Lawyer Diaries: Pro Bono Case

This Lawyer Diaries blog post is about one lawyer's pro bono case helping an old man against a contractor's lawsuit. It's an excerpt from Professor Andrew McLurg's 1L of a Ride.

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Incoming students naturally feel like they should be doing something to get ready for law school before they get there. They should be, but not necessarily the things they think they should be doing. Below are two pre-arrival ‘‘To Do’’ lists, one for intangibles and one for tangibles. Law students and law student advice usually focus on the tangibles, but the intangibles are just as important and harder to accomplish.

Pre-Arrival ‘‘To Do’’ List: The Intangibles

Be excited!
Be excited about going to law school. It’s a big deal and you should treat it that way. Approach it with enthusiasm. Not dread (distinguishing dread from a healthy apprehension) and certainly not apathy—nothing would be worse than that. My experience observing law students has taught me that President Harry Truman got it right when he said he had studied the lives of great men and women and ‘‘found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm.’’

Law school is an entry pass to an exclusive club offering unique challenges, opportunities, and rewards. Your degree will grant you the power to single-handedly change people’s lives for the better. That’s what ordinary lawyers do every day.

In my original draft of this chapter, to inspire you, I talked about some big, important lawyers and how their big, important cases changed history. It was all true. Experience has shown time and again that lawyers are the only group with the conviction and courage to consistently stand up and fight for justice when it’s unpopular to do so. Lawyers created the liberties we cherish and have fought to protect them for more than two hundred years. Thirty-three of the fifty-five framers of the U.S. Constitution were lawyers. Tales about lawyers who altered the path of America could fill this book.

But a conversation in the hallway with a 2L caused me to change course. As I was walking into class, he came up and recounted a dispute he’d been having with his landlord. He said he was able to resolve it because a lawyer offered to help him without charge because he was a struggling law student. The student told me: ‘‘Professor, I’m going to remember that when I become a lawyer. I’m going to remember what it felt like to have no money and no power and no voice and how that lawyer helped me.’’

That brought back to me the real heart and soul of what it means to be a lawyer. Big cases change history, but the smallest and simplest cases often have the biggest impact on ordinary people. I decided to cut the history lesson and tell you instead about a very tiny case I handled as a young lawyer. It was a pro bono case, meaning there was no fee involved. The Jacksonville, Florida legal aid organization called and asked if I would help an elderly man being sued by a home improvement contractor for breach of contract. I was tempted to say I was too busy—which I was, such is the life of a young litigation associate as many of you will learn—but I accepted the case.

My client was a man in his eighties whom I’ll call Clarence Jackson. Mr. Jackson had shown up at the legal aid office clutching a packet of papers, explaining to the intake interviewer that he had signed a contract with a home improvement contractor to have some repairs done on his house for $1,000, a lot of money back then, especially for a man living on Social Security. He said the contractor didn’t complete the work properly, so he refused to pay. The contractor hauled off and sued him and, in a letter, threatened to take his house away.

I drove out to the house on a hot, humid summer morning to meet Mr. Jackson. The house was in a neighborhood on ‘‘the other side of town’’ that I had never visited. Honestly, it wasn’t much of a house. It was very small and very old, but exceptionally well-kept. Mr. Jackson greeted me at the door and I took an instant liking to him. He was a gentle, softspoken man of diminutive stature. He wore overalls and I felt ridiculous standing on the porch sweating in my lawyer power suit. He invited me in, showed me pictures of his kids and grandchildren, and gave me some iced tea.

We sat in the living room looking over the contract and the legal complaint, then he took me on a tour of the premises. He pointed out the shoddy workmanship by the contractor: bare, wrong-size fascia boards nailed haphazardly at the roof line, a toilet that poured water out the bottom every time it was flushed, a window that was inches too small for the opening, etc. I remember getting mad. The nerve of that contractor to not only do such slapdash work, but sue Mr. Jackson and scare the heck out of him by threatening to take his home away.

I took some pictures with a Polaroid camera and went back to my office to prepare an affidavit for Mr. Jackson to sign and a motion for summary judgment in the lawsuit. Summary judgment is a way for a court to dispose of a case without a trial. We had a hearing on the motion in the judge’s chambers. At the end, the judge granted our motion— dismissing the case—but with all the legalese the old man misunderstood. He thought we lost. When the judge adjourned the hearing, Mr. Jackson put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘‘Thank you, Mr. McClurg, I know you did a good job. I guess some things just can’t be helped.’’ I said, ‘‘Mr. Jackson, it’s okay. We won.’’


This excerpt is posted with permission from Thomson Reuters which holds the copyright for the work.