Civil Law

Republished with permission from the sidebar, the newlsetter of the Westmoreland Bar Association. April 2010.

It soon became readily apparent, even to the lawyers in attendance, that there was a problem. Back in November 2009, at a meeting of the Pro Bono Committee of the Westmoreland Bar Foundation, the members realized there was now a substantial waiting list of pro bono divorce clients, mostly because there were not a lot of lawyers eagerly willing to take on a pro bono divorce.

Iva Munk, the long-time coordinator of the Bar Foundation's Pro Bono Program, had reported that there were over fifty clients on the list, some of whom had been waiting more than a year.

"It's difficult, with all our other priorities, to keep up with the demand for family law lawyers," Iva said. "There are only a few who have agreed to take pro bono cases."

What? Lawyers not wanting to take pro bono divorces? What a surprise. Next thing you know, they won't want to be drawn and quartered anymore either.

But the committee was undaunted. They (Jack Bergstein, Bruce Tobin, Judge Ackerman, Beth Orbison, Dick Galloway, Janice Galloway, and Peter Saxman, with Iva Munk and Diane Krivoniak as staff) knew this situation had to be addressed. "The committee recognized at once that we were not serving the needs of the public by permitting such a long wait for service," Diane recalls, "and they were resolute in their intentions to solve the problem."

By mid-December, the committee, and other members just recently appointed, had come up with a multi-pronged approach to the problem. The committee realized that it would not be practical to ask volunteer attorneys to handle complex contested, equitable distribution, or custody claims. Those cases, it was thought, would be better and more fairly served by referrals to the reduced-fee panel. (For those unfamiliar with the program, there are a meaningful number of WBA members who have agreed to handle certain kinds of cases on a reduced-fee basis for those clients unable to pay the going rate.)

Next, Bill McCabe and David Millstein offered to call a large number of colleagues to solicit their help in providing assistance to those who qualified for pro bono services and whose cases did not appear to present the kind of family law issues that might occupy an attorney for the balance of a career. In short order, Bill and David had lined up a significant number of members who magnanimously agreed to step up and help. Bill obtained the cooperation of ten colleagues, David got way more than that.

The third prong of the approach required the most cooperation and was the most creative. Reasoning that there may be a number of younger lawyers in the county who would be willing to pitch in and help, but who perhaps had no practical experience in doing family law work the committee thought it might be useful to offer a basic CLE course in family law to train those with no hands-on experience.

Kathleen Kemp, at the time a Foundation board member, and Sam Rosenzweig jumped right in and agreed to have Laurel Legal Services organize and teach the CLE. In short order, the WBA got the course certified for credit and on February 24, Kathleen and Leeann Pruss presented the CLE. The WBA agreed to waive the course fee for any lawyer who would agree to take on one pro bono divorce case. Twenty-two lawyers attended the CLE, and of those in attendance, 15 agreed to help by doing one case each.

All told, it was the remarkable coalescence of caring, efficiency, cooperation, and goodwill that made for such a satisfying result. Between November 9, when the problem first became apparent, and March 31, when the smoke cleared, the entire backlog of divorce cases had been assigned to volunteer attorneys. Some brave colleagues even offered to do more than one.

Below is the list of all of our colleagues who volunteered their services to reduce the waiting list. The first nine had been regularly taking cases all along, the rest all responded affirmatively to the call to help.

Our thanks goes out to them for acting in the best traditions of the bar and for helping to preserve the WBA's reputation for professionalism, for caring, and for their willingness to do what's needed. Thanks also to the staff of the WBA, particularly Diane and Iva, to our colleagues at Laurel Legal Services, especially Kathleen, Sam and Leeann, and to the Pro Bono Committee of the Westmoreland Bar Foundation. It was, all in all, a remarkable achievement and one for which many of us can take considerable pride. Everyone involved gets cookies.