Lowdown

Every time my students and I show up for our regular Thursday Students in Court day in the middle of Michigan in a tiny city known as Mason, we get most of the cases of people who have jobs. They are working men and women, struggling to get by, on wages which are too low, and bills that are too high.  Without our clinic though, they would have no lawyer. They make too much to get a legal aid lawyer and not enough to bring their own. 

We are part of a unique program in Mason. It is called the Eviction Diversion Program and was started through a partnership of the District Court, its judges and staff, and several non-profit organizations including our own, the Housing Law Clinic at Michigan State University College of Law. Our clinic tries to keep many irons in the fire regarding our community based legal work but when it comes to actual direct representation of a person, this is our big fish.  The community needed this because the area had too many evictions and not enough lawyers to stop them or at least help people find housing and leave responsibly.

So back to my original point. Our clinic gets most of the consumers who have jobs, who are not destitute poor and broken down because Legal Aid (Legal Services of South Central Michigan) can’t take these cases. They, the consumers, make too much money. People who make sandwiches at Quiznos for barely minimum wage or gas station attendants who have second jobs. Truck drivers. Part time school teachers (substitutes). Last week I had a couple who both had decent jobs but were still caught up in our world of overpriced units and underpaying employment. These are the invisible people who are in between the income trap fixed years ago by the ridiculous guidelines of the federal government that says you can’t get legal aid unless you are eating out of a trash can. They need a legal discount. In some cities, these individuals would be called ‘low bono.’ 

The American Lawyer recently defines ‘low bono’ as “legal services at affordable rates to people with modest incomes who don’t qualify for free legal aid because they’re not poor enough.” Surely, legal clinics at law colleges and schools might be tempted to enter this frontier in the future in various ways. I am sure there are plenty of people waiting. Georgetown University Law Center has done so; I assume other projects are in the works. Why is this? Who knows?

Low wages? They have been repressed for nearly 40 years now. Is the cost of living up? Surely. Fact is, there has never been a plan for this kind of legal customer.  People with means had lawyers and a small number of poor people can get a lawyer these days. Everyone else is at the mercy of the system.

I once worked at a law firm that offered Pre-Paid legal services to clients of this nature. It was kind of a play upon the health care model. Union members paid monthly for the services, if they needed it, and we provided legal services to them. We did everything from drafting legal documents so they could start small business to comprehensive family matters.  I once did a Amazon arbitration for a firefighter with a small hauling business who got shortchanged in the early days of Amazon delivery.I know now this was part of the “low bono” legal world before anyone I knew coined the term. 

Is this kind of legal work for some law school clinics in the future? Only time will tell.