimonial

Practitioner Peter Sessa

Furthering social justice is as important to Peter Sessa as air and water.

This Brooklyn native went into law in the late 1970s to help the disaffected populations help themselves.  After graduating St. John's University School of Law, Sessa heeded the call of the social justice and headed to Appalachia to do legal work and community organizing for some of the nations poorest citizens.

"I was lucky because I did not go to Vietnam," proclaims Sessa.  "This was my service back to the country," he explains his choice of career.

But after a few years of striking with the United Mine Workers, starting Battered Women's Shelter and aiding other grassroots community organizations, this legal services attorney felt constrained by new Reagan era restrictions.  Frustrated by the Republican government's new limitations on legal services, Sessa quit his not-for-profit job and started his own for-profit private practice in Boston in 1981.

"I went out cold.  It was so hard for the first few years," recalls Sessa.

Over the years, Sessa built a successful five lawyer firm, which does all types of civil work. Meanwhile, Sessa created a niche for himself in housing and complicated real estate transactions.  One of his clients is the city of Boston, which he represents on all of its affordable housing developments.

Although Sessa is an expert in his field, a few years ago he still chose to join an economic development attorney network run out of Northeastern University School of Law. 

The practitioner networks, which were created at City University of New York School of Law, University of Maryland School of Law, and Northeastern University School of Law, 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.

Sessa not only participated in forming the direction of the network, but also has taken on a mentoring role for less experienced attorneys interested in economic development work.

He claims the network has afforded him an opportunity to be a student as well as a teacher.  "Not only have I taught younger lawyers but I was able to learn things from other lawyers who were doing economic development work other than what I was doing," he says.  "You really can teach an old dog new tricks," he adds.

Also being around like-minded peers bent on delivering services to lower income people broke Sessa's isolation.  "It is great dealing with people who have a sense of social justice.  You have more commonality in this network than you would in a general bar association," he says.  According to Sessa, the difference between a bar association and the practitioner network is that bar associations tend to be "more formal, more sterile and less interactive."

Having access to Northeastern Law School's resources saved the very busy Sessa time and saved his cost-conscious clients money. For example, the Law School's librarian assisted Sessa on a number of research projects, time that his clients were not billed for.  Also, when he came across an unfamiliar issue, his fellow network members and Northeastern's law professors helped him out or put him in touch with someone who could help.

And even though the pressure to have a viable, lucrative business is always there, the social justice spirit is just as alive in Sessa today as it had been while he was working for legal services.  He claims that 50 percent of his practice has always been either pro bono or low bono work.  "My practice is profitable.  Of course, I could make a lot more money if I wanted to, but I don't," says Sessa.  "I have a deep commitment in me to social justice issues," he says.  "I couldn't live with myself if I wasn't doing this type of work." 

So a large part of his practice still consists of counseling different grassroots organizations, helping them grow from loosely bound groups of individuals to united community powerhouses.  "It has been a true pleasure seeing groups and people win unwinable fights while at the same time learn to fight injustice in the future," he says.

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