Client focus informs current practice

Year of service as a deferred associate deepens appreciation of need for relationships

By: Jared Welsh, Associate, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton

When I was offered the opportunity to spend a year working in the public interest prior to starting as a first-year associate at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, I jumped at the chance.

Like many people, I had become a lawyer in part because it would give me a unique ability to contribute to my community, and a year spent doing public interest work would give me a rare opportunity to focus exclusively on doing just that. At the same time, I hoped it would give me real, practical experience rarely available to first-year attorneys. My time at the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation more than delivered on these hopes and expectations; over a year working directly with clients to solve their most pressing issues, I developed skills and experience that have proven invaluable in private practice.

At AVLF, I focused on assisting low-income clients with housing-related issues. Almost immediately, I began working directly with potential clients, identifying legal issues in which we could provide effective assistance. And thanks to AVLF's tremendous expertise and willingness to invest time and resources in a new attorney, I soon was able to guide clients through the process of making a claim or answering an eviction notice with confidence. Before long, I was negotiating with opposing counsel, making court appearances and representing clients in mediations. I constantly was learning not just the law, but the practice of law—skills such as identifying the critical facts in a dispute, convincing opposing parties that compromise made the most sense for them, too, navigating unsympathetic bureaucracies and managing a client's expectations when the ideal solution was truly out of reach. Each day was challenging and exciting, and we always provided attentive, insightful, professional advice and assistance—something that I soon learned was incredibly valuable to our clients, even when we couldn't reach the result they hoped for.

My work at AVLF included many vivid, memorable cases. There was a couple who faced imminent eviction because of a simple clerical error at the eviction court and a woman who couldn't afford to replace all of her children's clothing and other belongings after moving into a bedbug-infested apartment. There were too many clients who had paid rent for months to absentee landlords, only to discover upon receiving an eviction notice that their homes had long since gone into foreclosure. With AVLF's help, many of these people were able to save their homes or obtain the recovery they needed to start over.

In one particularly moving case, I helped AVLF staff and a volunteer attorney enforce a court order to recover a client's property from his landlord, who had evaded service and refused to cooperate with counsel after an illegal eviction. We arrived at the apartment with marshals and a locksmith, gained entry to the property and recovered most of the client's belongings—and, when the landlord arrived to protest, we finally were able to serve him personally.

AVLF routinely achieves such extraordinary results for its clients, and it was a great privilege and a true learning experience to spend a year participating in its great work. But in some ways it was not these special cases that meant the most to me, but rather the day-to-day client relationships I developed, some of which continue even now. Working with clients over time, helping them confront ongoing legal issues and giving them advice based on the insight into their circumstances that only a sustained relationship can provide is at the core of a lawyer's service, whether his clients are low-income individuals or major corporations. Of all the legal skills AVLF gave me the opportunity to develop, this constant engagement with and focus on my clients' circumstances and needs has most deeply informed my private practice. This aspect of my experience as a public interest lawyer has given me a deep appreciation for this most basic part of our profession, which will continue to serve me well in private practice. And the knowledge of what a difference insightful, professional advice can make for anyone will help ensure that I continue to do pro bono work throughout my career.