Benevolent Lawyers Hitting the Streets
Written by Ryan Mack, President of The Optimum Institute of Economic Empowerment
Through our non-profit, The Optimum Institute of Economic Empowerment, we provide many free financial literacy workshops for the community. Through group and individual consultation we help those who cannot afford the services of a financial advisor to put together a financial map to accumulate wealth. However, I recently was made aware of a group of attorneys who were just as benevolent but were providing free legal services to the community. I had to take a trip to Chicago to see for myself.
On Saturday, May 15th I had the opportunity to check out the legal clinic of an organization called Street Justice (www.street-justice.org). This organization is a group of attorneys who came together in law school and saw a need in society. In this nation, governed by the rule of law, many people couldn’t afford to hire an attorney to discover their protections under the laws of the land. Through tangible action, they came together to form this organization which provides free and low cost legal services and educational seminars to underserved individuals, such as minorities and economically disadvantaged.
I had a chance to talk to many people who attended this free legal clinic and I was moved by the stories that I heard. I talked with a young man who had done time in prison and was released in 1992 but because he had that negative background on his record was still unable to get a decent paying job for the last 18 years! The stories that they deal with at their clinics such as this range from people trying to keep their homes from going through foreclosure but don’t know their rights, to grieving family members who have lost a loved one but don’t know how to navigate through the tricky probate system, and people who just want to have a fair shake when it comes to child custody battles because they want to be in the lives of their children. The stories that I heard and are regularly told at these legal clinics are from real Americans whose only goal of the day was to learn about what every American wants to learn about…his or her rights as an American citizen.
Equal protection of the law should be provided to EVERY American citizen but because of the greed that can exist many times the little guy is looked over because he didn’t have enough money to afford proper counsel. Street Justice is the answer to this problem and all lawyers out there can take a page or two from the work that this organization is doing in Chicago. Keep it up Street Justice and I look forward to seeing you on the streets!
Click Below to see Ryan Mack Interview an Attorney of Street Justice…
