Giving Back : Lawyers Who Devote Time to Making Things Right

Robin Meadow is a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Loeb and Loeb. He serves on the board of Public Counsel, a nonprofit, Los Angeles organization that bills itself as the nation’s largest pro bono law office. It provides free legal advice to those who can’t afford a lawyer. Big and small Southern California law firms, and businesses too, give financial support. The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. and the Beverly Hills Bar Assn. co-sponsor Public Consul. Meadow talked with Berkley Hudson.

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You might call the people Public Counsel normally serves working poor. These are people who are taken advantage of by loan sharks, unscrupulous landlords, unscrupulous vocational schools or by a whole raft of evil people.

Public Counsel gets the best and brightest volunteers from law firms around town. I joined Public Counsel in 1988. The president of the County Bar, Margaret Morrow, (now president of the California State Bar), asked me to get involved. She was extremely concerned about pro bono activities and about children’s legal issues.

Sometimes organizations like Public Counsel get painted with a brush of being bleeding heart liberals. But the wrongs that Public Counsel corrects, such as slum housing or home equity fraud, are conduct that I don’t think any responsible person--regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum--would tolerate.

It’s difficult to find lawyers to volunteer for the good of the public, because you can’t make money out of this. But we’ve been fortunate that large numbers of lawyers, especially younger ones, are not only prepared but are eager to work. Public Counsel also has enlisted law students in its homeless project. They work as advocates in the welfare office and other places, where these people are up against a solid bureacracy.

The students hopefully become imbued with the philosophy that public service is worthwhile.

Public Counsel’s centerpiece is the volunteer legal services project. Public Counsel has a list of clients who need lawyers. They are referred or may come directly in the door.

I take my firm as mirroring other firms volunteering: Public Counsel clients get the same legal talent our other clients get.

A typical example we are very proud of is our work on home-equity fraud. You know people come around to sell you carpeting or appliances or whatever. They take a trust deed on your house for a gargantuan amount. Eventually you can’t make the payments. Then they take your house. The only way to stop it is through a court proceeding.

There was a fellow named Roland Henry who was a victim. Public Counsel ended up not only rescuing his house but getting his estate--he died while this was going on--hundreds of thousands of dollars.

When you get verdicts like that, it sends a message: There are lawyers who will devote time and resources to making things right.

We’ve worked with people seeking political asylum. And we were able to change an entire system in the immigration courts.

Immigrants would go into deportation proceedings where the court was run in English. There were inadequate interpreters. We were involved in a suit to change that.

There is a child - care project for people trying to set up day - care centers. These are small operators. They don’t have a clue how to deal with a maze of regulation.

One thing that inspired me most about Public Counsel since I’ve been on the board happened in the wake of the riots, remember it broke out in full force on a Thursday:

Public Counsel people were back in their offices over the weekend, getting out faxes and phone calls to start rebuilding from a lawyer’s perspective. They put together a special project and staffed it with volunteers who helped thousands of people.

Legal volunteers are doing things that keep the wheels of our society turning in ways most people don’t think about.

Virtually every lawyer has skills that suit him or her to give something back to the community. There is a strong obligation to do this.

The number of problems that needs to be solved in a community as large as Los Angeles is extraordinary. Yet I’d like to think that Public Counsel and its counterparts are a major part of keeping things right.