Perspective from Dawn Caldart Included in Law360 Article About Efforts by Firms to Address Legal Deserts
Dawn Caldart, senior pro bono counsel at Quarles & Brady LLP, was quoted in a Law360 story about what large and midsize law firms are doing to address the challenges associated with the lack of readily available legal services in many underserved communities.
The article noted that the issue is especially prevalent with civil legal needs, for which there is no constitutional guarantee to legal representation, unlike in criminal cases. According to the American Bar Association, “more than one-third of all the counties in the U.S. — nearly 1,300 of them — have less than one attorney per 1,000 residents.” Firms around the country are pursuing a variety of ways to provide assistance.
Caldart highlighted a Wisconsin Access to Justice Commissions effort, being led by Quarles, to create a trained legal advocates program in Wisconsin. The petition to the state bar’s Board of Governors was filed last week.
An excerpt:
Quarles & Brady LLP senior pro bono counsel Dawn Caldart is leading a task force for the Wisconsin Access to Justice Commission that is presenting a petition to the state bar's Board of Governors on Friday to enable legal advocates to offer assistance for civil legal problems within their areas of expertise. The board is scheduled to vote on the petition in December.
"What the task force is proposing is the supervisory model, where a legal advocate is trained in a very small, discrete area of law — so child support, domestic violence, eviction, consumer debt — and they can help only in that area," Caldart told Law360 Pulse, noting that multiple Quarles & Brady attorneys were involved in drafting the rule. "They won't have broad authority under the rule, and they will only be able to give legal advice under the supervision of an attorney."
Caldart said new ways of thinking about legal services are needed, noting that members of the task force met with stakeholders in other jurisdictions that are trying to empower nonattorney workers to assist with legal problems.
"I think that we have to really look at innovation and new ways of delivery, like the healthcare field has done. You can enter the healthcare system [through] a nurse practitioner, a nurse, a physician's assistant, a doctor, a specialist, depending on what your needs are and your resources are," Caldart said. "But in law, we just have a lawyer, and now we're bottlenecked."