Members of the Massachusetts nonprofit and legal communities gathered at the John Adams Courthouse on October 11 to join Lawyers Clearinghouse and the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission in kicking off the seventh year of the Clearinghouse’s Access to Justice Fellows Program.
Created in 2012 to address the need for more civil legal services, the founders of the Fellows Program recognized the potential for senior attorneys and retired judges to serve their communities. They believed that if these experienced lawyers volunteered to work with nonprofits, legal services organizations, and the courts, they could help close the “justice gap” that leaves so many unable to access the legal help they desperately need.
To date, 115 Fellows have signed on, devoting thousands of hours of pro bono service collectively to 70 partner organizations. This year’s class of 21 Fellows is engaged in a wide range of projects, using their decades of legal expertise to assist with matters related to affordable housing, disability law, domestic violence, workers’ rights, immigrants seeking asylum, student loan debt, mentoring recent law school graduates, and more.
Following opening remarks from Fellows Program Director Susan Gedrick, attendees heard from Rosalyn Garbose Nasdor, Director and Pro Bono Counsel at Ropes & Gray and a member of the Clearinghouse Board.
Roz welcomed the newest class of Fellows on behalf of the Clearinghouse. She remarked that the strength of the program is evident in the number of current and past Fellows who have received awards for their pro bono service over the past year alone: Dick Bauer, recipient of the Massachusetts Bar Association’s 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award; Ann Baum, recipient of Volunteer Lawyers Project’s (VLP) Gideon’s Trumpet Award; Steve Greenzang, recipient of VLP’s Denis Maguire Pro Bono Award; Irene Freidel, recipient of PAIR Project’s Outstanding Service Award; Richard Soden, recipient of the Boston Bar Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award; Al Zabin, recipient of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation’s 2018 President’s Award; and John Hand, recipient of the Supreme Judicial Court’s 2018 Adams Pro Bono Publico Award.
A senior partner from Ropes & Gray has participated in the Fellows Program every year since the program’s inception. Roz explained how much this means for these attorneys, who are able to focus on such meaningful pursuits, and for the firm’s younger associates, who gain hands-on experience and mentorship by assisting them.
Roz then introduced the evening’s Fellow speaker, Judge Patricia Bernstein (ret.). A former Associate Justice of the Boston Municipal Court, Judge Bernstein spent her 2017-2018 Fellowship year volunteering as a mentor with Justice Bridge Legal Center, an incubator program for recent law school graduates and young attorneys who represent modest-means clients who don’t qualify for free legal services. In addition to Judge Bernstein, nine Fellows have served with Justice Bridge since 2012.
Judge Bernstein said she was drawn to the opportunity to mentor after decades in the public sector and praised the program’s two-prong approach to access to justice: providing direct services to people who would otherwise lack counsel in court and empowering new attorneys to serve their community. She said the courts benefit from such a model as well, because people with counsel are better prepared to navigate the system effectively and efficiently.
Judge Bernstein’s experience as a Fellow is a testament to the program’s impact on access to justice efforts and, like many past Fellows, she continues to volunteer even though her Fellowship year has ended. She closed her remarks by welcoming the newest Fellows to the fold and said she looked forward to hearing more about their work over the next year.
Fellows Program co-founder Susan Finegan, a Member at Mintz Levin, then took the podium.
Sue announced that the program was celebrating surpassing the 100th Fellow mark, and that she felt it was a good segue for a countdown. She started with the number eight, for the number of years that had passed since program co-founder Martha Koster, a Member at Mintz who had been planning to retire, first approached her with the suggestion that they create a program to engage other senior attorneys in pro bono projects.
Sue continued, remarking at the number five that over the past two years, five states have approached the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission, which she co-chairs, seeking to create their own fellowship programs. The interest was encouraging, Sue said, because she and Martha always hoped the program would lead to a national shift in how attorneys think about what they will do in retirement.
Number one stood for “one Supreme Court Justice,” the evening’s final speaker, Hon. Ralph D. Gants, Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court and Co-chair of the Access to Justice Commission.
Justice Gants “believed in the idea eight years ago and agreed to let our band of wayward attorneys actually be something,” Sue said. She referenced his reply to her initial email all those years ago, when she and Martha had already been turned down by other organizations. He wrote back: “What a wonderful idea; it’s definitely worth pursuing.”
Justice Gants provided the final remarks of the evening, praising the program for reinventing what it means to retire and saying the world needed people like the Fellows.
“This program has changed the idea of what it means to be leaving a career–which people spend 20, or 30, or 40 years on–and embarking upon a new chapter in their lives,” he said, “ … and the world has provided you with so many terrific challenges which need your expertise and your energy and now your wisdom and experience.”
