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Making Seven Minutes Count

New York Lawyer
May 9, 2008

By Mark Fass
New York Law Journal

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Each week day, hundreds of litigants show up at Brooklyn's Family Court, nearly four-fifths of whom are unrepresented by an attorney and, to varying degrees, unprepared for what may be six or seven of the most important minutes of their lives.

The six floors of the court at 330 Jay St. offer standing room only for people whose familial problems - mostly custody, visitation, child support and paternity issues - have deteriorated to the point that they require court intervention. Virtually no one wears the tell-tale dark suit of an attorney.

"Family Court hearings proceed very quickly and pro se litigants are overwhelmingly unprepared for this," said attorney Leah Edmunds. "They often emerge not knowing what hit them."

Such was the genesis of the now 18-month-old New York City Family Court Legal Services Project, a twice weekly free-consultation service in the Brooklyn Family Court that provides pro se parties a chance to meet with volunteer attorneys on a one-time basis, usually for about 30 minutes to an hour.

The project is manned by volunteer lawyers from two banks and 15 of the city's top firms, including Ms. Edmunds' employer, Greenberg Traurig. Each volunteer must first complete about seven hours of live training, for which they get CLE credit, or they can view the training on DVD.

Since the free-advice service opened its doors in the fall of 2006, its attorneys have advised more than 1,200 people, at a rate of about eight to 10 per day, regarding the best ways to address and resolve the problems that have brought them and their kin to Family Court.

The project is located in the court's 5th-floor Office of Self Represented, where court officers, who are legally precluded from offering advice, screen clients and act as a liaison to the lawyer volunteers, who usually work in teams of two.

About half the clients seek advice about child support; some litigants are seeking additional payments, while others want to lower their obligation. The remaining questions are fairly evenly divided among paternity, visitation, custody and other issues, according to volunteers.

'Focusing' Litigants

On a recent Monday, Gaston Kroub, another Greenberg lawyer and Nancy Wood, an in-house attorney for Bank of America, advised the family of a 13-year-old El Salvadoran immigrant on how, following the death of his caretaker grandmother, his aunt could apply for an expedited order of custody so he could visit his mother for the first time in seven years.

"If we didn't tell her [about expedited actions], she wouldn't have even known to ask for that," said Mr. Kroub.

A second walk-in suffered from migraines and other undiagnosed maladies that prevented him from making his child support payments, he said. He had also missed his last court date because of a doctor's appointment, which resulted in a default judgment. On this day, he had simply shown up with a doctor's note, hoping that would set things straight.

Ms. Wood and Mr. Kroub emphasized procedure and strategy - namely, they recommended a motion to reinstate and another to adjust the support order, and walked him through the steps he needed to take.

"It was really all about focusing him," Mr. Kroub said.

A typical Family Court judge's calendar allots about seven and a half minutes per case, and the proceedings very much resemble the television show The People's Court - the uncounseled litigants, standing alone behind a table, tell their sides of the story to the court and hope that they serendipitously satisfy the requirements of the law.

So the Family Court Legal Services Project lawyers emphasize zeroing in on the issues.

Mr. Kroub told the story of a litigant who showed up with a Redwell Folder whose thickness rivaled that of the most fastidious of corporate litigators.

"We told him, 'You need to show the judge this, that and the other thing," Mr. Kroub recalled amusedly.

Consistent Presence

By most accounts, the idea for staffing the Family Court with volunteer attorneys who could, in a single session, set the self-represented on the right track, began with Judge Joseph M. Lauria, administrative judge of the New York City Family Court.

Judge Lauria, however, credits Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye and her emphasis on a "consistent pro bono presence in all the courts."

Judge Kaye's informal efforts to recruit volunteers played a key role in tripling the number of participating firms from the original five to the present 15, participants said.

Because the cases are not tracked, the assessments of the attorneys' efforts remain largely allegorical, though universally positive.

Ramonita Cordero, a supervising attorney at MFY Legal Services, an unaffiliated non-profit law firm, said, "There is a crisis in the Family Court in the lack of representation. This project is of great assistance. It's always best to have an attorney, but that's not always feasible. [It's critical to have] someone to hone the legal issue."

Greenberg litigation partner William C. Silverman, who helped spearhead the project by recruiting its original volunteers, said, "You can measure [results] in sheer numbers, but the real way you measure is intangible - the satisfaction, the gratification in the clients. It's hard to measure, but it's real."

The attorneys also call the sessions a highly manageable way to incorporate volunteer time into their schedules, while gaining hands-on litigation experience to boot.

Mr. Kroub, 30, who was raised and continues to live in Gravesend, Brooklyn, adds, "I get compelling stories every time I come. Any time you sit in a room and the door closes and people tell you their stories, there's no way that can not be compelling. Sometimes the baby is even in the room."

Earlier this year, the project expanded to Manhattan, where lawyers advise the self-represented every Monday and Wednesday. Queens will have its own outpost within the next year, Judge Lauria said, and Staten Island some time after that.

The need for volunteers, Judge Lauria said, is unlikely to diminish.

"We see over 200,000 new petitions a year," the judge said. "Over a million people a year come through the door. And in some ways, that's a good thing. It means that people are seeking redress to their problems. That's why we're here."