I paint pictures for a living, word pictures. As a reporter/editor/teacher I insist those pictures be fact-based.The mental images I used to have of lawyers centered on the formal: neat, precise, pin-stripe, establishment, buttoned-up-and-down, downtown offices with a view. Those were my experiences as a newspaper editor.
After hanging with legal services lawyers for the last four years as a volunteer in fund raising, my mental models are different.
The offices of Bay Area Legal Services offer thrift-shop austere, miles from downtown Tampa. The lawyers dress and drive down: khakis and Hondas.
Their clients are society’s most vulnerable: aged, poor, put-upon, abused. The lawyers, at no charge, repair unjust financial obligations; build barriers against mates who batter; negotiate successfully with bureaucracies their clients can’t fathom.
The vicious and seemingly endless recession is throwing new demand on the BALS doorstep. Once viable homeowners and productive citizens are out of work, facing foreclosure and staring down bankruptcy. The poor and put-upon are increasingly the former middle class.
BALS is overrun with need. There is no worthier place to invest your resources than with these public-interest lawyers. They deserve your help. Please give generously. The fellow citizens you assist with legal aid will never, ever forget it.
Gil Thelen
Clendinen Professor, University of South Florida Executive Director, Florida Society of News Editors
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you, Gil, for so eloquently describing the extraordinary need for legal services in our community and how Bay Area helps “fix” the lives of so many of our fellow citizens.
Great word-picture! Aptly describes what I’ve been seeing for the past 20 years as a legal services lawyer.
ps – I drive a Suzuki.
Gil, thank you for your support. Great word-picture!