Providing mentors, legal aid

Nicholas Gomes passed the Massachusetts bar in July 2013 after graduating from the University of Massachusetts Law School at Dartmouth, and almost immediately started practicing as an attorney in Fall River.
But the 26-year-old from Acushnet has since also established himself as an attorney working through the university’s Justice Bridge Legal Center, a new, Boston-based incubator that employs attorneys who are starting out and provides experienced mentors that help the lawyers serve clients of modest means in areas such as family law, housing, employment and bankruptcy.
Gomes, who recently helped a mother get child support three years after filing for divorce and also get the divorce proceedings back on track, hopes to develop a practice specializing in property law. But the work in family law at Justice Bridge, as well as the occasional case in landlord-tenant disputes, is helping him gain needed experience, referrals to clients and exposure, he said.
“I am still in my first year as a professional, so I need to build my credibility,” he said.
Launched on Aug. 1 as a pilot program with, now, 10 graduates accepted to practice at the center, Justice Bridge is on track to double that number as a full-fledged program in its own right by the start of 2015, said Mary Lu Bilek, the law school dean who helped establish the program, and Len Zandrow, the center’s executive director and a practicing attorney in his own right.
They also expect the center to expand concurrently into the South Coast region next year.
“What is really encouraging is that in the first month or so we’ve received about 125 requests for representation,” said Bilek. “More than 50 of them have turned into lawyer-client relationships and in virtually all of these cases, the clients have been willing to pay and have been able to give us modest retainers.”
Besides the demand in Boston for family law, immigration, landlord-tenant and consumer issues, which the incubator caters to, Bilek said it was located there because “having a Boston address is a valuable thing for a lawyer. And Boston is a bigger market so there’s more unmet need and more room for new lawyers. We thought it would be best to test it there and make sure our lawyers are getting cases that other lawyers don’t want, because we didn’t do this to be in competition with the bar.” The Legal Advocacy and Resource Center in Boston is the primary referral service, though there are several others, Bilek said.
The original idea for the center came from Deb Ramirez, a professor at Northeastern University. As a result, a couple of the slots for attorneys are filled by Northeastern graduates, Zandrow said.
All juris doctor graduates must apply to the program, he said. In order to be eligible, they have to be members of the bar and incorporate as a professional corporation or practice on their own, he said.
The attorneys pay membership fees that started at $250 a month and will increase to $500 a month by December, he added. They also on average charge about $50 an hour, while some charge flat rates at times, Zandrow said.
Part of the attraction to the center also is the mentoring provided, Gomes said. He particularly looks up to retired Judge Lloyd MacDonald, who served as chief administrative justice of the Bristol County, Mass., region for the state’s Superior Court two years prior to retirement. MacDonald is in residence two full days a week at the center, Zandrow said.
“It’s very nice having the mentors available,” said Gomes, “because you know if you have a question, you have someone you can go to and discuss it with.”
Mentor Nicki Famiglietti of Watertown, Mass., specializes in family law. She retired in 2009. Helping the young attorneys is a combination of guiding them in how to work with a client to obtain the information; how to document matters for the court, and knowing procedurally what to do, she said.
“The new attorneys are just learning the court procedure. They’re pretty well-versed in basic law but how you put that into practice is the part every new young lawyer needs help with,” Famiglietti said.
There are about six mentors staffing the center, plus two dozen on call, Zandrow said. The mentors have 30 to 40 years of legal experience, so they know their areas of practice exceptionally well, said Zandrow, but many have mentoring experience as well. “The mentors really function as partners would to associates,” he said. “It’s a true, old-fashioned apprenticeship, and that’s something you would not get practicing on your own. There is more regular exposure day in and day out, particular when someone is in residence right in the next office. It’s just easier to make that connection.”
The incubator model has value in several respects, said Bilek. It ensures that new lawyers “hanging up a shingle have the support, mentoring and networking they need to do a really good job for the communities they’re going to serve,” she said.
At the same time, the legal work fills an unmet need for the public, particularly with regard to child custody and foreclosure cases, she said. Add to that the challenging job market, which is somewhat glutted at the moment, she noted, and the center emerges as “a really good idea.”
“It creates advantages for our students and it increases access to justice in the state,” she said.
Justice Bridge also has raised the law school’s profile with the bar in Massachusetts, which is important for a new school, Bilek said. UMass Dartmouth acquired the Southern New England School of Law in 2010 and graduated its first class in 2013, Zandrow said.
“We’re getting press,” said Bilek. “We’re just entering the recruitment season now for students and that will be helpful. For faculty, knowing we were going to do this was attractive to them because it fits with the school’s mission and is forward thinking. It provides not only a lab for how to make the legal system better; it also provides a reference point for how to make a better curriculum.”
Gomes, who is part of that inaugural class, can’t say enough about the center’s value not only to his growth as a practicing attorney but to the community he is working in.
“Even though we’re charging a reduced fee and making money,” he said, “we’re providing a service in the community that is much needed.”
Justice Bridge has raised more than $154,000 and needs $200,000 by June to keep going, Bikek said.
“I’m confident we’ll meet our goal,” she said.

No posts to display