Law Students Aid the Homeless : Innovative Program Helps Many Get Welfare Benefits

Dressed in summer suits and button-down shirts or silk blouses, the young law students walked into the Echo Park welfare office with boxed bistro lunches under one arm and briefcases under the other.

They were on their way to meet their very first clients.

Clients like June, the pregnant American Indian woman with the sweet face who had been turning tricks on the street to get a bed for the night. And David, the young man who had just sold his parrot to buy food. And the tall guy with the vacant eyes and one pant leg rolled above the knee who just stared at the floor.

This summer, about 450 young lawyers-to-be--nearly half the summer law clerks in town--are walking into welfare offices to help the homeless wend their way through Los Angeles County’s welfare system. Their efforts constitute an innovative public-interest law program that its founders hope may serve as a model nationwide.

The Summer Homeless Project, as it is called, was started last year by Public Counsel, an office that coordinates volunteer legal work by members of the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills bar associations. The project is believed to be the single largest volunteer legal effort on behalf of the homeless in the country. More than 2,000 people have received help already this summer.

“The immediate idea was to help the homeless,” said Steven A. Nissen, executive director of Public Counsel. “But we also wanted to educate a large number of people in the legal community and sensitize them to the issues of homelessness.”

That sensitization is anything but subtle. It is an instantaneous process that takes young middle- and upper-middle-class students out of glass-and-steel high-rise offices and plunges them into the grit of Skid Row.

“I grew up in Beverly Hills,” said Joseph Handleman, 24, a George Washington University student clerking at the law firm of Rogers & Wells. “It was kinda sheltered. . . . This really puts things in perspective. It makes you remember that law comes down to helping your fellow man, not just figuring out the tax consequences of a multimillion-dollar merger.”

Most of the summer clerks are top-notch students who have been recruited by highly competitive top-notch law firms. They are wooed to Los Angeles with barbecues, yacht parties, Dodger tickets, dinners at Spago, and salaries of up to $700 a week.

Curiously, the homeless project is being added to that list of attractions. “It can be a real plus for our recruiting because students can really get an opportunity to do something outside the office . . . to really be an advocate,” said John Karaczynski, a Rogers & Wells partner.

- Because the students have not taken the bar exam, they cannot practice in court, and typically spend their days preparing briefs or listening in on depositions. But those who sign up for the homeless project spend a few hours at a legal clinic being briefed on the issues by Public Counsel attorneys, then go in groups with a supervisor to different offices of the county’s Department of Public Social Services to see clients.

The moment they walk in the door, they are usually surrounded by throngs of homeless people with street-worn faces or frightened eyes, beseeching them for help.

Grim Environment

This is not the conference room lined with lawbooks that many had imagined for their first meeting with clients nor the courtroom where many had imagined themselves making their first legal arguments before an attentive judge. The floor is dirty. So are many of the clients. And one of the legal clerk’s biggest jobs here is simply getting a welfare officer to talk to.

“You go into a place like that and deal with people and find out the intricacies of their problems and very quickly your grand truths about the marketplace and about people who don’t work for an honest dollar disappear,” said Jeb Boasberg, 25, a Yale Law School student clerking at Munger, Tolles & Olson.

“I had no idea how many glitches and problems there were in the system, in getting the people the benefits they were owed and in administering it. I never knew all that before.”

Their clients are homeless people on the county’s general relief program for those who do not qualify for specially tailored government programs, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

When the young clerks step into a typical county welfare office they find a crowded waiting room with a receptionist, a security guard and a door. The social workers are on the other side of the door. Sometimes there are fights among the homeless; some of the homeless are just out of jail. Sometimes hours of waiting lead to desperation.

“This guard guards the door, and the guy who was there the day we were had to draw his billy club on occasion,” said Tom Eck, 23, a clerk with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. “People had to wait literally all day long in that place, just to see a social worker.”

It is the waiting that most surprises the summer clerks. Melinda Smolin, 25, a Loyola Law School student now clerking at Rogers & Wells, said a Korean couple she helped sat all day long with two babies and a note saying in English, “Help me.” At the end of the day, she said, it turned out their problem was “tiny.”

Not Enough Staff, Money

“For people like us who are used to speedy, sophisticated, responsible results, it is incredibly frustrating,” Boasberg said. “It looks like the workers against the people. And it’s very easy to blame the workers. But they don’t have enough facilities, enough staff, enough funds to handle it all.”

Pamela A. Mohr, directing staff attorney for the program at Public Counsel and the one who conceived the program last year, estimated that the clerks get positive results for 80% to 85% of their clients.

Last year, she said, attorneys conducted an experiment in which they had clients present complaints to welfare workers, and then had law clerks present exactly the same complaints later. “The clients got nowhere,” she said. “They are very often powerless. We got results.”

Some of the summer clerks said there were several reasons they succeeded in securing hotel vouchers or food stamps or general relief checks for clients who had been unable to do so themselves. In some cases, they said, clients were inarticulate or simply so frustrated or angry that they alienated the social workers. In other cases, they said, they didn’t understand their rights.

“Most of the people I dealt with were coherent, capable people,” Handleman said. “But they couldn’t get through that door. . . . All it took was us; all it took was wearing a tie and being a little pushy.”

About 14,000 people flow through Los Angeles County’s 32 welfare offices a day, according to Carole Matsui, special assistant to the director of the Department of Public Social Services.

“There’s no doubt our welfare offices are very busy,” she said. “People will have to wait. But they will not be turned away.”

The county general relief system has been under fire for several years from the Homeless Litigation Team, a group of several nonprofit agencies that have brought class-action complaints on behalf of the homeless.

“You go to court wearing your blue-striped shirt and you get orders saying the county has to pay attention to the needs of, say, the mentally handicapped, and then you go down to the welfare office and find it has no reality unless you’ve got advocates enforcing those rights,” said Gary L. Blasi, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and a lead lawyer on the Homeless Litigation Team.

“This project has helped more people get those rights than any other program I can think of,” Blasi said of the Public Counsel program.

In the most recent of the major lawsuits, the city of Los Angeles sued the county of Los Angeles, contending that the county has been derelict in granting benefits to the homeless and that it has deliberately discouraged people from applying for welfare so that it can save money. The city contends that it has had to spend more than $1 million to make up the difference.

Experiences as Evidence

Case histories compiled by summer clerks are being collated for possible use as evidence in the lawsuits. Some summer clerks are being asked to sign affidavits as witnesses to problems at the welfare offices. A detailed report on suggestions for streamlining the system is also planned to be submitted to the County Board of Supervisors this fall.

Nissen said Public Counsel also hopes to develop a long-term project to assist the homeless that will draw upon corporate attorneys’ skills to create incentives for nonprofit organizations to build and manage low-income housing.

In the last few years, about 20 public interest programs to help the homeless have been initiated by bar associations nationwide, according to Pat Hanrahan, consultant to the American Bar Assn.’s Representation of the Homeless Project in Washington.

However, Hanrahan said, she doesn’t know of any other program that involves summer law clerks on such a large scale.

“That program’s really unique,” Hanrahan said.