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Best Practices
Mobilizing Law Students to Protect Women
by Kaaren Boullosa
Pro Bono Net’s unique vantage point in the public interest law community allows us to interact with many different kinds of programs. One that we would like to highlight is the Courtroom Advocacy Project (CAP), which is using the probono.net platform to coordinate its volunteer program as well as participating in the New York Family Law/Domestic Violence practice area. CAP arose out of "CourtWatch,” a joint project created some years ago among several domestic violence organizations in New York City. CourtWatch sent students from area law schools into Manhattan Family Court to observe and report on the treatment and level of protection that pro se domestic violence victims were receiving. In 1997, CAP evolved from CourtWatch into a full-fledged pro bono assistance and advocacy project active in the Family Courts in all five boroughs of the city, including Staten Island. CAP offers its volunteers, who now include law firm associates, law students, and interns at legal aid and pro bono organizations, an opportunity to work directly with domestic violence in Family Court.
Now a collaborative project of Sanctuary for Families Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services (the Center) and the New York Legal Assistance Group, CAP is housed at the Center and has five staff attorneys as well as hundreds of volunteers, all under the guidance of attorney Jennifer Friedman, who has directed CAP since its inception. More than 750 law students from nine area law schools, dozens of interns from legal aid organizations, and many summer and new associates at 27 major law firms, have had the satisfaction of providing a measure of reassurance, safety, and peace of mind to women fleeing violence in their homes. More than 3,000 pro se petitioners seeking orders of protection have received help from CAP’s volunteers in understanding their legal rights, navigating court proceedings, and drafting and filing effective court petitions. As you would expect, coordinating the CAP program is a complex undertaking, especially in connection with scheduling and matching hundreds of volunteers with court dates. Probono.net’s platform is being used to house CAP’s Calendar and contains every court date for every volunteer associated with the program in all five boroughs.
CAP provides volunteers with thorough training, including a day observing in Family Court. Volunteers then assume one-day shifts in one of the city’s Family Courts, working directly with petitioners, informing them of their rights under the law, helping them to fill out petitions for orders of protection correctly, and preparing them for what they will encounter inside the courtroom. CAP volunteers are also trained to report back to CAP cases that are particularly serious and may need additional legal assistance, including representation. In these instances, CAP staff attorneys will review the case and, if warranted, assume responsibility for representing the litigant, either on their own or through a law firm volunteer. New associates not yet admitted to practice can thus help a woman in desperate need and, at the same time, mine a valuable opportunity to obtain early courtroom experience. Volunteers in a litigated case receive excellent mentoring from CAP, which is listed as attorney of record, while the associate’s law firm is listed as co-counsel.
Family Court is nicknamed “poor people’s court” because it is the court people turn to who do not have the resources to pay for legal help. The Family Courts technically have a panel of lawyers on hand (the Assigned Counsel Panel) to provide representation for cases involving high-priority issues such as child custody and serious violence. However, as has been reported in the media several times during the last few years, the Family Courts remain woefully short of enough assigned counsel to help the thousands of petitioners who flood the courts each year.
The result is that poor people overwhelmingly proceed pro se, and confront a system that is intimidating, complex, and adversarial, usually at times of severe personal and family crisis. For women already frightened by violence, the experience can be agonizing and increase, rather than diminish, their feelings of helplessness. At a minimum, CAP and its volunteers are providing knowledge, reassurance, and effective court papers. At a maximum, this wonderful program can provide the direct legal assistance that can make the difference between retaining or losing custody of a child to an abuser or remaining in scarce low-rent housing or being forced to flee into shelter - even, sometimes, between life and death.
If you would like to learn more about CAP and how you can become part of its efforts to help victims of domestic violence, visit the web site of Sanctuary for Families – www.sanctuaryforfamilies.org or email CAP Director Jennifer Friedman at jenniferf@sffny.org.
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
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