Meet Maggie Hanrahan, New AVLF Board Member

Maggie Hanrahan is a partner with Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C., a national labor and employment law defense firm. At Ogletree, Maggie regularly counsels and represents clients across the country on a variety of labor and employment law matters. This commonly includes defending class and collective action lawsuits; conducting national wage and hour audits; defending employment discrimination lawsuits and charges; and drafting employment policies and agreements. Maggie’s practice also focuses extensively on assisting clients with independent contractor issues, including drafting independent contractor agreements, advising on independent contractor-related issues, and representing companies in connection with misclassification audits conducted by federal and state administrative agencies.

Maggie feels extremely honored to be joining the AVLF Board. Maggie fell in love with the mission immediately after attending the PurShoeing Justice event and learning and hearing more about the different services offered by AVLF. In particular, Maggie looks forward to getting more involved with AVLF fundraising efforts and the domestic violence program. Maggie also believes the domestic violence program will be an excellent way for younger lawyers in her firm to get involved with the community and will do all she can to maximize her firm’s volunteer efforts for AVLF.

Hot Town, Summer in the Safe Families Office (Interns Getting Dirty & Gritty)

The hard work of our interns and volunteers is what makes the Safe Families Office possible. Their diverse backgrounds and shared commitment to victims and children are what make the Safe Families Office so dynamic and effective. This year's summer class is no exception. 

Megan Gordon (right) chose to spend the summer before her 2L year at Emory with AVLF because of her dedication to issues of violence against women here and abroad. Prior to law school, Megan spent a semester at the School of International Training in Rwanda. Her piece, The Battlefield on Women's Bodies: Comparing the Causes of Mass Rape in the Genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, was just published in Auspex, Warren Wilson College's interdisciplinary journal of undergraduate research.

Allison Murphy (left), an Emory 2L, wins the prize for most interesting resume entry in this year's intern class. Among her many impressive credentials, one really caught our eye - puppeteer at the Center for Puppetry Arts. We're excited about the creativity and resourcefulness she brings to her new role working with clients on a walk-in basis at the courthouse. 

Juli Crider (not pictured) is one of those exceptional people who manages to work full-time and attend law school part-time at John Marshall Law School. On top of school and her job at Hedgepeth, Heredia, Crumrine & Morrison, she is also interning at the Safe Families Office one day per week, and already her experience and ability to multi-task is serving her (and us) well.

Danielle Walker (middle), a 3L at Emory, can't wait to represent SFO clients in court under the supervision of Liz Whipple, thanks to the Third-Year Practice Act. In addition to her law school obligations, which include the Emory Corporate Governance and Accountability Review and the Child & Family Law Society, Danielle has dedicated an immense amount of time to the judicial campaign of Jane Barwick. Danielle also spent last summer interning and volunteering with the Fulton County Family Division, so she brings some valuable courthouse experience to the Domestic Violence Project.

One Step Toward Justice

By: Cole Thaler, AVLF Director of Housing and Consumer Programs

Mrs. Thomas twisted her fingers nervously in her lap. We sat at the kitchen table in her Vine City home, collection notices and court papers spread out before us.

“I wanted to pay the credit card bill,” she told me. “I knew I owed it, and I knew I was supposed to pay. I just didn’t have the money.” Mrs. Thomas called for legal help after she went to the bank to withdraw money and learned that her account had been frozen because of a garnishment.

She pushed back from the table and stood up, grimacing, holding the back of the chair to steady herself. Her degenerative spine disorder was getting worse, she told me, and I could see the effects of chronic pain in her rail-thin frame and stooped shoulders. Then Mrs. Thomas looked in my eyes and said, “My daddy would be so ashamed of me. He earned minimum wage his whole life, but was still able to buy a nice house for us to live in. When he owed money, he paid it. I feel so embarrassed.”

I shook my head. “It’s not your fault, Mrs. Thomas.” Over time, the buying power of minimum wage has dropped dramatically. According to a 2014 report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is 22 percent below its peak value in the late 1960s, after adjusting for inflation. Today’s minimum wage is only about 30 percent of the average wage of production workers and non-managerial workers, compared to 50 percent in the 1960s.[1] Income inequality – the ocean between the very poor and the very rich – has gotten far worse in the wake of the Great Recession.

When Mrs. Thomas’s father was a working man with a growing family, the minimum wage was enough to provide for a family. Today, a family of four with both parents working full-time minimum wage jobs will earn $30,160 annually – barely over the federal poverty level.

Mrs. Thomas herself had worked for many years, until her spinal condition made work impossible. Now she lived alone and received Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) benefits of just $976 per month. On that impoverished income, she could no longer afford to pay her rent, utilities, medical copays, and credit card minimum payment, and so her credit card went into default.

Mrs. Thomas blamed herself for not being able to achieve the “American Dream” that her father had attained, back when the minimum wage was nearly a living wage. She blamed herself for being too sick to keep up with the payments on her 28% interest rate credit card. And she even blamed herself for the garnishment, until I explained to her that SSDI benefits are exempt from garnishment under federal law, and that the bank blatantly violated that law when it froze her account. With strong legal representation, Mrs. Thomas got the garnishment dismissed and recovered all of her frozen funds.

I came to work for Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation so that I can help low income people like Mrs. Thomas take a small step in the direction of justice. As AVLF’s new director of housing and consumer programs, I ask you to take that step with me. A single good lawyer with an ounce of compassion can change a life. A city full of good lawyers with a taste for justice can change the world. Please join us.

[1] CBPP report available online at http://www.cbpp.org/files/1-7-14minwg.pdf.