Posted October 20, 20129:03 am
From "Other Letters" on Cleveland.com:
Lawyers are in the problem-solving business. Lawyers recognize better than anyone the wide gap between the number of civil legal problems experienced by low-income Ohioans and the amount of resources available to help address those problems. Lawyers know that the funding that supports legal aid societies -- nonprofit law firms serving all 88 Ohio counties -- declined 14 percent last year on the federal level. On the state level, where funding is provided through interest on lawyer trust accounts and a portion of civil case filing fees, it declined by about 75 percent from 2007 to 2011. Lawyers also see, across Ohio and in their own communities, the significant number of people living in Ohio at or below the federal poverty level.
What Ohio lawyers do in this time of great need, as lawyers have done since the founding of our country, is to provide pro bono legal services to those who cannot afford a lawyer.
To highlight pro bono service by lawyers across the country, lawyers will observe the fourth annual National Pro Bono Celebration the week of Oct. 21-27. In Ohio, legal aid societies, bar associations, law schools, law firms, government attorneys, corporation law departments and judicial offices will take part in the National Pro Bono Celebration by volunteering at clinics where people who cannot afford an attorney receive legal information and advice, and by attending continuing legal education courses to become trained to accept a pro bono case.
Ohio lawyers take seriously the professional obligation to provide pro bono legal services to those who have a critical legal problem and cannot afford to hire an attorney. In Columbus, nearly 30 lawyers provided free legal information and advice to veterans participating in the Central Ohio Stand Down on Tuesday. In Cincinnati, lawyers accepting cases from the Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor Foundation, which serves clients of the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati, donated more than 16,000 hours of pro bono legal services in 2011, valued at more than $2.1 million. In Cleveland, 1,600 lawyers volunteer for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland's Volunteer Lawyers Program, which in 2011 served nearly 1,100 clients at 63 neighborhood clinics held throughout the five-county area served by Cleveland Legal Aid.
As Cleveland lawyer David A. Kutik, a partner at Jones Day, put it, "When you do pro bono, everybody wins. Our communities are served by the most talented of its citizens, and our needy get the help that they require."
There is no better time than October to thank a lawyer for the work lawyers do each day to make life better for Ohio's most vulnerable citizens.
Ritchey Hollenbaugh, Columbus
Hollenbaugh is a partner in the Columbus law firm of Carlisle Patchen & Murphy LLP, and is president of the board of directors of the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation, created by the Ohio General Assembly in 1994 to enhance civil legal aid for low-income Ohioans. The foundation uses dollars earned from the interest on lawyers' trust accounts, the interest on real estate trust account funds and a civil filing fee surcharge.