Media Coverage

Fighting for their rights

Legal group donates time to ensure children's cases aren't lost in the court system

Article Source: Journal Inquirer – Thursday 1st, 2005

Paralegal Jayne Carlson has lots of children to care for. But they're not hers. They're children who have been abused or neglected, and are having the courts decide their future.

Carlson is part of Lawyers for Children America, a nonprofit organization that recruits lawyers and paralegals willing to do pro bono -- free -- legal work advocating for children.

"I am so impassioned by this," Carlson says.

"We're not doing this for reward, we're not doing this for credo," she continues."We're doing this because it's the right thing to do."

Carlson, of South Windsor, is the executive vice president of the Central Connecticut Paralegal Association, a paralegal for Chubb & Son, and a volunteer for Lawyers for Children America.

The nonprofit organization is dedicated to helping children who are victims of abuse or neglect. The work is challenging, emotionally intense, and invaluable.
The first time Carlson sat in the courtroom for a Lawyers for Children case, she says, "I thought to myself, I'm really a paralegal.' I was so proud of who I was, and what I'm doing."

500 volunteers

Lawyers for Children was started in 1995 by Zoe Baird, former candidate for attorney general, under President Clinton's administration.
Since then, the organization has helped over 1,600 children. All its cases are spread among 500 volunteer lawyers who represent over 200 firms, and a great number of private practices.

Lawyers for Children has five offices: in Hartford, Fairfield, and New Haven; two in Florida; and one in Washington, D.C. And it's growing.

Kimberly King, executive director of the organization, explains that Lawyers for Children is different because of its volunteer setup.

"There are a lot of legal advocacy groups," she says, "but none of them utilize volunteer attorneys to provide pro bono work."

The unpaid status of Lawyers for Children volunteers isn't the only thing the organization does differently. It also provides training and support to address the challenges of being a child lawyer.

The Yale Child Study Center leads one portion of the Lawyers for Children training, giving an overview of child development and the impact of traumatic experiences. It coaches volunteers on how to relate to the children and make the court process less frightening and mysterious.

Many of the children face psychological difficulties as well, says Miriam Berkman, Lawyers for Children's liaison at Yale. And frequent uprooting and distrust of adults has long-term consequences for everything from social skills to learning capacity, she says.
Crucial, then, is Yale's training on how to get the best professional evaluations for the children. The evaluations weigh on decisions regarding living placements, schooling, and medical treatment, to name a few.

"Child attorneys are not themselves going to be the evaluators, that's not their job," explains Berkman. "Their job is to understand enough about development and mental health that they seek a good evaluation, so that they can advocate for their client and make sure they get what they need."

More time for each child

Volunteers take on only as many Lawyers for Children cases as they can handle with the rest of their workload -- usually just one at a time -- which allows them to really immerse themselves in the cases. They visit foster homes, have regular contact with the children, and interview social workers and teachers.

This is a stark contrast to contract child lawyers, who often end up with a landslide of cases and just minutes to meet each child.

Mary Bartholic and Thomas "Tad" Witherington are partners at the Hartford firm Cohn Birnbaum & Shea P.C., and work together on Lawyers for Children cases. Their first client was a child whose situation was complicated by Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. After meeting with the school's special education department, they found a foster home to accommodate the child's disorder, and argued successfully for him and his brother to be placed there together.

Richard Harris, a partner in the Hartford law firm Day, Berry, & Howard LLP, describes a case where his client's mother had a drug addiction problem. A cursory decision would have been to remove the child from the parent. Harris was able to take the time to observe the two together, though, and it became clear that they had an important bond. The child's best interest was in getting help to her mother, and finding a way to reunite the two.

"It took a lot of work for somebody to say, Maybe we shouldn't terminate parental rights,'" Harris says. Today, the child is 15 years old and has been living under supervised conditions with her mother for the past four years, "and they're doing very well," Harris reports.

A network of support

Lawyers for Children is run by 10 staff members who supervise the entire volunteer caseload and are a direct source of advice. According to King, they are educators, doctors, and nurses who are also lawyers who provide technical support to their peers.
Beyond the staff, Lawyers for Children has a network of local professionals -- including the Yale Child Study Center -- that can be contacted for input on cases. As Berkman puts it, "The more you know about children and the more you have access to other professionals the better of an advocate you can be."

This strong support system means that volunteer lawyers and paralegals don't need to have experience in child welfare law. In fact, most of them don't.
Many are corporate lawyers by practice, spending most of their days on mergers, acquisitions, stocks, and bonds, explains Claudia Maxwell, Lawyers for Children program director.

For volunteers with such backgrounds, Lawyers for Children adds a new and rewarding aspect to their work lives, Maxwell says. They are in direct contact with the children and can see the difference that they are making. A number of other volunteers are new lawyers. For them, Lawyers for Children represents the opportunity to try cases in front of a court -- a rare experience for someone in his or her first few years at a law firm -- with Lawyers for Children standing by as a mentor.

Passion for their work

For the varying experiences that Lawyers for Children volunteers bring to the courtroom, one thing is strikingly common: They really believe in the work that they are doing. "The Lawyers for Children America program is, in my view, one of the unrecognized jewels in the pro bono arena," Harris says, "because it focuses on our future, our children."

"It's really a passion," Maxwell concludes.

Lawyers for Children America is always looking for lawyers and paralegals. A free training session will take place from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 15, at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae in Hartford. Those interested may contact Claudia Maxwell at (860) 273-0654, or e-mail maxwellc2@aetna.com to register.
For more information about the organization, visit:
www.lawyersforchildrenamerica.org