Going the distance.

• Author: DeLoye, Stacey Singer
• Position: Pro bono team from Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson P.A. - Pro Bono Pros

How many attorneys would stick with a case for three years, preparing for trial multiple times, pulling the full resources of their firm into fighting for their client's best interests, all for zero compensation?

Speaking from his home in Miami, the one his lawyers helped save, disabled former carpenter Fred Cooch wonders aloud about the dedication of his pro bono team, which included Julie Fishman Berkowitz, Darrell Payne, Joseph Onorati, and Matthew Graham, from the firm Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, P.A., of Miami.

Why did they work so hard for him for so long, for nothing?

"They came in on Saturdays and Sundays and met me there, they prepped me for trial, they'd work late into the evenings," Cooch says. "God bless them."

"At our firm, if we take a case, we are prepared to go the distance," Berkowitz says. "We treated this case like we would treat any paying client."

Berkowitz says she earned something more than money "You don't always get the warm fuzzies in law, but on this one, I know we really made a difference in somebody's life," Berkowitz says.

Cooch, now 64, had sought help from Legal Services of Greater Miami, Inc., a Florida Bar Foundation grantee, during a difficult, depressing time in his life. A series of devastating health problems had cost Cooch his business, his marriage, and, nearly, his home.

A cancerous growth on his nose required doctors to remove most of it, but no further cosmetic surgery was done, leaving Cooch with a gaping hole on his face. A series of heart attacks left him too weak to operate his furniture restoration business. His wife left him as he began to abuse drugs and alcohol. His home was all he had left, but without his business income, he fell behind on the mortgage payments, and the lender initiated foreclosure.

It was during this dark time that a friend introduced him to a landscaper willing to help him keep the yard up. The landscaper ingratiated himself by fixing a few things up, running errands, offering hope. Cooch thought he had found a true friend, at a time when he really needed one. So when that friend offered to help him rescue the home from foreclosure by putting his name on the deed, promising to renegotiate a new mortgage, and rent rooms out for income, Cooch thought it sounded like a reasonable plan.

Berkowitz says that's not what the landscaper did, however.

"He never got a loan, he never paid off the existing loan, and he never could have gotten a new loan. He...