Lura Johnson was surprised when a representative from Administer Justice spoke at St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Gurnee last year about how many people in the United States don’t have access to the legal system.
She had never considered, she said, how many people can’t get help with the kinds of legal issues that nearly everyone will have to deal with at some point, whether handling wills and probate, landlord-tenant agreements or real estate deals or family law.
“I really had no idea of how underserved the folks in the U.S. are until I heard this gentleman speak,” she said, noting that the United States ranks last among peer nations for access to civil legal care. “I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s, I heard all the news about the equal rights amendment struggles and the civil rights marches and so on, and they were discussed in my home, so I grew up with a passion for that kind of freedom and thinking it was pretty important for everyone. I felt compelled to get involved when the opportunity arose.”
Now Johnson is the lead for a monthly legal aid clinic, operated as part of Administer Justice’s church-based network.
The clinic, which had its first monthly session in February, has so far helped nine clients, she said.
Administer Justice is an Elgin, Illinois-based non-profit that has established hundreds of such clinics around the United States, with dozens in Illinois, according to its website. But the only other one at an Illinois Catholic church is the Church of Holy Apostles in McHenry, part of the Rockford Diocese.
The clinic does not represent clients in court, Johnson said, or file any documents or paperwork on behalf of clients. Volunteer attorneys can advise people about what their legal options are or what their next steps should be, she explained.
Johnson first heard about Administer Justice when St. Paul the Apostle’s former pastor, Father Chris Ciastoń, invited representatives to speak at Masses. Ciastoń said he heard about it from an attorney who contacted the parish about a donation from a client.
After Administer Justice visited, the parish collected the names of interested volunteers, Johnson said, and then started the process of getting a clinic up and running.
“It takes time to get a team recruited and trained,” Johnson said. “It took about six months to open the center in terms of training and support for me as team lead.”
Under the Administer Justice model, each clinic must have a lead volunteer to coordinate operations, including making sure other volunteers are trained and available as necessary and working with the hosting church.
In addition to the regular volunteers, St. Paul the Apostle has a roster of people who have been trained and are available on an as-needed basis, she said. More people initially were interested in helping and started training, but it is a lengthy process and people’s circumstances change, she said.
Each clinic must also have at least one attorney volunteer to offer advice, as well as volunteers to do intake and to act as client advocates.
“The advocate is a layperson who is there to make sure the client gets their question answered,” said Johnson, who is also trained as a client advocate. “They don’t do attorney-speak. So if the conversation is using terminology that is confusing me, I’ll ask clarifying questions so the client doesn’t have to.”
Julie Wedell, one of seven regular volunteers at the St. Paul the Apostle legal aid clinic, said she is a paralegal who has been working in the legal field since 1988. She volunteers as a client advocate, helping the volunteer attorneys understand the issues the clients are coming in with and helping the clients understand what the attorneys are telling them.
“Many people don’t know legalese when they are looking at a contract or a document,” Wedell said. “For a $30 fee, they can speak to an actual attorney who knows legalese.”
The $30 fee helps pay Administer Justice’s overhead. None of the parish volunteers receive any financial compensation. Ciastoń said that the parish also received some donations to help people who cannot afford the copay.
“There are so many people who don’t know where to go, how to go, where to start with their particular legal problem,” he said, adding that many are afraid to reach out to an attorney because of the expense. “It is to kind of start this conversation for people.”
Hosting the clinic in church facilities can also help people feel safe, Ciastoń said, and offer an opportunity to pray with them if they want to after their consultation.
Wedell, a parishioner at St. Paul the Apostle for nine years, said the opportunity to volunteer in the legal aid clinic appealed to her because she could use her professional skills and it fit with her schedule, with predictable hours one Saturday morning a month.
While St. Paul the Apostle is the only parish working with Administer Justice in the Archdiocese of Chicago, other legal clinics have clinic sites in parishes as well.
Wedell said that she would like to see more parishes offer something like the Administer Justice legal aid clinic, especially those in or near areas with a larger population of residents who might not be able to afford a lawyer otherwise.
She’s seen how learning what their rights are under the law has helped the clients at St. Paul the Apostle, she said.
“They felt empowered when they walked out the door,” Wedell said. “They felt they had a voice and they had legal rights that they weren’t aware of.”