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| Two years ago, the Law Center moved to a building off The Alameda at South Keeble Avenue. While it is no longer in the heart of East San Jose, it continues to serve the same clients. |
Second- and third-year students are trained to give advice in the Center’s weekly Advice Clinics in the four areas of practice (receiving one to two units of credit) or may become Certified Law Students, essentially acting as attorneys under the supervision of a licensed supervising attorney. After extensive training in Clinical Skills classes taught at the Center, the students are involved in all aspects of the cases including taking depositions, drafting pleadings, arguing motions, and even doing trials. They receive one unit of credit for each 50 hours of work.
Last year, approximately 30 first-year law students and 70 second- and third-year students worked at the Center in these capacities.
Undergraduates (59 last year) also work at the Center, mainly as interpreters placed through the Pedro Arrupe, S.J. Center for Community-Based Learning (formerly the East Side Project). They receive at least five hours of training from Dianne Blakely, the Center’s interpreter coordinator, and Sergio Lopez, the Center’s communication specialist, who speaks four languages including Spanish, Portuguese, and French. At least half of that is informal training and the rest is "hands-on" training through shadowing and performance feedback.
Through their work at the Center, undergraduate and law students acquire not only practical skills but an understanding of the legal system and how it affects the poor, especially immigrants.
An emotional investment
Lopez has seen students leave meetings with clients and burst into tears. "It’s very emotional," he says. Law students and undergraduate interpreters "hear clients’ stories they wouldn’t otherwise believe," says Mertens, giving them not only an idea of what it is like to practice law, but to be in another’s shoes.
Hallie Aaron, who will graduate in 2005, is one of those students. When asked about a case that has most affected her, she says, "a trafficking case, still pending, so I can’t go into it, but truly horrific, and it wasn’t even the worst out there!"
Sheryl Ainsworth too is deeply affected by the experiences of her clients. "I have found myself filled with indignation on behalf of my clients who are victimized by rapacious businesses," she says.
The Center’s clients find real dedication in the law students. Client Ena Aguirre says in Spanish, "they are very hard working. They have patience and compassion and are very pleased to assist you with your case."
Making a difference
There is something about the Law Center: It sticks with people. Ruben Castillo, who has been with the Center for eight years and has seen hundred of students train in its programs says, "It affects changes in individuals where they say ‘I can make a difference.’" Sergio Lopez agrees. "Many students leave this place completely changed," he says. "They see the heartbreak and injustices our clients face and want to help people."
Sometimes making a difference is taking the compassion they experience at the Center into the mainstream practice of law; other times it is making a commitment to practicing law to promote social justice or otherwise serving the poor. Ruben Pizarro worked for California Rural Legal Assistance and is now teaching advanced placement government at a public high school in Salinas to mostly poor Mexican-American students. Dori Rose Inda ’00, used the Center as a model to establish the Watsonville Community Law Center, providing services to the poor, mainly farm workers, including workers’ compensation assistance. Many other alumni of the Center return to work as volunteer lawyers at the Advice Clinic or to oversee the workshops.
Jim Hammer, now a high-profile Fox News television commentator, still feels the pull of the Center. "I’m in awe of what it has become," he says. "It reminds me of why I’ve done public service my whole life."
In fact, Hammer calls his involvement in founding the Law Center the "proudest accomplishment of my life so far. It shows what you can do with faith and hard work."
Pizarro hopes his legacy as a founder of the Center is "to show people the power that a few determined individuals have. A lot of people think ‘I can’t do anything, I’m just one person.’ But I’m just one person, and with my will to do something, and the coincidence of talking with Jim Hammer at that dinner, we planted this little seed that has turned out so well. I love to know that I had a small part."
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