The Love of Beer
Community Law Project Executive Director Dana Sisitsky gives law student Sarah Jordan (wearing glasses) advice on a case.
- Photo by Kelly Davis
Adjacent to the makeshift waiting area, behind one of three office dividers that give the legal clinic a bit of privacy, Dominique (who asked that only her first name be used) sits down with Jillian Tarabocchia, a second-year student at California western School of Law. For the next 20 minutes, Dominique, a Latina with long, wavy hair and glasses, does most of the talking, telling Tarabocchia a meandering story about what led to her sister filing a restraining order against her. Tarabocchia jots down a few notes but mostly listens while Dominique tries to make sense of what happened.
“Does this sound like a soap opera to you?” Dominique asks after realizing how long she’s been talking. “I just want to know how I can fight this. What are my rights?”
Cal western’s Community Law Project has been around since 2005, though in the last year, it’s seen exponential growth, due to word-of-mouth, a new executive director and an economy that’s resulted in more folks being unable to afford an attorney and facing legal issues that result from financial instability. In the past, there were evenings when only a handful of people, many of them homeless, showed up seeking legal advice; now, clients book appointments sometimes weeks in advance to meet with volunteer attorneys who specialize in a range of issues from housing, family and criminal law to immigration and personal injury. attorneys don’t represent these clients in court, but they’ll serve as guides, walking them through the process, says Dana Sisitsky, the clinic’s executive director.
“At one consultation, they’ll provide them with: ‘This is the map of how you get through your divorce case. Come back in a month with you’re paperwork and we’ll work on that.’ They’ll sort of guide them through the entire process…. They’re looking over their paperwork, they’re telling them what’s going to happen, they’re giving them advice on how to present themselves in front of the judge—sort of just basic information that someone who is involved in a big court case and is frazzled may not think of.”
That’s what Sisitsky and Tarabocchia do in Dominique’s case. With a hearing scheduled for that week, Dominique asks whether she should even show up—the sheriff’s deputy who served her with the temporary restraining order told her she didn’t need to.
“If you don’t go, she’ll get the restraining order,” Sisitsky explains. She advises Dominique to get a copy of the affidavit her sister filed.
“Make sure you look at it line-by-line,” she says. “I would ask for proof—is there a police report? Are there texts?”
The Community Law Project isn’t San Diego’s only free legal clinic, but it deals with a wider array of issues on a regular basis than others. What also makes the project unique is what surrounds it: medical and dental clinics staffed by students from UCSD’s School of Medicine, a small pharmacy and acupuncture services. There’s at least one social worker available—Lovell—and sometimes a nutritionist.
One goal of having a variety of clinics onsite, says Dr. Ellen Beck, the medical clinic’s program director, is to create a onestop model that can tackle problems that might involve overlapping legal and medical issues. Someone might come to the medical clinic with breathing problems and, during the intake interview, mention that his landlord refuses to do anything about the mold infestation in his apartment. Or, a woman going through a divorce who seeks assistance from the legal clinic might benefit from a sit-down with one of the onsite social workers. “Issue spotting,” is how Sisitsky describes it.
Having everything in one location is not only more efficient for people who might struggle with transportation or child care, but it also encourages the students who staff the clinics to think about issues in a different way. Beck describes it as a “transdisciplinary model,” though she admits it’s not easily replicated in the real world.
“In our current system, we’re all in our various silos, so it’s very hard to achieve that kind of integration,” she says. “But, when you do it, generally there are better outcomes. Really, it’s a philosophy or an approach: What are the barriers? How do you build trust so you identify the barriers? … And then, one at a time, you try to work on those barriers.”
By nature of the location—First Lutheran Church houses Third Avenue Charitable Organization, which does homeless outreach—many of the people who show up to the clinics are homeless.
“We saw this [homeless] man on the street and said, ‘Why don’t you come back to the clinic?’” Beck recalls. “And he came a few nights later, and I saw him, and I said, ‘Oh, I’m so happy you came!’ And he said to me afterwards it was the first time in two years anybody had cared about something he had done. And it was just a sense of Wow. And that’s where it begins. You grow trust, you show respect, you have compassion, and then you’re thorough and you try to figure out what’s going on and you bring in these different partners.”
Beck started the medical clinic in 1997 in partnership with the Third Avenue Charitable Organization, run by Lovell. In 2005, Linda Morton, a law professor at Cal western, contacted Lovell and Beck about adding a law clinic on Monday evenings that would be largely staffed by Cal western students under the supervision of a licensed attorney.
“I wanted our students to learn a broader approach to problem solving,” Morton says. “I can teach them theory until they’re blue in the face, but until you’re in the trenches and seeing it and doing it, it doesn’t come alive unless you’re actually walking the walk.”
Prior to coming to Cal western, Morton had a law practice in Boston where she built up contacts among social workers, drug-treatment counselors and medical providers who could help her address her clients’ problems in a more holistic manner.
“I think as attorneys, it’s incumbent upon us to be aware of problems that exist that aren’t necessarily put in legal boxes,” she says, “or even within the legal framework.”
She’d have criminal clients whose stories just weren’t adding up, and only after getting them to talk about what was really going on would they admit to a drug addiction.
“I would say, ‘We can try your case, and I would estimate an 80-percent chance of [you] being found guilty at this point, or we can put you into a drug-treatment program, and here are three names of drug-treatment programs, here are three people I’m going to call while you’re here in my office; we’ll see which one will accept you, and if you begin that, you’re going to be in much better shape when it comes to working out a plea for you.’ Let’s help you solve this problem as opposed to just looking at it as a purist lawyer saying you’re going to be found guilty or innocent.”
It’s not about hand-holding, Morton says.
“I get that it can be completely overwhelming initially, so we’re here to kind of show you the ropes and be there for you in a variety of capacities. It’s a collaboration; it’s not a model of the sort of patronizing, pedantic way of kind of reaching down and saying ‘I’ll take care of you.’ It’s ‘Let’s work together to make sure that you get what you deserve.’”
At around 6 p.m. every Monday, the students gather for a quick meeting so that the medical clinic knows which specialties the legal clinic has lined up for the evening and vice versa. At a recent meeting, Beck, who was hosting a couple of visiting doctors from outside the U.S., asked if any students were willing to talk about their experience working at the clinic. Almost all who opted to share brought up the significance of being able to spend time with folks.
“A little bit of time, it goes a long way for some patients,” said one.
“I’ve never seen this degree of trust,” said a fourth-year medical student.
“People don’t get listened to,” Lovell says later in an interview. “And the less you have, the less maybe you get listened to.
“This isn’t poverty medicine,” he continues. “This isn’t ‘Find a little bit to give to somebody and hope that everything is fine.’ This is high-quality care. And I think there’s an integrity in that that’s so powerful.”
Email kellyd@sdcitybeat.com or follow her on Twitter at @citybeatkelly.
