Q&A: Church joins effort to help the needy get legal
aid
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| Sutro |
Recently, the leadership of the Episcopal Diocese of
California, which includes 79 congregations in San Francisco Bay Area, agreed
to support the Campaign for
Justice in raising money for legal services for the poor. Retired
Marin County Superior Court Judge Jack Sutro, a member of the Legal Services Trust Fund
Commission, spoke to the Bar Journal about the effort. Here’s an edited version
of the conversation.
Tell us how this unique partnership came about.
Sutro: Several months ago the idea germinated with
some members of the Legal Services Trust Fund Commission that one possible way
of raising money for the Justice Gap Fund was to get churches involved,
religious institutions, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and so forth. Before
I went on the bench I was very involved in the Episcopal Church. I still am.
I’m a Eucharistic minister. I’m a member of St. John’s in Ross and have been
since 1973. When I heard about this faith-based initiative, I said I’d see what
I could do about getting the Episcopal Church involved. I’m very glad to say
that the Episcopal Church is solidly behind our effort to raise funds needed to
provide legal services to the needy.
It’s a regional effort, right?
Sutro: Yes. This isn’t a high-intensity solicitation
effort. As I understand it, we’re trying to get a lot of people to put a few
dollars in. And maybe if we’re lucky we’ll get somebody who really believes in
this and sees the importance of it to make a donation of a lot more. Hopefully
it’s something that can be ongoing with our parish and not just a one-shot
deal. The need of indigent or lower-income people for legal services is
something that no one really pays much attention to or maybe is that conscious
of. But it is a need that can be as significant to the needy as medical care
and shelter.
A lot of times the legal issues that needy people get
involved in result from eviction cases, where they’re in danger of losing their
homes, and also the inability to get medical services and assistance in that
regard. So this fits right in with the goal of the church to help people in
need. I think we have very solid support here because of the backing of the
bishop and also because of my rector, who has direct contact with all the
clergy in the diocese.
It sounds like it’s an issue that wasn’t at the forefront
in the minds of the church leaders, but once you brought it up, they recognized
the importance.
Sutro: That’s exactly right. It is a natural fit, and
it was an easy sell. Our parish, for example, has always had a very vigorous
outreach program. For many years our church has raised substantial amounts of
money for the needy in our community and has been doing this for years and
continues to do so. And this fits right in with it. I don’t expect we’re going
to raise huge amounts of money, but I do hope we can raise something
noticeable. And aside from raising money, it educates people to the need to
provide funds for legal services for the needy in California.
I’m sure you know the sad history of the funds available for
legal services since the collapse of the financial markets. In 2008, the bottom
dropped out on the interest rates, so our IOLTA funds went from $22 million in
2008 to about $5 million now. That’s a huge hit when you have 97 legal aid
agencies in California. The need for the services is not diminishing, it’s
increasing, and so is the need to fund them. The Justice Gap Fund is a very
significant effort to try to bridge this huge gap that has been created by the
dropping of interest rates to near zero.
Did the financial crisis make you have to think more
creatively about different ways to raise money and lead to this effort to reach
out to religious institutions?
Sutro: Yes, I think that’s certainly a fair
statement. The faith-based initiative is the result of some creative thinking
on the part of the members of the commission to try and raise money for the
Justice Gap Fund. One of the important things here too is, as I said,
educational – to make people aware of something probably nobody gives much
thought to. One of our goals is to organize attorneys who are members of the
parish, to get them more involved and to contribute. Hopefully that will work
its way out into the firms and we can get better participation of the legal
profession. Our legal system depends on people’s respect for it. When people
get ground up in it because they’re helpless, they’re helplessly ensnared in
legal matters, that doesn’t do anything to enhance people’s respect for the
legal system.
If you’re successful in this partnership, do you hope it
will be a model for other faiths?
Sutro: Absolutely.
You’ve volunteered on the Legal Services Trust Fund board
since 2010. I’m curious what’s motivated you to give so much of your time to
this issue.
Sutro: In my last couple of years on the bench I was
in the civil division. The civil division judges were swamped with eviction
cases and credit card debt cases. Those are the two that come to mind most
readily. And I kept seeing these people who were coming into court on their
own. There would be some lawyer there for the landlord or the credit card
company and these debtors, and tenants didn’t have a clue about the procedure
or what was going on.
Of course as a judge there was only a limited amount I could
do to try to see that they weren’t just eaten alive, so to speak. I’d refer
them to legal aid. We had an office where people could go in and get help
preparing forms. It bothered me. If you owe money, you ought to pay it. You
shouldn’t get free tenancy, and you shouldn’t get free goods off your credit
card. But on the other hand, there are ways of working things out so that
people don’t have to go out on the street. They need somebody to represent them.
That troubled me. And it was frustrating because I had to be careful as a judge
not to become everybody’s advocate.
When I was retiring, I had a friend, Dick Odgers. He and I
started practicing together at Pillsbury Madison & Sutro and have been friends
for many years. When I was retiring he invited me to lunch at the Buckeye in
Sausalito and the subject came up about legal representation for the needy. He
said if you really mean what you say about not sitting around on your hind-end
when you retire, I have something for you. He sent me an application for a spot
on the commission. I became a member in April 2010. It’s been a very
interesting experience. I’ve really enjoyed the people I’ve worked with.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Sutro: I just hope that something really good comes out of this, and I have confidence that it will.