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The Face of Public Interest Law

Besides the supportive work environment, Joset points to another key benefit of her job. "I've been running the legal program here since I started," she notes. "It's experience you wouldn't get in a large firm in your first two years out of law school. You'd be buried in the library doing somebody else's research. You wouldn't see clients or a courtroom. So this is great experience."

Plus, she knows she's giving clients what they couldn't get anywhere else. "It's very difficult in our system to file an action (against an abuser) without an attorney," Joset says. "When you can't afford to hire an attorney, and you don't qualify for legal aid, you're left with no options. You're stuck in a relationship that is emotionally, verbally, physically, or sexually abusive with no way out."

The gratification for Joset is helping people find a way out. She thinks about one of her recent clients, a severely physically disabled woman who was regularly beaten by her husband. So was their child. "The divorce will be finalized shortly," Joset says. "She and her son have gotten out. They're able to live abuse-free lives, which otherwise they would not have been able to do."

Practicing "real" law

Three hundred miles to the south, in Dodgeville, Chuck Kreimendahl works on survival issues of a different sort as managing attorney for Western Legal Services, where he's worked for 10 years. His core areas of practice include housing issues, family law, public benefits, and consumer law. "It's essentially about keeping a roof over people's heads," Kreimendahl says. "We cover six counties and have two attorneys."

Kreimendahl was drawn to public interest law even before he enrolled in law school. With a science background, including graduate studies, he initially did volunteer work in environmental law for the Department of Natural Resources and Wisconsin Environmental Decade as a law student. But a poverty law course at U.W. Law School steered his interest to doing legal work for poor people. He, too, had to wait to find the right position. After graduation, he worked for a year in a small firm in Park Falls before landing his current job.

"I have days probably all lawyers have when they wish they weren't lawyers," Kreimendahl says. "But to me there's a satisfaction in getting results for poor people. They don't get evicted, or they get the public benefits they're entitled to, or they resolve some sort of crisis custody dispute."

He finds as much, or more, satisfaction in that as he would landing a big client in a private firm. "There's this chasing-the-big-dollar thing that's evident in law school, in competing for jobs, and in law practice," Kreimendahl says. "It's refreshing not to have to contend with that kind of picture."

"And frankly," he adds, "this job offers opportunities a lot of general practitioners in small firms don't get a chance to do. We deal with elaborate, or at least interesting, legal issues - constitutional issues - that have to do with administrative law or public benefits."

Still, the attitude pervades the legal profession, say many public interest lawyers, that they're not practicing "real" law. Kreimendahl's response to that is two-fold. "First, our clients see what we do as the practice of law, and they're grateful," he says. "And the other thing is that if you do this type of practice for a while, you find other attorneys turning to you with questions they get. They don't practice in the areas we practice in. Judges and hearing examiners also see us as being somewhat expert in the fields we handle. So that counteracts any general sense that we're a different class of attorney."

The image of public interest lawyers as a separate breed is understandable, says Cindy Haro of Wisconsin Judicare in Wausau. "I'm not an attorney other lawyers see around the courthouse very often," she points out. "When I go to a local bar meeting or social function, they have no idea who I am or what I do."

Not only does her work differ from what private practitioners do, but public interest lawyers themselves have diverse jobs, Haro says. "What I do in my job probably bears little resemblance to what an attorney for a mental health project in Madison does," she says. "I doubt our days are much alike at all." Nonetheless, Haro values her connection to colleagues through the Bar's Public Interest Law Section. By meeting other public interest attorneys, she sees commonalities between the problems of her clients, who live on rural Indian reservations, with those of people living in urban areas.

For eight years, Haro has worked in Judicare's Indian law office, serving 10 reservation communities in 33 counties. She came to Judicare after running a similar program in northern Minnesota for more than four years. "One of the good things about a public interest law career," she says, "is that it's easier to find role models and mentors. And you get immediate experience. In the part of our office that does regular poverty law, if you want to go to court the first month you're on the job, the supervisor will make that happen for you. And work with you."

Haro's attraction to public interest law predates law school, back to when she was working as a claims processor for the Social Security Administration. "I saw that clients who had attorneys tended to get better results at their hearings," she says. "When I was trying to figure out what else to do with my life, I decided to go to law school and work for legal services." While a law student at the University of Montana Law School, she worked in the Indian Law Clinic. "That solidified my career choice," she says.

It's a choice she's never regretted, even though she says on this particular day she's had one of those "bureaucracy mornings," her least favorite part of the job. Much of her time goes into special projects, such as setting up a training program for tribal court advocates, or developing a tribal-specific juvenile justice system - "infrastructure building," as she calls it. "But I always make sure I also have at least a small client caseload," she says, "because that reminds me why I went to law school and why this is a great job. I would definitely do it all over again."

Going private

Jennifer Wertkin always knew she would be in public service someday, but she thought it would be as a social worker. After earning a master's degree, she took a social work job in Philadelphia. "I saw a lot of people's rights being infringed upon," Wertkin says, "and I had no ability to advocate for them legally because I was part of the system. I decided to go to law school to become someone who could advocate for people who didn't have a voice."

After graduating from U.W. Law School in December 1997, Wertkin set her sights on a legal services career and sent out "a million resumes all over the country," she says. She ended up, however, in private practice, working in a Madison firm that exclusively practices Indian law. Much of Wertkin's work is with the firm's public interest clients, plus she holds a Judicare contract to serve members of the Ho Chunk Nation in Dane and Sauk counties.

Now with a year of experience under her belt, Wertkin acknowledges that a major portion of her paycheck goes to repay law school and graduate school loans. Has that stirred second thoughts about pursuing a public interest career? "Nope," she says emphatically. "Not in a million years would I want to work in a large firm. I can't imagine being comfortable in that environment. I don't want to burn out."

Granted there's a certain burnout factor, too, in struggling to repay student loans while holding down a lesser paying job. "But," Wertkin maintains, "I enjoy what I do. That's the big difference." Even as a first-year lawyer, she's able to plunge into hands-on legal work and deal directly with clients. "I knew when I got out of law school that any job I took would have to involve a lot of client contact," she says. "One of my strengths is working individually with people, making a connection, and helping people feel that things aren't hopeless."

Like Wertkin, Darcy Haber aimed for a public interest law career when she graduated from U.W. Law School in 1995. But, thanks to Congressional cuts in legal services funding, job options were slim. "Not only were there no jobs," Haber says, "but some of my friends who'd graduated the year before were being laid off."

Instead of seeking a legal services position, Haber set up a sole private practice right after law school, emphasizing consumer and tenants' rights law. "I try very hard not to turn anybody away on the basis that they can't pay," she says.

Haber knew many fellow law students who felt drawn to public interest law careers. "But I can't name a handful who are doing it now," she says. The primary obstacle? Heavy debt load from loans for law school, perhaps also for college. The lower salaries in public interest law scare off many new lawyers who face loan repayment bills of several hundred dollars a month. "That's why," Haber emphasizes, "we need loan forgiveness programs," in which students get a portion of their loans repaid in return for entering public interest law work.

As for Haber, she says she was lucky to graduate without building up debts. Otherwise she may have abandoned her chosen career. "I wouldn't have been able to sleep at night not knowing if I was going to be able to pay an extra $500 a month in loans," she says. "Your sense of security goes right out the window."

Fortunately, Haber didn't face that dilemma and was able to pursue her passion for public interest law. She says she can't imagine doing anything else. "I remember why I'm in this," she says, "when I get another attorney on the phone and say I'm representing so-and-so. They say, 'What?!' They never expected this person to get an attorney. Then I think, 'Okay, I'm doing the right thing.'"

Editor's Note: Members interested in joining the Public Interest Law Section can do so simply by checking the appropriate area on the State Bar dues statement, to be mailed in June. For more information about the section, please contact Bob Peterson, chair, at (608) 264-6950; or State Bar staff liaison Jennifer Roethe Kersten at (800) 444-9404, ext. 6171.

Dianne Molvig operates Access Information Service, a Madison research, writing, and editing service. She is a frequent contributor to area publications.