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LANCES OF JUSTICE FOR THE POOR - CUNY Law School Network Aids Public Interest Lawyers

By Dorothy M. Zellner

When Fred Rooney, a member of the 1986 inaugural graduating class of the CUNY School of Law, received a job announcement in the mail in 1998 for the position of Director of the School's newly-created Community Legal Resource Network (CLRN), it struck a chord.

The new project, the announcement read, would provide resources, support, and mentoring to new lawyers who wished to establish viable solo- and small-firm practices in underserved communities. And communities poorly served by the legal profession are numerous: according to the American Bar Association Commission on Non-Lawyer Practice, in 1995 as many as 70% to 80% of low-income persons were unable to obtain legal assistance, even when they needed and desired it. The ABA also estimated that conditions were not too much better for moderate-income families, 61% of whom could not find their way to the justice system in 1994.

Since his graduation, Rooney has become familiar with the tribulations experienced by lawyers who choose public-interest practice. First he worked at a Legal Services organization, earning so little that he actually received public assistance benefits for his family. Then he hung out his own shingle for low-income clients in 1987, choosing for his base of operations a Latino neighborhood of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. "When I first opened my office, everyone expected me to know everything. I didn't!" Rooney had to "re-invent the wheel" each time he was called upon to deal with a new need of his soon-burgeoning practice, which was sustained by significant sums of borrowed money that took him years to repay. He longed for a community of mentors and for a network of peers with whom he could interact. 

Rooney's career choice was, if not inevitable, certainly predictable. He had, after all, attended CUNY Law, which since its founding in 1983 has made a commitment to public interest law its prime focus. The School's motto-which is tellingly not in Latin but plain English and which is taken very seriously on the Flushing campus-is "Law in the Service of Human Needs." 

After a few rocky years, he not merely survived but developed a thriving practice, which now employs four attorneys and seven paralegals. The firm's work, which consists mainly of family law, bankruptcy, real estate, workers compensation, and social security cases, was honored in 1994 by the Pennsylvania Bar Association's "Pro Bono Award." As time passed, Rooney himself developed a specialty in international child abduction. This heartbreaking expertise was called on recently: Rooney was summoned by several television news programs to comment on the case of Elián Gonzalez. 

With 13 years of experience in his own small practice, Rooney saw the Community Legal Resource Network directorship as the perfect way to "return the kindness" of those mentors who had assisted him. He saw that CLRN could help other lawyers avoid what he had gone through and help them create financially viable and professionally satisfying lives.

Rooney got the job. Since October 1998 he has divided his time between New York City and Bethlehem, where he plays a scaled-back role in his firm.

The idea for the network was conceived in 1995. The then newly-appointed Dean, Kristin Booth Glen, invited members of every CUNY Law graduating class to her home for a series of dinners, and she heard, over and over, of their need for mentoring and support to survive in their practices for the underserved. Glen and Susan Bryant, Director of Clinical Education at the Law School, reached out to three other law schools whose mission they believed to be similar: the University of Maryland, Northeastern, and St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas. 

After two years of brainstorming and discussion among the four schools and George Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI), the new CLRN consortium received an OSI grant of $1.6 million to set up a demonstration model that would resource and support law graduates in community-based practices, facilitate a rethinking of the role of community lawyering, and challenge legal educators and students to work for wider access to the justice system. "Most law graduates," says Rooney, "never hear from their law schools until they're asked for money." He lauds Dean Glen for her visionary concept of "longitudinal" legal education. This, he says, is "truly revolutionary."

Each school agreed to experiment with a different aspect of the project. Maryland's CLRN created Civil Justice, Inc., a demonstration law office to model "best practices" aimed at unmet legal needs. Northeastern developed two CLRNs, one for domestic violence, the other for economic development. St. Mary's version, called the People's Legal Assistance Network, initiated an Internet network that provides services to small, isolated South Texas towns.

CUNY's Legal Resource Network started with 28 lawyers in three "practice groups." Now there are 45 members in five groups. These are organized according to professional focus: family law, immigration, employment discrimination (a special three-month program mentored by CUNY Law Professor Merrick Rossein), and two general practice groups.

CLRN's Immigration Specialist Miguel Negron, CUNY Law '94, runs a very successful practice with offices in Manhattan and on Long Island. He was profiled on the front page of the New York Law Journal last April under the headline, "Indigent Clients Feel Welcome at this Firm." Negron remarked in the article how scrupulous his poor clients were about paying their bills, though they sometimes take a long time and their "payment" sometimes takes the form of barter. "I have never had to hire a collection agency." 

CLRN helps its members avoid the usual starting-from-scratch hassles of office management, and it has also hired a part-time librarian and an e-mail network to assist them in legal research. Mentors with many years of experience are also available to work through more complicated problems. The head of CLRN's mentoring program, for example, is Kenneth I. Greenstein, who was a partner at Nixon Peabody and has 40 years of experience specializing in environmental law and public financing. The groups discuss many management issues, such as efficiency, billing, and how to place a "fair and reasonable value" on their work. As Rooney says, "You can't ask a person to engage in pro bono service if they can't pay their Con Ed bill." 

Early in his Bethlehem practice, Rooney obtained a contract with a local hospital to assist people with AIDS. For nominal reimbursement, his firm helped prepare wills, guardianship arrangements, and powers of attorney. Arrangements like this have carried over into CLRN, which is always on the lookout for ways Network members can augment their incomes while expanding service to low- and moderate-income clients. For example, Rooney and Negron set up a partnership with Baruch College last January to provide low-cost legal services one day a week to students who need advice on immigration-related matters. Fees of $50 per hour (considered extremely reasonable in a profession where it is not uncommon for lawyers to charge $250 or more an hour) are paid from student government funds. Since the service began in February, nearly 75 students have taken advantage of this assistance. Rooney has written to all Directors of Student Affairs and student government leaders in the CUNY system, hoping to set up a similar service on all campuses. He reports that members of CLRN general practice groups also hope to set up educational meetings at all CUNY campuses to provide general information about various areas of the law.

Rooney hopes that CLRN, which he expects ultimately to have 200 CUNY grad members, will be an "incubator" for experiments in other modes of legal work. (Rooney and CLRN can be reached at rooney@mail.law.cuny.edu or at 718-340-4451.)

At the heart of the program is Rooney's hope that "we've made a positive impact on our members so that they can continue to serve underserved communities." He has seen members grow and their self-confidence improve as their economic base has improved. He is convinced that "the program saved people from giving up [on the law], since the pressures of being a solo attorney are never-ending."

"The common theme that runs among all of us," Rooney reflects, "is our commitment to 'serving human needs,' and, somehow or other, we're going to do it."

TEXT BOX:
Shakespeare on Public Interest Law
Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it.
King Lear