Spotlight on pro bono

While the need for civil legal services is extant throughout the state, the needs in extreme Southern Illinois are unique.

This area is marked by historic poverty, marginal farming, migrant agriculture workers, heavy unemployment (parti-cularly in traditional coal mining areas), high density of prisons and, most recently, immigration detainees.

Two main organized pro bono programs serving this area: the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation, especially through the Carbondale office, and the Southern Illinois University School of Law Legal Clinic

Land of Lincoln provides civil legal services in three ways to those who are economically qualified: staff attorneys, private bar involvement with minimal compensation, and private bar pro bono. Cases are taken in four major areas and referred to pro bono attorneys.

They are family law, including domestic violence; housing problems, including public housing issues, private landlord conflicts and foreclosures; public benefit problems, including public aid and food stamps, medical assistance and disability, and consumer law, including debt collection practices, contracts and bankruptcy

LLLAF not only recruits pro bono attorneys, matching their interests and expertise with the needs of clients, but aids the private bar by screening clients for financial eligibility and collecting initial intake information.

The foundation also provides attorneys in the pro bono program with primary professional liability insurance and training in substantive areas in which the clients need assistance. Helpful follow-up and problem client assistance are also available.

The legal clinic at the SIU School of Law provides pro bono assistance in a number of ways. It has had a long-standing commitment to civil representation of the elderly in the 13 southernmost counties of Illinois.

A somewhat newer program is the domestic violence clinic, which offers additional civil representation to clients who have already received orders of protection, based on referrals from other agencies.

The clinic also provides alternate dispute resolution (ADR) for custody litigants who cannot afford private mediation and are referred by courts in the 1st Judicial Circuit. The clinic has developed, and manages, an online self-help Web site that offers specific information in a number of practice areas. It provides student externs to several area public agencies.

A relatively new clinic program, in conjunction with the Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Center of Chicago, offers rights information to immigration detainees in the Federal Detention Center at Ullin.

Because of the international nature of these detainees, this project involves not only law students, clinic staff, law professors and the private bar, but also other members of the university community who are fluent in foreign languages.

While pro bono legal services available in Southern Illinois seem plentiful, the need is still great. More pro bono attorneys are always needed.

In conjunction with the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, the law school is seeking to offer substantial opportunities for student participation in pro bono activities.

Pro bono programs and participation opportunities for law students are im-portant, not only because of the service performed and the lessons learned, but also to instill in young attorneys-to-be the need for and satisfaction from providing pro bono services. The hope is that new attorneys will enter practice with a com-mitment to pro bono work.

At the other end of the experience scale, senior attorneys who are retired or close to retirement are another potential golden source for pro bono assistance, both as volunteers in legal assistance programs and as private attorneys.