Two Winners in Providing Pro Bono Legal Services: Delta and Weld Counties

• Publication year: 1997
• Pages: 43
• Citation: Vol. 26 No. 3 Pg. 43

26 Colo.Law. 43 Colorado Lawyer 1997.

1997, March, Pg. 43. Two Winners in Providing Pro Bono Legal Services: Delta and Weld Counties

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Vol. 26, No. 3, Pg. 43

The Colorado Lawyer
March 1997
Vol. 26, No. 3 [Page 43]

Departments
Legal Services News
Two Winners in Providing Pro Bono Legal Services: Delta and Weld Counties
by Michael Schottelkotte, Liz Meyer

Michael Schottelkotte is a partner of the law firm of Brown Schottelkotte & Tweedell, (970) 874-4451, and is presently serving as coordinator for the Delta County Bar Association's pro bono program. Liz Meyer has been the Administrator of Weld County Legal Services since 1993

Attorney participation in pro bono programs providing legal services to the poor varies widely throughout the state. Two programs with excellent attorney participation are those of Delta County and Weld County. Each program has provided a short description of its services and has attempted to select those elements that have made its program especially successful

Delta County's Pro Bono Program

by Michael Schottelkotte

The Delta Country Bar Association ("DCBA") is regarded by outside observers as having achieved relative success with its pro bono legal services program. The purpose of this article is to identify the mechanisms by which DCBA gained its success and, in that process, to help and inspire other lawyer groups with their own pro bono efforts.

As a threshold consideration, everyone recognizes that pro bono services should be an organizational, rather than merely an individual effort. Experience shows that, just as diet and exercise goals seem better achieved at a health club, the achievement of a lawyer's unquantified ethical mandate to perform pro bono services seems to increase overall within the supportive framework of a local bar association or other group. In *DCBA's view, organization size and the quality of leadership are the key ingredients of any successful pro bono campaign.

Based on the last official count, twenty-one attorneys are now actively engaged in private law practice in Delta County. Nearly 90 percent of them accept pro bono referrals on a rotating basis, averaging approximately two and one-half significant cases per year.

Applicants for pro bono services are first screened for financial and other eligibility criteria by the Montrose office of Colorado Rural Legal Services...