My students are probably tired of hearing me talk about how lawyering was almost thirty years ago, when lawyers were lawyers and did not let snow or broken technology harness our lawyering. In what I am sure they consider some of their most interesting classes (or maybe not!), I have described times when I did things like drive for an hour and a half to the courthouse in Woodstock Illinois down Illinois Rt. 14 in a foot of falling snow to get to a landlord/tenant hearing. We got a continuance that day, but had we not gone, the client might have been evicted. The drive was harrowing but snow had to be conquered and such problems overcome.
Though I sometimes question whether new lawyers today would do the same thing, perhaps I needn’t worry based on what my interns have done over the last years. Last year, one of my students met a client outside a local Social Security office in a snowstorm because we had learned the day before that the client had only one more day to appeal a denial. The Social Security office never opened, but the student and client didn’t know that it wouldn’t. She and the client waited for two hours, alternating between standing outside and sitting in the doughnut shop across the street, each deciding whether it was okay to offer to buy the other coffee, until they realized they would have to come back the next day. They did, and the client still gets benefits because of it. Another student a few years ago stayed in constant contact with a hearing office and pushed for a hearing to happen that did not, but was ready to help his client move her case forward that day so that the client would not have to have her case delayed several more months for a hearing, delaying the decision on whether she could get the income support help she needed. Both students realized that their inconveniences were minimal when compared to the problems of their clients and that those problems would be prolonged or worsened if the clients and their attorneys or interns gave in to something like snow.
Today, we expect 4-8 inches of snow and the school and the Temple Legal Aid Office are open. We had no hearings set, but I am in the office. I will enter an appearance in a Social Security hearing, work on a federal court appeal, and meet with clients who can get here. Students will be here or working remotely if they can, one researching federal law so we can submit an argument today or tomorrow to an administrative law judge. Another will be tracking down records for a client and writing letters to a judge while working with our hospital to set up an intake site in a few weeks.
Although we can do some our work remotely like we could not do 30 years ago, we still have to work. We still cannot let snow stop us. And hopefully, our clients will be better off for the work we do today.