Since he began work as a fellow for the Pace Community Law Practice, Craig Relles, a 2012 Pace Law School graduate, and three fellow legal fellows have helped some 200 people who have legal issues but not a lot of money.
Relles, law students and staff of the Pace Community Law Practice recently gathered in the Robert B. Fleming Moot Courtroom in the Gerber Glass Law Library at Pace Law School in White Plains to celebrate the first year of their mission and its success.
The community-oriented, sliding-scale legal help focuses on civil matters that so far have included matters of: immigration, family, special education and guardianships. The backroom work to develop the program took five years.
“It”™s a wonderful program,” said Pace University President Stephen J. Friedman, an attorney who previously served as Pace Law School dean. “Pace Law School has a long commitment to public service and to pro bono service. We have a number of longstanding legal clinics. This is a very important addition to those efforts.”
Attorney Jennifer Friedman served five years on the task force to bring the community practice to fruition and has served as its director since it began operations in earnest last September. “We have definitely started to identify and meet the legal needs of the community,” she said.
Since September, program fellows have retained 100 cases and helped another 100.
Relles said his clients are typically working people who have found themselves in need of legal work, but who lack limitless funds to get it done properly. “These are people who otherwise might slip through the cracks,” he said. “It”™s been an extremely positive experience. We really feel like we”™re making a difference in the community.”
Michelle Simon, dean of the law school, said, “We”™re very pleased with the results. The service is providing many different benefits, helping an underrepresented part of the community.
“There”™s a lot of hype about too many lawyers,” she said. “That”™s not really the case. This program helps to fill that gap.”
The state”™s chief judge of the Court of Appeals, Jonathan Lippman, addressed the 150 assembled. Others speakers included: state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins; U.S. Immigration Court Judge Noel Ann Brennan; and attorney Sergio Saravia, a 2007 Pace Law graduate who now practices solo and who runs Jose L. Saravia Legal Services Inc., named for his activist brother, serving poor farmers in Sullivan County.
“With millions of New York state residents unable to afford market rates for legal services, the Pace Community Law Practice is exactly the kind of innovative new program that law schools should be creating to help close the justice gap,” Lippman said in a statement. “I applaud Dean Michelle Simon and Pace Law School for trailblazing public interest legal education in New York state.”
Read how Jonathan Lippman became Chief Judge of Nw York:
http://www.judgejonathanlippman.blogspot.com