Pioneering for Lend-a-lawyer
| Publication year | 1990 |
| Pages | 1797 |
1990, September, Pg. 1797. Pioneering for Lend-a-Lawyer
Because mine was the maiden effort on behalf of the Colorado Bar Association's Lend-a-Lawyer program,(fn1) I have been asked to report to you on my experience.
As I trust the readers already know, Lend-a-Lawyer was immediate past president of the Colorado Bar Association Chris Brauchli's brainchild. Since I had recently retired from the active practice of law and have been occupied with other pursuits, Chris urged me to undertake a pioneering effort to see what might be done to help provide free legal services for the indigent in the Four Corners area of our state. I accepted the challenge, mainly because my conscience bothered me that I had not done more over the years. And so my wife Janet and I moved to Cortez, Colorado, for ten weeks, from January 15 through the end of March 1990, hoping to serve as points of light in a kinder and gentler nation.
The first week was spent meeting with judges, court personnel, and members of local bar associations to assess the need and determine how I could be of help. I learned that the Durango Bar, in cooperation with Colorado Rural Legal Services ("C.R.L.S."), had an active legal services program which generally seemed to be meeting the needs of LaPlata County. However, the situation in Cortez and Montezuma County was quite different. There is considerable poverty and need for free legal services in the Four Corners area, both among the Native American population and the white community. Some of the local attorneys do what they can to help on a purely ad hoc basis, and from time to time C.R.L.S. hires a local attorney at a reduced fee to handle a specific matter in the Cortez area, but the absence of an organized, on-going program means there is a great need not being met. And so I decided to concentrate my efforts in the Cortez area and on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation which is headquartered some thirteen miles south of Cortez at Towaoc, Colorado.
The Cortez law firm of Fossum, Hatter and Green graciously furnished me an office at no charge and permitted me to poach as necessary on their secretarial staff and support system on a cost-only basis. Michael Green of that firm was of great assistance, as was District Judge Grace...
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