2005 is centential year for The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Centenary a year of changes for local Legal Aid Society

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Angela D. Chatman Plain Dealer Reporter

The year 2005 marks the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland's 100th anniversary and its step into the future.

The society will face new challenges as Executive Director C. Lyonel Jones prepares to retire by the end of next year, after nearly 40 years as a staff attorney and 37 years at its head.

Founded in 1905 to provide free legal services to low-income Clevelanders, the society was only the fifth such organization in the United States at the time. It has stayed true to its commitment despite changes in the way it serves its clients.

"We are a medium-size law firm with attorneys who would be working in large law firms if they chose that work but are committed to working for poor people," said David Dawson, the society's deputy director. "We are the law firm for poor people and we need to advocate publicly on those issues to influence public opinion."

The lawyers help the poor navigate an often complex legal system.

When Cynthia Williams could not get her former employer to verify that she was entitled to unemployment benefits, the seasonal worker went to the society.

"My rent was in arrears. My telephone got turned off," Williams said. "I had to go get help and I didn't have any money for any kind of other lawyers."

A Legal Aid lawyer identified the problem: Williams' employer submitted inaccurate information to the Office of Employment Compensation of Ohio's Department of Job and Family Services. The lawyer resolved the matter before it went to court.

The society needs more money and staff to serve people like Williams. It has launched the first fund-raising effort in its history as state and quasi- federal support stagnates.

In the 1960s, money from the War on Poverty fueled the expansion of legal aid societies. But gone are the days when the groups can rely on federal help.

The society gets most of its support from the Legal Services Corp., a private, nonprofit agency established and financed by Congress, and the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation. Additional help comes from United Way Services of Greater Cleveland, the Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging and private donations.

So the society looks for support from law firms, individuals, foundations and corporations. And it's investigating ways to expand services by getting more private lawyers to do pro bono work.

"I think it's a stronger organization if it has a strong local financial support," said Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Burt Griffin, who was executive director from April 1966 to June 1968.

Griffin, who retires from the bench this year, ran the society when it was expanding, flush with money from the federal Office of Economic Opportunity.

Its staff went from five part-time lawyers who also maintained private practices to 16 full-time lawyers. The society opened five neighborhood offices on Cleveland's East Side, two on the West Side and a hospital unit at Fairhill for mental health advocacy.

Jones left the attorney general's staff in Columbus to return to his native Cleveland in 1966, during the society's expansion. Within days, he was in the Hough office, defending those who had been arrested during the riots.

"It was a time of a lot of upheaval. It was a time that we had a lot of opportunity to represent a lot of groups," Jones said. That included starting the Hough Area Development Corp., one of the city's earliest community development corporations.

Dawson joined the staff in 1971.

"Those were heady days. We had a chance to influence policy and change institutions. Lyonel created the environment for people to be able to make change," he said.

A changing climate forced the society to change. It shed its criminal practice around 1970, because it lost federal support for that work. It ended its practice of handling class-action cases. The number of attorneys went from a high of 47 in 1983 to today's 39.

Jones sees positive results from the changes.

The attorneys

whose salaries start at $33,000 -- handle 8,500 cases annually. The society has a bilingual staff and offers a family advocacy practice at MetroHealth Medical Center. The civil practice covers family, housing, consumer and community development law, and advocacy for health, education, welfare and income issues.

The society closed its last neighborhood office -- on the West Side -- in mid-2004, but it serves plenty of clients in Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Ashtabula counties. It turns away about 750 cases a month because of limited resources, said Melanie Shakarian, director of development.

Its annual budget of just under $5.5 million is not enough to meet the region's need for legal services for the poor, Shakarian said.

The society hopes to have a budget of $7.5 million to $8 million within the next three years. And it could provide more legal services by adding up to 15 staff attorneys and clinics through its Volunteer Lawyers Program.

Board President Diana Thimmig said more money would help the society "take off." The board will conduct a national search for a new director, said Thimmig, a partner with the firm of Roetzel & Andress.

The agency is primed to fight on.

"The most important thing is to keep our eye on the goal to provide quality legal assistance to people who can't afford it," she said. "As long as we keep our eye on that ball, I think we'll do fine."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

achatman@plaind.com, 216-999-4115

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