Spotlight on pro bono

Trial attorney shares skills with legal aid trainees

The location is the courtroom in a metropolitan law school. The activity is a trial advocacy training program for recent law graduates.

An experienced trial lawyer begins his persuasive demonstration of the closing argument in a contested custody case, while eight new attorneys watch anxiously from the jury box.

After a few minutes of argument, the lawyer opens a duffle bag he brought with him. He takes out a pair of tennis shoes and a baseball cap, and puts them on.

Then he sits on the counsel table with the cap on backwards, delivering the rest of his closing from the point of view of the 11-year-old boy who is the subject of the custody dispute.

When he finishes, he explains that the point of his demonstration was to illustrate that a trial attorney should be creative and think outside the box.

It is a lesson that will stay with the trainees as they begin their legal careers.

This memorable demonstration could have taken place at a trial training institute, where the cost might be several thousand dollars per trainee. Instead, it took place during a trial advocacy training program for new legal service attorneys, at a cost of a fraction of that amount.

The demonstrator was David M. Fahrenkamp of Edwardsville, an outstanding Madison County trial attorney, who recently coached his law school mock trial team at Washington University to the semifinals of the national tournament.

His opposing counsel in the closing argument demonstration was ISBA Assembly member Julie K. Katz of Belleville, a past chair of the Family Law Section Council who serves on the Committee on Continuing Legal Education.

One of the expert witnesses at the training was psychologist Daniel Cuneo, who developed the Children First program utilized in family cases involving minor children.

All three of these outstanding trainers had one thing in common: Each helped make this invaluable trial training affordable for legal service attorneys by donating hours of their expertise on a pro bono basis.

The training was sponsored by the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation, which provides free legal services in civil cases to indigent residents of 65 counties in central and southern Illinois.

In addition to its trial advocacy training program, Land of Lincoln has utilized pro bono attorneys to provide substantive law training.

In the fall of 2004, more than a hundred Land of Lincoln staff, pro bono and compensated attorneys attended a free family law training in Collinsville, where each trainer donated his or her services.

The faculty included 3rd Circuit Associate Judge Barbara Crowder of Edwardsville, vice chair of the ISBA Bench and Bar Section Council, who serves as a trainer on maintenance for other Illinois domestic relations judges.

Others were prominent St. Clair County divorce attorneys John J. Kurowski of Swansea, Susan Parnell Wilson of Belleville, and Katz.

Neither Land of Lincoln's trial advocacy training program nor its family law training would have been possible without the generosity of the trainers, all of whom provided services pro bono. Both of these trainings received excellent evaluations from the trainees.

We encourage private attorneys to consider pro bono training as a way to enhance the quality of legal services to clients who cannot afford to pay for representation. Pro bono training of legal service attorneys is a gift that keeps on giving.

• • •