Equal Justice Works

The E-Guide to Public Service at America's Law Schools: 2007-08 Edition

Equal Justice Works — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 05:49:31 GMT

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Transcript: Katrina and Public-Service Law

Equal Justice Works — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:45:22 GMT

Aug. 29, 2007 - Bill Quigley is a law professor as well as director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. Quigley has been an active public-interest lawyer for over 25 years, serving as counsel with a wide range of public-interest organizations on issues including public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. Since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Quigley has been a leading voice in the quest for a just and equitable recovery.

NEWSWEEK hosted a Live Talk with Quigley on the second anniversary of Katrina, Wednesday, Aug. 29

Bill Quigley: This is Bill Quigley at Loyola University New Orleans. Thanks to Newsweek and Equal Justice Works (see www.equaljusticeworks.org) for setting this forum up. Thanks also to the thousands of law students and lawyers who have come to the Gulf Coast to help us out. More than 100 Law Schools have sent students, faculty and administrators to volunteer in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas - most organized by the Student Hurricane Network (see www.studenthurricanenetwork.org).

Now to the questions!

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Arlington, Virginia: I've heard reports of the criminal justice system in New Orleans being a mess. Shortly after the Hurricanes hit there were reports of people remaining in jail long after their sentence was completed, or being held awaiting trial with no possibility of bail because their records were lost -- even for non-violent offenses. What's the status now?

Bill Quigley: It is true that our criminal justice system was a complete mess for a long time after Katrina. The jails flooded, the clerk's office was under water, hundreds of police officers left, victims of crime and witnesses were scattered across the country. Records were destroyed. We did not hold a jury trial for almost a year.
But much has improved - thanks to help from people across the country. Law students from across the country came down with the Student Hurricane Network to help out the public defender and interviewed every single person in jail to find out what their situation was - and ended up releasing many who had become lost in the system. Other law students worked with the District Attorney's office.
We are still a long way from being fixxed, but the public defender system has been overhauled, the police and the prosecutors are working better together than in the past, and all the courts are up and running.
We still have police officers doing reports in their cars because the station is too hot. We have public defenders and prosecutors operating several to a room. We need a lot of help, but we are getting better.

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Los Angeles, California: Do Louisiana and Mississippi still need law students to come down on spring and semester breaks or on an externship program, and if so, what kind of work would they do?

Bill Quigley: YES! The Gulf Coast still has tremendous unmet legal needs. Just a few examples. Thousands of families still need help clearing up titles to their property so they can get assistance. There are over 4500 tax appeals awaiting hearings just in New Orleans - most of low and moderate income homeowners who are struggling to rebuild. There is a lot of contractor fraud investigation and work needed.
Best bet is to go through the Student Hurricane Network - a law student created association that helps place law students with legal services providers along the Gulf Coast. See http://www.studenthurricanenetwork.org/orgs2.html

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Washington, DC: I know there are still a lot of injustices in New Orleans, but the sheer volume makes it hard to grasp. Can you tell a story of an injustice that will rekindle the outrage I felt right after the hurricanes?

Bill Quigley: Let me tell you about a woman I met for the first time just a few days ago.
She owned her own home in New Orleans for 37 years before Katrina destroyed it. She has received no money from the state or federal government to rebuild. She gets no rental assistance but she and her husband live in an apartment with two other families nearly 50 miles away from her house. They pay $1350 a month rent. She does not know where her neighbors who lived across the street live. She arranges to have the grass cut on her empty lot to try to keep it up for when she can rebuild.
This woman is 79. Her husband is 84.
There are tens of thousands of stories like hers across the gulf.

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Washington, DC: How hard has it been to build coalitions between law schools (Loyola, Tulane, Southern and LSU), local and national law firms, non-profits (like the Pro Bono Project, Legal Aid) and the LA Bar in order to make progress in one area such as housing or health care? Do they work together; and, if not, what are the barriers?

Bill Quigley: Building coalitions is always hard, especially when the local partners are busy trying to fix their buildings and teachers and staff and students are trying to repair or replace their homes.

But there have been great success stories. The coalitions that have worked have usually created a working group on a specific topic - like opening probate (successions in LA) to help. Law students interview people locally, a wonderful lawfirm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, a law firm headquartered in North Carolina, sent lawyers to the gulf coast to interview and work on cases - and hundreds of families have been helped.
Jenner and Block and the Advancement Project in DC are helping thousands of low income families in public housing try to get home. Many other lawfirms like Shulte Roth & Zabel combined with national public interest groups like the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, Appleseed, and others to provide tremendous assistance.

Barriers remain. Mostly because there are so few public interest lawyers on the Gulf Coast who can partner with out of state firms and organizations which want to help. Much remains to be done. We need a lot more examples like that.

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Bar Harbor, Maine: I have relatives in New Orleans and they tell me that housing rental rates have skyrocketed, and that few people of modest means can afford to live there. Who is paying those high rents? And why doesn't that create incentives to rebuild affordable housing quickly?

Bill Quigley: Rents have doubled in most cases. Why? Over 200,000 homes were severely damaged - 80,000 rental units - tens of thousands have not yet been repaired. Many people are living several families to an apartment.
There are a lot of projects in the works to build affordable housing, but few have actually come on line yet.

Most describe this as a circular problem. We need more workers to help rebuild, but we have a shortage of housing for workers to live in. Right now, along the gulf coast it is tough to be a homeowner, but it is much tougher to be a renter.

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Memphis, Tennessee: How are the dynamics of class and race impacting advocacy and recovery efforts in your view?

Bill Quigley: Race is a part of every single decision made along the Gulf Coast - we either deal with it up front (which is uncomfortable for everyone) or we don't deal with it directly (and hope it does not come back up with more energy later - which it usually does).

Class is most often shown now in terms of the division between homeowners and renters.
For example, less than 25% of the homeowners in LA who have applied have received any federal rebuilding money from the Road Home. So homeowners are hurting. But renters are in even deeper trouble because the state rebuilding programs in LA and MS do nothing directly for renters at all. Since most low income people are renters, they have fewer resources to begin with and now have less and are in real trouble.

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Baton Rouge, Louisiana: How can volunteers help when New Orleans legal providers are not equipped to deal with the volume of aid they are being offered? Would a pro bono coordinator ease this bottlenecking situation? And if so, who would pay for this?

Bill Quigley: Great question. You are right that sometimes we on the gulf coast cannot respond to offers of help as effectively as we want. We are overwhelmed with people in need at the door. As a result, I know there are people and organizations which have reached out to help but have not been met halfway by us. This is part of the problem after a disaster - those impacted cannot always figure out how to use the help that is offered.

It would be great if State or City Bar Associations in major population centers recruited their own pro bono coordinators and put them on the ground on the gulf coast to help identify and organize appropriate opportunities to link the help offered and those in need.
Who would pay? Realistically, those people would have to be funded by the group who wants to help. Wish it could be different, but that is the reality.

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Washington, DC: I heard horror stories of FEMA going after victims to recoup money that had been paid in the immediate aftermath of the hurricanes -- in several cases where family members had been separated from one another and each applied for benefits in good faith. Meanwhile, there have been stories written about contractors getting huge sums of money and not performing promised work or being awarded supplemental contracts to cover cost-overruns.What's your take? What is FEMA's role in this?

Bill Quigley: It is true that the disaster of Katrina is one that keeps on giving.
Mistakes and red tape on the local, state and national level have penalized tens of thousands of people.

FEMA is trying to recoup money from people who have none now. Contractors have received hundreds of millions of dollars for work that they turned around and subcontracted out to others and pocketed big big bucks. Truthfully, disasters are great financial opportunities for the unscrupulous individuals and corporations. That should not stop us from being generous, but much more oversight and accountability is needed.

FEMA itself is a tragic story. It was an understaffed and underorganized organization when Katrina hit. It grew rapidly to try to respond and made tens of thousands of mistakes. We were not ready as a country for such a disaster. Are we ready now? I hope we have learned some lessons. I am sure some things are better, but I am also certain that if another comparable disaster hit today, we would see many of the same problems.

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Grand Rapids, Michigan: Do you feel that the recovery effort has been evenly divided between Mississippi and Louisiana?

Bill Quigley: Not really. See the editorial in today's local paper, the Times-Picayune for details.
But let me assure you that low and moderate income people in Mississippi have not received anywhere near enough assistance to bring them back to where they were the day before Katrina. So, while Mississippi received proportionately more than Louisiana - neither has received enough help to help out the elderly, the sick, the working moms, kids and the rest of the everyday families.

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Baltimore, Maryland: As a law professor, I've been struck by how quickly and expansively the student hurricane network formed in response to Katrina. Since so many students are engaged in the legal lessons of Katrina recovery, I'd like to integrate some of them into my classroom discussions. Do you have suggestions about how these issues fit into classroom coverage of doctrinal and theoretical materials? (I teach Contracts and Commercial Law, but it could be other topics of course.) How can professors and students get involved in discrete legal projects to help the recovery process either long-distance or by going to the Gulf?

Bill Quigley: Katrina is a terrific educational opportunity. That is one of the few bright spots from the disaster.

We held a Katrina seminar at Loyola in our first semester back - the class looked at contracts, insurance, environmental issues, criminal law, family law, civil rights, and community development. We asked various professsors in the school to explain how Katrina had impacted their areas of expertise. We got a great response from faculty and students.

The University of the District of Columbia and Golden Gate Law School offered a Katrina and the Law seminar, Professors Jim Chen of Minnesota and Dan Farber of Boalt co-wrote a textbook and teach a class on Disasters and the Law, and the legal clinics at Boston College, Yale, and Stanford took FEMA and insurance cases from the Mississippi Center for Justice.
The most successful volunteer research projects have been overseen by committed faculty members who work with students. At this point, almost every institution and system on the Gulf Coast remains in deep trouble - so there should be no shortage of topics.

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Annapolis, Maryland: Given the poor state of the public school system in New Orleans prior to Katrina and the subsequent emergence of charter schools there, what direction, in your view, is optimal for the educational system as it stands today? What can be done to strengthen the Recovery School District program in order to improve access to a quality education for all New Orleans youth?

Bill Quigley: Public education was a big problem along the gulf coast before Katrina, especially in New Orleans.

As public school systems rebuild, New Orleans has embarked on a massive experiment in charter schools. We have more charter schools and a higher percentage of our kids in public charter schools than any city in the US. The charters compete for the kids with the best test scores and the most committed parents.

Combined with the more exclusive well-performing public schools, the charters are getting about half the kids. The other half of the schools are for the average New Orleans kid who has average scores and probably parents who are in deep financial trouble trying to make ends meet right now. The average student is in what we call the RSD (officially the Recovery School District - often called the Rest of the Schools District). Kids in RSD schools are in trouble. RSD schools are in not in good physical condition and have trouble recruiting certified teachers.

The RSD cannot improve without significant community assistance. We need corporations and communities to adopt these schools in the way that the charter schools have been supported.
The health of the RSD non-charter schools are also really tied into the overall health of the community. If we have an affordable housing crisis, a mental health crisis, a healthcare crisis, inadequate public education and crumbling infrastructure - our schools will reflect our city.
There is no realistic hope for a top notch public education system in a city ranked in the bottom for everything else. Thus, as our city and region rebuild, our public school system can and will rebuild. As they falter and drift, we should not expect more from the educational system.

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Washington, DC: Why are so many people still in temporary housing? Is FEMA still trying to cut off benefits, take back trailers, etc., even though people have no where else to go?

Bill Quigley: I do not think anyone thought it would take this long to get people back home. It is a real tragedy. Here are some of the facts from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“Hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged one million homes in four states; 300,000 homes were destroyed. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of the homes that were destroyed were affordable to low income families before the storm. The shockingly slow pace of rebuilding damaged homes has been well-documented. Replacement of housing that was lost is even slower. Even if all the replacement housing that was planned is actually built, which will not happen, there was never any intention by state and local governments to come close to replacing the affordable rental housing stock that was destroyed.

“Thus, two years later, at least 106,000 mostly low income families remain displaced. Some 31,000 families are still receiving FEMA rent assistance. Another 11,500 families who received HUD housing assistance prior to the storm are still getting disaster housing aid through HUD. And 65,000 families still reside in FEMA issued travel trailers and manufactured homes; 15,000 live in trailer camps with the remainder in trailers on their own property.

“Moreover, as many as 75,000 (maybe more) additional displaced households may have been cut off from FEMA rent assistance by mistake or wrongful action by FEMA. FEMA’s rules for determining continuing eligibility for rent assistance have been incomprehensible and arbitrary and its record keeping abysmal. One judge has called FEMA’s application process ‘Kafkaesque’ and another has labeled FEMA’s attitude toward aid recipients ‘cavalier.’ Any external examination of FEMA’s actions on rent assistance will reveal untold hardships experienced by evacuees at the hands of the federal agency charged with helping them, just as FEMA’s failure to address toxic conditions in their travel trailers is now being exposed.

The truth is we as a region and as a nation were not prepared to help this many people.

Katrina has offered our nation a very costly lesson. I hope we will learn from it. We have paid and will continue to pay an awful price for this lesson whether we learn from it or not.

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Minneapolis, Minnesota: I am neither a lawyer nor a law student. I also do not live in the Gulf Coast region. What is the best thing I can do to help the legal community in New Orleans and across the Gulf address the continued overwhelming legal needs?

Bill Quigley: You are good to ask. Most people's legal needs are centered around not being home after 2 years. So, I think if you could help people get home, that would really be a big help.

For example, I think people should contact their US Senators and ask them to support S. 1668, also called the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act of 2007. It needs some improvements, but it is a good start to help more people get home.

It has been sitting in the Senate since June 20. The US House passed a better version - H.R. 1227, the Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007, on March 21 by a vote of 302-125. That was led by Reps Maxine Waters and Barney Frank - two true friends of the Gulf Coast. Helping people get the resources to help themselves will be the best help anyone can offer.

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Los Angeles, California: I heard that HUD recently approved (Mississippi) Governor Barbour's Small Rental Assistance Plan. What are your thoughts on this plan and the general lack of affordable rental housing in Mississippi?

Bill Quigley: MISSISSIPPI! Thank you for reminding everyone of the big problems that remain for affordable housing in Mississippi. The media focus on New Orleans and Katrina overlooks the fact that Mississippi took the direct hit from the storm and is still in serious trouble. \

Mississippi recently announced a small rental housing program for owners of rental property. This is part of a much needed strategy to help create affordable housing - but no people have yet qualified. Nationally people seem to think Mississippi is zipping along on the road to recovery. True if you're a casino or hotel owner.

Not true if you're a renter, live in public housing, or you lost your home to wind rather than water. Not a single dollar of the $5.4 billion awarded to Mississippi as CDBG funds, money that is supposed to benefit low- and moderate-income people, will go to a renter, even though 28,000 units were severely damaged or destroyed; none of the CDBG money has been spent on replacing rental housing.

Although the MS coast is down almost 1000 units of public housing not a dollar of the $100 million allocated for public housing has been spent. The only government plan for getting people out of the formaldehyde filled FEMA trailers is a lottery for some of the 4-6,000 Katrina cottages -- but with 18,000 households still in trailers that gives people only about a 1 in 4 chance. And of course, if you don't own a piece of property to put it on, you're out of luck.
To cap it off, most local governments along the coast (in LA and MS) are shutting down the FEMA trailer parks. All roads out of the FEMA trailer parks are blocked, in one way or another.
For more contact the Mississippi Center for Legal Services 601.948.6752 or Coastal Women for Change - 228.297.4849.

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Los Angeles, California: We've been hearing about formaldehyde in trailers for a while now. Is it safe to assume that most of the trailers contain formaldehyde? Have you heard anything regarding FEMA's plans, if any, to move trailer residents out of the trailers and into safer housing?

Bill Quigley: This is an example of how our problems are inter-related. Housing and health in this instance. Over 70,000 families still live in FEMA trailers across the gulf coast.

The Sierra Club first reported formaldehyde problems in FEMA trailers over a year ago. On August 1, 2007, FEMA, after congressional pressure, decided to stop selling trailers to the people in them until they could find out how serious the formaldehyde problems are.

I know of no effort by FEMA to move people into safer housing. Even people with respiratory problems are not leaving their FEMA trailers because there is no other place to go. Our region is short tens of thousands of affordable rental units and there is just no realistic alternative at the moment.

To read the FEMA August 1 announcement, go to www.FEMA.gov. To read the full record of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee July 19 hearing, go to http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1419.

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Atlanta, Georgia: What are the city's plans for rebuilding the 9th ward? Is there any validity to claims that the 9th ward and other low-income communities will be replaced by high-income developments?

Bill Quigley: The government has not released any concrete detailed plans for rebuilding the 9th ward. I was in the lower 9th ward a few days ago and it looks like a graveyard - some stone blocks and steps poking up through the weeds - and deathly quiet.

Many people see the complete lack of progress in the lower 9th as an intentional land grab - you hear plans for condos and industrial development. But nothing concrete.

I am not a conspiracy type of person. But when: the neighborhood was kept closed for months and homeowners were not even allowed to look at their homes; once opened people were not allowed to stay in their homes; electricity is still not on everywhere; and it took more than a year for drinkable water to be working - you can understand how people might connect the dots in such a way that they think the neglect of this overwhelmingly African-American neighborhood borders on intentional. In other areas of the lower 9th, like Holy Cross neighborhood, there is some progress and some investment.

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Centreville, Virginia: Have there been any improvements at all in New Orleans over the past two years?

Bill Quigley: The Saints are doing much better than before Katrina!

Really though, a lot of New Orleans has been repaired and improved since the early days of the destruction - but the city as a whole is still no where near where it was before Katrina.
We have benefitted from some amazing new people who have settled in New Orleans since Katrina and we have benefitted from the tens of thousands of volunteers who have done everything from cook food to gut and repair houses. Without the kindness of strangers we would be much worse off.

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Biloxi, Mississippi: If you could push the rewind button, from whom do you think the right words might have been said to produce a better recovery in the Gulf Region? And what would those words be?

Bill Quigley: Our nation should have said:

"Every single person harmed has equal value. We will not rest until every single person has been made whole. We do not care if you are homeowner or renter, black or white or asian or latino, elderly or child, rich or poor, we are going to reach out to you as sisters and brothers and we will not rest until justice is done."

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Chevy Chase, Marlyand: I have a question about people on death row and people who are serving lengthy sentences who have credible claims of innocence. I heard that many of the records and evidence were destroyed by the hurricanes and the flooding. Based on your experience, has the damage irreparably harmed their cases?

Bill Quigley: The evidence room of the criminal clerk in New Orleans sat in chest deep water for weeks.

Anyone whose claims to innocence rested on documents or evidence held in that office is damaged irreparably.

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Grand Rapids, Michigan: Has the racial tension in New Orleans and Mississippi worsened since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita? Or, has it turned into more of an economic tension between the ones who have received SBA and/or FEMA aid and those who are still waiting to get out of the trailers 2 years later?

Bill Quigley: If you take away peoples' homes, jobs, neighborhoods, healthcare providers, churches, pharmacies, playgrounds, and neighbors - there are going to be serious problems.
Many churches, neighborhood and community organizations are working hard to try to rebuild our physical communities.

We need to also rebuild our social communities and our churches and voluntary organizations are trying to do that as well. Unfortunately, when people get desperate or they think there is only going to be limited help and not enough for everyone, they start to panic. The lifeboat syndrome takes over - there is only room in this boat for a certain number of people and if we allow others in they will sink the boat.

Some of us are in the lifeboat syndrome and we are so afraid we will not survive that we want to exclude others. As I said earlier, race and ownership v renters are parts of every decision on the gulf coast - so yes there are tensions.

At the same time, I was in Mississippi two nights ago at a hundred person dinner with men women and childre of all races - african american, white, vietnamese and latino - working together as Coastal Women for Change. They were assisted by the Mississippi Center for Justice and volunteers from law schools and churches across the world. They even had some visitors from India who had survived the tsunami and who shared their stories of the need to build and rebuild community after a disaster.

We have lots of tension - race and class. But we also have some inspirational people who, despite odds that might seem overwhelming to others in the US, continue to work day by day to rebuild their communities - often in the face of government opposition.
So there is both tragedy and hope. Both are real. We need to have our eyes open to the injustices - but we also need to have our hearts open to the inspirational hope demonstrated by people.

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Niagra Falls, New York: I appreciate the sheer scale of problems created by Katrina and their complexity; however, I can't shake my sense of disappointment over the nation's inability to make our response more of a defining and unifying moment in our collective lives. Has the notion that we have missed an opportunity to redefine our social contract through this disaster been publicly discussed?

Bill Quigley: Katrina offered our nation a glimpse of the reality that is usually kept out of sight.
There was hope among many that this was an opportunity to re-engaged our national community in a meaningful dialogue about how we could rebuild in a more just way.
Some are engaged in that dialogue. Hundreds of thousands have come to the gulf coast to lend a hand. Millions more have contributed money and supplies.

Many continue to examine what has and has not happened in order to learn and grow and connect in new ways. As a nation have we engaged in this process? I think I am too close to the problem to tell. But I do know that when I post a story about Katrina, I usually get more supportive comments than negative ones. (Though I do get emails like one last night that called all of us "idiots" for living along the gulf coast).

I hope we as a nation have not missed the opportunity. I know hundreds of thousands of people who have not - perhaps they can continue to tell their stories in such a way that the learning will continue.

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Bill Quigley: Thanks to Newsweek and Equal Justice works for this. And thanks to the hundreds of thousands who have helped us out, particularly to the thousands of law students and lawyers who have made so much possible. Peace, Bill Quigley

Again for those who want more, I suggest you look at the following:

The best source of information about public interest and hands-on learning at law schools is The E-Guide to Public Service at America's Law Schools.

Student Hurricane Network
For free legal aid in New Orleans contact the New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation: (504) 529-1000
For free legal aid in Mississippi call the Mississippi Center for Legal Services at: 601-948-6752
For free legal aid in Alabama it's: (334) 832-457
For free legal aid in Texas at Lone Star Legal Aid call: (800) 354-1889

Stories from the Gulf

Equal Justice Works — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:26:05 GMT

Harvard Law Students Helen Kim, Ehren Brav, Rita Lomio and Zach Clopton with NOLAC attorney Bernadette D'Souza. Photo courtesy of Helen Kim.

As the Gulf Coast faces the second anniversary of the nation's worst natural disaster, we dedicate this edition of The E-Guide to the many thousands of pro bono lawyers and law students who have made and continue to make extraordinary differences in the lives of survivors of the devastation.

The following essays come from four law schools in the affected region (University of Alabama, Loyola University New Orleans, University of Houston and Mississippi College) and from four of the more than 100 law schools from distant corners that sent volunteers to the Gulf—Fordham, Harvard, University of Maryland and University of Southern California. These are stories not just of assisting survivors in crisis, but also of the life-changing potential of public service and of providing legal services in the public interest. We've collected a few of these remarkable stories. Of particular interest to law school applicants will be the story of the Student Hurricane Network. Not since the Freedom Summer of 1964 have so many young people descended on the Deep South, changing themselves and the region in the process.

Read first-person accounts from these law schools in the affected region: University of Alabama, Loyola University New Orleans, University of Houston and Mississippi College.

The Writers:
Tari Williams
Director of Public Interest Law Programs and Public Interest Institute
University of Alabama School of Law

William P. Quigley
Professor and Director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center and Loyola Law Clinic
Loyola University New Orleans College of Law

Rhonda Beassie
Assistant Clinical Professor
University of Houston Law Center

Jim Rosenblatt
Dean
Mississippi College School of Law

Read first-person accounts from four of the more than 100 law schools from distant corners that sent volunteers to the Gulf: Fordham, Harvard, University of Maryland and University of Southern California.

Hillary Exter
Director of Student Organizations and Publicity
Public Interest Resource Center
Fordham Law School

Lee M. Branson
Assistant Director
Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs
Harvard Law School

Briana Green
Director, Judicial Clerkships, Public Interest & Government Programs
University of Maryland School of Law

Lisa Mead
Associate Dean
Office of Public Service
University of Southern California Gould School of Law

Tari Williams

Equal Justice Works — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:24:07 GMT

Tari Williams
Director of Public Interest Law Programs and Public Interest Institute
University of Alabama School of Law

Like many other law schools, the University of Alabama School of Law community felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina's impact on Alabama and the Gulf Coast. Searching for a way to help, in consultation with the Tuscaloosa Bar Association, we formed the Hurricane Katrina Legal Assistance Project (HKLAP). The HKLAP operated at the Law School's Public Interest Institute combining volunteer efforts of students and local attorneys.

Through the HKLAP, more than 80 first, second, and third-year law students assisted Hurricane Katrina victims. The students met people who had lost everything, people who did not want to go back, and people who wanted to return to their homes but could not because there was nothing left. The students and volunteer lawyers handled FEMA problems, insurance coverage cases, housing issues, and family law disputes. The students learned as much about the courage and resiliency of the people impacted by the storm as they did about the law. Emily Hines, a second-year UA Law student and HKLAP volunteer, was struck by one of her client's plight. Months after Katrina hit, this man was still searching for his sister and her family. He didn't know where his sister was and he didn't know how to find her. Emily had trouble imagining where he found the strength and determination to rebuild his life and be reunited with his family.

The University of Alabama School of Law's commitment to Katrina victims crossed our state's borders. A group of UA Law students and I went to Mississippi over spring break to assist the Mississippi Center for Justice with victims still reeling from the devastating affects of Hurricane Katrina. The Break for Public Service Program (BPSP), coordinated through the Law School's Public Interest Institute and the Student Hurricane Network, immersed students in a multitude of projects including housing preservation, collecting oral histories, and community development initiatives.

I had not traveled to the Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina. I did not want to go just to see the destruction. I wanted to go in a capacity that would allow me to put my skills and experience to use. The spring break trip allowed me and the students to do that, contributing to rebuilding the lives and spirits of those most affected.

Service learning opportunities such as the HKLAP and BPSP help law students discover the power of the law and the value of public service and empathy. They receive first-hand opportunities to examine the dimensions and urgency of poverty and other social issues that many will confront during their legal careers. They walk away from these experiences inspired and challenged to find avenues for continued community involvement and to work towards social justice and positive social change.

William P. Quigley

Equal Justice Works — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:20:09 GMT

William P. Quigley
Professor and Director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center and Loyola Law Clinic
Loyola University New Orleans College of Law

In late August 2005, Katrina and its aftermath shut down New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, displacing all the faculty, staff and students of Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.

Once it became clear that New Orleans was not going to reopen, the University of Houston generously offered to host Loyola Law for the rest of the fall 2005 semester. Hundreds of law students, along with faculty and staff, moved to Houston to re-start the fall semester.

One of the first priorities was to set up the Loyola Law Clinic in Houston to help provide legal assistance to the tens of thousands of Gulf Coast families who were temporarily living there.

The clinic faculty and staff conferred and arranged for most to come to Houston, where the clinic set up a Katrina Clinic in the main Katrina/Rita Disaster Relief Center. Others stayed behind to track down incarcerated criminal defense clients and to work with the Louisiana State Bar Association to set up and staff an 800 number for civil advice and referrals.

The Houston-based Loyola Katrina clinic faculty and students partnered with as many pro bono organizations and individuals locally and nationally as possible. Students and faculty directly assisted approximately 1000 people during the fall of 2005. Other organizations assisted thousands more. Loyola students and faculty helped people get copies of birth certificates, reinstate social security, restart child support, and assist with landlord-tenant and consumer problems. Faculty were also involved in major federal and state litigation to re-open the courts, address landlord tenant problems, voting issues, public housing, public education, trailer problems, and create due process reviews before home demolitions started.

When Loyola moved back to New Orleans in January 2006, the need for the Katrina clinic increased. Loyola started a new worker justice clinic and hired two full-time Katrina staff attorneys while continuing its clinical work in family, immigration, and criminal defense.

Law students and lawyers from across the country came to Loyola to join in and provide volunteer legal assistance with the Loyola Katrina Clinic. In all, nearly 3000 law students and representatives from every legal assistance organization in the country came to help out organizations across the gulf coast. This tremendous outpouring of support has been one of the true reasons for hope despite the adversities continued to challenge the people of the area.

Loyola University New Orleans has made participation in the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast one of its institutional priorities. Law and undergraduate courses have concentrated on the effects of the disaster and the many challenges ahead. Clinical and service learning educational opportunities have involved thousands of students and continue to expand.

Many obstacles remain for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Over 200,000 people have not returned to New Orleans alone. With continuing national and international assistance and solidarity, our communities will not just be repaired to pre-Katrina conditions, but will be rebuilt fairly and with more justice for all.

Rhonda Beassie

Equal Justice Works — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:10:53 GMT

Rhonda Beassie
Assistant Clinical Professor
University of Houston Law Center

The buses are on their way. A lot of buses are on their way.

While law schools across the country responded to the Gulf Coast disasters by providing legal assistance to victims through scheduled visits to the region, the University of Houston Law Center (UHLC) had the opportunity to help meet the most basic of human needs—shelter and sustenance. It began with the buses.

For many Houston residents the impact of Hurricane Katrina became more than just horrifying television images with the arrival of busloads of evacuees. Our city became temporary shelter for a great number of Katrina victims housed initially in the old Astrodome and later moved to the George R. Brown Convention Center, hotels, and apartments.

The school reacted swiftly. Several students and faculty members provided logistical support at the registration/housing centers. Student organizations staffed a joint hurricane relief effort collecting contributions of clothing, toiletries, non-perishable food, and cash. A Words of Encouragement Project invited students to stop in on breaks to write cards and letters to demoralized evacuees.

Knowing UHLC survived flooding during Tropical Storm Allison through the support of our neighbors and friends, then Associate Dean Seth Chandler was especially motivated to help the New Orleans schools. Through his leadership and with the support and flexibility of our faculty, staff, and students, we hosted Loyola University New Orleans Law School's fall 2005 semester on our campus. The call for shelter came even closer to home when several members of our law school community prepared to share offices and even their homes with our Loyola friends during their time in Houston.

Shortly before Loyola arrived on our campus, much of Houston experienced our own evacuation in expectation of Hurricane Rita. The hurricane shifted east in the 11th hour and few Houstonians experienced damage. However, our brush with Mother Nature and the destruction experienced in eastern Texas strengthened our resolve to help hurricane victims. With Rita sufferers joining Katrina evacuees, both the population and demand for social services, including legal services, swelled far beyond capacity.

Professor Richard Alderman, known throughout our region as "the People's Lawyer," organized volunteers to staff a Hurricane Relief phone bank and a special People's Law School Program for hurricane victims to learn about their legal and rights. Many of our hurricane relief and education projects continue today, such as our resource bank for children in disasters and conference on Children and the Law after Katrina, both projects of UHLC's Center for Children Law and Policy.

We could not meet all the shelter, sustenance or legal needs of the busloads of hurricane evacuees that traveled to Houston. However, we were fortunate to forge relationships with Loyola evacuees and experience the sense of purpose that comes through helping others. I think I speak for every member of the University of Houston Law Center community when I say we gained far more than we gave.

Jim Rosenblatt

Equal Justice Works — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:06:35 GMT

Jim Rosenblatt
Dean
Mississippi College School of Law

The Mississippi College School of Law is located in the State Capital of Jackson some 150 miles inland from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We watched the Hurricane Katrina weather reports the weekend before she was scheduled to make landfall. We kept the Law School open for classes on Monday, August 29, 2005 not knowing how the winds might dissipate as the hurricane traveled inland. Many of our students with families on the Gulf Coast had already returned home to assist with evacuation efforts.

As winds became increasingly strong, by noon we cancelled classes and sent everyone home. That night Hurricane Katrina roared through Jackson with fierce winds that blew trees over, tore roofs off and snapped utility poles. Electric and telephone service was lost. On Tuesday morning amidst the clear skies that follow a hurricane, we inspected the Law School and found our only damage to be a shredded American flag and a downed hackberry tree sprawled out on our parking lot.

Not knowing when electric service would be restored, we cancelled classes for a week. Knowing we'd narrowly escaped a similar fate, my administration agreed we would offer to take in Tulane and Loyola law students. Late on Thursday with electric service back and communication with the outside world restored, we were amazed to discover that law schools all over the country had already extended the same offer. Though late in the game, we posted our invitation and eventually gave free classes to one Tulane and four Loyola law students for the fall semester. Our students and administration rallied around these students and made them a part of our community. Our Law Review published two notes from Tulane students.

After classes resumed, our law students volunteered at the Mississippi Bar where the Mississippi Young Lawyers Division coordinated the provision of legal services to Hurricane victims. The outpouring of support from lawyers and law students across the United States was overwhelming, and our students helped organize this support and staffed call centers. MC law professors offered training sessions for out-of-state lawyers who arrived to volunteer. Our alumni raised funds for law students and graduates who lost so much during the hurricane. We collected and donated professional furniture to Gulf Coast lawyers who lost their offices. Our students provided food and clothing to classmates whose families had lost their homes. Many members of our law school community traveled to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to assist with cleanup and rebuilding. We provided replacement diplomas to our graduates whose diplomas were lost or damaged during the storm.

To make the connection between the tragedy and the law, we offered a fully subscribed Katrina seminar and marked the one-year anniversary with a Katrina Symposium hosted by the Mississippi College Law Review, published in a volume of the Law Review dedicated to the storm's victims. Today, our students and graduates continue to provide legal services on the Gulf Coast to assist people in reclaiming their lives.

As I reflect on the two years since Katrina's wrath, I am reminded that we also saw humanity at its best!

Hillary Exter

Equal Justice Works — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:52:30 GMT

Hillary Exter
Director of Student Organizations and Publicity
Public Interest Resource Center
Fordham Law School

The impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has been a defining moment for law students at Fordham Law School and nationally. It opened eyes to enormous institutional failure, systemic problems, poverty, inequality, and racism. Facing this reality, an extraordinary group of law students mobilized in the aftermath of the storms and formed the Student Hurricane Network to provide critically needed legal assistance and advocacy on behalf of people and communities in the Gulf Coast.

"On August 29, 2005, I had sat, transfixed, in front of the television as the news networks reported the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The shock that overcame me in those initial moments quickly gave way to the gut reaction that I had to do…something," said Melissa Rasmussen, '08, who began Fordham Law only a week before the levees broke. "I went down to New Orleans because I felt like it was something terrible happening here in America and that I could help," said Jeremy Pfetsch, '07, who joined three of Fordham's delegations. Janos Marton, '09, "made the decision to attend law school after spending a year doing Katrina relief, seeing the legal obstacles people faced during the recovery," and has been a part of the last two Fordham delegations.

"Right after the storm a group of Fordham students along with students from other schools in the country got together and came up with the idea of sending law student volunteers to the Gulf Coast to not only bear witness but also just help out in any way that they could," said Anamaria Segura, '07, who has been a part of each winter and spring delegation.

Fordham's students, faculty and administrators have worked with many legal and grassroots organizations, including the Advancement Project and the Peoples' Hurricane Relief to stop the bulldozing of lower Ninth Ward homes without notice to the homeowners and outreach to immigrant workers doing clean-up and rebuilding in often illegal working conditions, with the Orleans Parish Public Defenders and the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center on criminal justice issues, with NAACP-LDF on a voter protection project, with New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation to assist homeowners unable to access government benefits to rebuild, with the Gert Town Revival Initiative on neighborhood rebuilding plans, and with the People's Organizing Committee on a housing conditions documentation project.

Our experiences are transformative. "What leads you to go down is different than what you take away from it. You're drawn in by the magnitude of the tragedy and the overwhelming significance of what has happened," explained Jeremy. "But on the ground it becomes about the people, the individuals you have the chance help. There is still much to do."

The passion, commitment, dedication and love that students at Fordham and nationwide have put into the work has been truly inspiring. "Those newest to our profession are really setting the standard for the rest of us," said Ian Weinstein, Professor and Director of Clinical Education.

Lee M. Branson

Equal Justice Works — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:26:13 GMT

Lee M. Branson
Assistant Director
Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs
Harvard Law School

"I'm sure I learned as much about life and the law in America this week as I did all the rest of my first year of law school," claimed one of our Harvard Law School students after a trip to New Orleans. Each of our 129 students and seven staff who have traveled to the Gulf Coast since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has had a unique experience. The Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs has arranged for students to travel on one-week trips by coordinating placements with the Student Hurricane Network. Additionally, during our winter term students have done clinical work for the month of January, either splitting their time between Washington, DC, and Biloxi through a partnership with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the Mississippi Center for Justice, or working in New Orleans with legal services agencies.

Volunteers included 1Ls who at first worried they didn't know what they were doing but in the end gained a great sense of accomplishment. In performing what may have seemed a relatively easy task like helping a client file a bankruptcy petition, many students learned a practical skill that also had a great impact on one person's future. Other students were frustrated by their time spent in the Gulf Coast. Expecting to go and save the world in one week, they found an entire legal system in disarray. Several were disappointed when they couldn't solve every problem during their visit, and were exasperated at seeing so many people in need. Despite their frustration, I told them that there was still something to be learned—how much work needs to be done, how much change needs to be made so that the law can protect people in the future, how lucky we are that we have so many resources. The most satisfying experiences were those that combined very big picture, theoretical legal work with on-the-ground contact with victims of the storms.

When I accompanied students on a recent trip, I couldn't believe how much our presence was appreciated. Gratitude wasn't limited to the volunteer work alone: Gulf Coast residents were constantly thanking us for coming to eat, shop, and listen to their stories. I felt proud to say that HLS has put amazing resources into this effort to support student and staff travel over the past two years. I am humbled and inspired to see that our students are getting as much or even more out of the experience than they are giving.

Briana Green

Equal Justice Works — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:41:31 GMT

Briana Green
Director, Judicial Clerkships, Public Interest & Government Programs
University of Maryland School of Law

While many law students use their semester break as an opportunity to relax and recover from final exams, students at the University of Maryland School of Law spent their last three Winter and Spring recesses lending a helping hand to the devastated residents of New Orleans and Mississippi through the Student Hurricane Network’s Gideon Indigent Defense and Building Projects.

In March, 2006, about 30 Maryland law students traveled to New Orleans where they partnered with Catholic Charities' Operation Helping Hands project to rebuild homes for families in St. Bernard Parish. Students spent the week removing rotten furniture, walls, and fixtures from severely damaged homes belonging to elderly residents and people with disabilities. First-year law student Stephan Stohler noted the many-layered challenges to rebuilding: "Resources are precious," he said. "In St. Bernard Parish there's one store open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the whole neighborhood. You can't build a house if you don't have a job. And you can't work if you don't have a home."

Maryland students have been part of the Student Hurricane Network’s more than 2,700 law student volunteers from across the country who have worked in Louisiana and Mississippi. Not only have students flexed their physical muscles, they’ve also applied their burgeoning legal knowledge through SHN’s organization. More than 50 Maryland law students, for instance, spent their January 2007 break interviewing jailed prisoners on behalf of the city’s few remaining public defenders. They pored over case files for defendants awaiting trial, interviewed people recently arrested and helped defenders represent clients in court.

Maryland Professor, Doug Colbert, who supervised the students along with volunteer lawyers from the Maryland Public Defender office, observed that “students’ growth was enormous. First-year students developed the skills of a third-year student by week’s end.” Students, too, recognized that their work was crucial. “You try to develop a rapport with the client in a short time,” said Sandra Goldberg, a law student from Montgomery County, Maryland. “You ask questions about them and their family. If I can make a difference in one case or give someone hope that they’re not being forgotten, I’ll feel like the trip has been worthwhile.”

Maryland students returned from their three trips in 2006 and 2007, the School of Law held a forum where student volunteers shared their experiences. Dean Karen Rothenberg greeted the students and praised student leaders. "They were determined that these trips to New Orleans and Biloxi were going to happen. It was the right thing to do," she said. "Not only is leadership figuring out the means to do something, it is also having the passion collectively to make it happen. I want to stress how proud I am of all of you." Dean Rothenberg then informed the students that the law school would match the money they had raised with donations from fellow students, faculty, family and friends.

Lisa Mead

Equal Justice Works — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:11:35 GMT

Lisa Mead
Associate Dean
Office of Public Service
University of Southern California Gould School of Law

We all hoped against hope we wouldn’t be needed to go back a second time when we returned from the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast in the spring of 2006. But there we were—32 USC Law students and me—returning to the region in the spring of 2007to a region and people still suffering greatly and still with tremendous unmet needs—legal and otherwise.

It’s amazing how much work there is still to do,” said Andy Miller, ’08, who worked with the Center for Racial Justice and helped organize the trip. “It has been a full year and people are still grappling with the same issues and difficulties that they were a year ago.”

When our plane touched down in New Orleans we were struck by how little had changed since our last visit. True, most of the debris was gone and the crumbling houses demolished, yet so many residents were still in despair and lacked even the most basic of necessities, not to mention legal help. It also seemed that a heavy blanket of depression had covered the residents as well as the full-time aid workers who had all seemed so energetic just 12 months before.

“I know that many people have lost hope and are frustrated — including the lawyers and other volunteers in the region,” said student Paula Mayeda, ’09, who worked with the Student Hurricane Network on a FEMA trailer and survey mapping project. “I’m hoping that our group will help publicize the needs that the region still has.”

On our second trip to New Orleans and Biloxi, Mississippi , students helped with class-action lawsuits, examined housing claims, and sifted through criminal cases at the Department of Justice. They assisted lawyers at myriad agencies, including the Mississippi Center for Justice, Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana , FEMA and the NAACP.

After working with the USC students and law students from across the nation, I’m struck by how fortunate our country is to have so many thoughtful, articulate and motivated students with a passion for justice. Some will chose public service as a career. Many will go on to private law firms. All have found experiences like the service trips to the Gulf Coast to be incredibly moving, even life-changing.

As one student said at the end of our second trip to New Orleans, “These trips have provided me with a lens through which I am able to more clearly see the poverty and injustice that is all around me in my own community.”

I hope that all of us at law schools will redouble our efforts to provide every student with: a lens through which they can see the consequences of inequality, the skills to solve the most challenging societal problems, the motivation to stand up for what is right, and the willingness to work hard to improve life for everyone.

Transcript: Civil Rights and the Law

Equal Justice Works — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:12:52 GMT

Columbia Law School professor and civil-rights lawyer Jack Greenberg joined us for a Live Talk on Tuesday, Jan. 16. Read the transcript.

Jack Greenberg has been at the forefront of many of the landmark civil-rights cases of the 20th century, including serving as co-counsel with Thurgood Marshall in the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954. Greenberg suceeded Marshall as director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, a position he held until in 1984, when he joined the faculty of Columbia Law School. He has continued to champion individual rights, and has participated in human-rights missions to the Soviet Union, Poland, South Africa, Sudan and elsewhere. Join Greenberg for a Live Talk on a career in civil rights and his work in school desgregation cases, on Tuesday, Jan. 16, at 1 p.m. ET. Submit questions now.

A Vital Mission

Equal Justice Works — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:42:33 GMT

I have been well rewarded for my work as a lawyer, but I have to say that a large measure of the satisfaction I feel as I review a lifetime in the practice derives from the work with others in the volunteer sector—including fellow lawyers—to effect worthwhile, sometimes even important, results. There is, indeed, a widespread incidence of lawyers in the private bar who give time and advice to nonprofit organizations—sometimes through lawyering and sometimes through board, committee or management work. This volunteer public-interest work is nearly as important as the work of lawyers in a public-interest law office.

To me, a lawyer's responsibility to do public service can be summarized quite simply: to whom much is given, much is expected. And much is given to us who have had the opportunity to get a good education, get a law-school education, work in a law firm, make an adequate or better living and enjoy the fruits of the great education. We owe something back to the society that made it possible.

I see considerable overlap in the characteristics that lead a person to the practice of law and those that lead a person to be involved in civic activity. These activities share a major ingredient—the challenge of the planning and follow-through required to get a desired result. In both cases, the process is largely dependent upon persuading others to accept the wisdom of a plan and organizing a plan that works within the rules and traditions that govern the activity.

The essence of this civic work is problem-solving: the city needs a zoo, our schools need to pass a levy, foster children deserve a better shake. There are thousands of problems, virtually none of which are going to be rectified without organized citizen involvement.

Let me mention one of my activities that I feel particularly good about. I was asked to chair a long-range-planning committee for the Washington State Bar Association back in the '80s. The question we pondered was what the primary objective of our bar should be. In fairly short order, that group—which was an assembly of very experienced, thoughtful lawyers —came to a strong consensus: the most important thing that a state bar association could do and the priority of its agenda should be to improve the level of access to justice for all citizens. The Bar Board of Governors readily accepted this conclusion and obtained a rule from our state Supreme Court establishing a permanent Access to Justice Board, making this work a priority for the whole justice system.

In closing, I would add that the unpaid time and effort so many lawyers devote to the work of the profession itself—supporting the court system, administering lawyer discipline and the like—is a part, and an important part, of the whole of the voluntary work we do.

I feel sure I am not alone in these reflections.

For more information about the work of the Washington Access to Justice Board, go to www.wsba.org/atj.

Hillary Clinton on a Law Career in Public Service

Equal Justice Works — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 18:18:29 GMT

U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)...

Reflecting on all of my experiences since law school, it's hard for me to imagine any other path. I have been blessed with so many opportunities: being part of the newly-created Children's Defense Fund, becoming a staff attorney in Congress and partner at a law firm, serving our nation as First Lady and serving New York in the United States Senate. And, of course, I met my husband when we were both students at Yale Law School.

But the truth is my decision to attend law school was by no means assured. I felt pulled in a million different directions. My graduating class at Wellesley was the class of 1969, a time of great change and anguish for America. My time as an undergraduate coincided with years of cultural tumult, controversy, and tragedy, including the escalation of the Vietnam War, the withdrawal of President Johnson from the presidential race and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

All you had to do was turn on a television set to see that there was so much going wrong in America. But in my young and idealistic mind, that meant there were so many different ways a young person like me could make something right. There was a spirit of civic involvement—of civic action—that permeated the campus and filled me with a sense of possibility, despite the social upheaval that marked the late 1960s.

There was, however, one thing I knew for sure. I wanted to participate in public life as an activist and a citizen. I believed in our country and our democratic institutions—and that you could achieve a lot of good by participating. In the years since, as a lawyer, as First Lady and as senator from New York, that faith has only grown. In the end, the decision to apply and attend law school was for me an expression of that belief: the system can be changed from within.

The law can be an incredible vehicle for social change—and lawyers are at the wheel. I think of Brown v. Board of Education and the Supreme Court cases that would follow, of the Voting Rights Act. In fact, in the Senate, we just renewed the Voting Rights Act, a reminder of the work that remains to ensure that every citizen's constitutional rights are safeguarded. (Alas, the work of public-interest lawyers is never done.)

I also reflect on my personal experiences: the inspiring lawyers I've met, like Marian Wright Edelman who founded the Children's Defense Fund, and the opportunities I've had to serve the public interest as a lawyer. One of my first jobs after leaving law school was gathering information about the Nixon administration's failure to enforce the legal ban on tax-exempt status for private segregated academies. These schools had sprung up in the South in an effort to avoid court-ordered integration of public schools. I remember traveling to Atlanta to meet with the dedicated, passionate lawyers and civil rights workers who were compiling evidence to prove that these schools were created solely to avoid the Constitutional and moral mandate.

In the end, the law is a profession unlike any other. By sheer strength of argument you can right wrongs, protect society against abuse and serve the public good. At its best, law can be a field where your belief in justice can become justice itself. Is the law right for everybody? Of course not. But I can honestly look back and say that my decision to become a lawyer was one of the most important in my life, affording me so many chances to learn, give back, find my own strengths and use them well.

Today, these many years since I chose to become a lawyer, America faces a new set of challenges—and will require a new generation's efforts to help meet them.

In the past five years, we have experienced great tragedy. We witnessed the deadliest attack on our soil in the history of the country. Our nation was changed forever, and you came of age and tried to begin figuring out your path even as our nation seemed to find itself on less sure footing. I also see in your generation much of what I saw in my own, including a renewed commitment to service. You need only look to AmeriCorps, Teach for America, and the focus on public interest at our nation's law schools to see this for yourself.

Now it's your turn to find your footing by helping America find hers. And of course, you have difficult decisions to make about how you will participate, about how you'll use your talents to be the best citizen you can be.

The path to giving back is not always the easiest one to follow—or even, at times, easy to see. But each of us has an opportunity to use our talents and blessings to help others. Each of us has a duty to one another. The law is one way—but by no means the only way—to fulfill that duty. You can make it your life or at least part of your daily life, with pro bono work, for example. As you look past your college careers, as you consider a career in law and the myriad opportunities that lie ahead, I'll leave you with this piece of sage advice passed on by the wise and learned philosopher—and Yankees Hall-of-Famer—Yogi Berra:

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."