avlf
Bending Toward Justice
By Michael Lucas
Director of Housing and Consumer Programs,
Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation
M
artin Luther King, Jr. said that “human progress is
neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward
the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and
struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern
of dedicated individuals.” At the risk of the cliché and the
presumptuousness that come with relating one’s own work to
the words of Reverend King, the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers
Foundation (AVLF) is lucky to have as its volunteers a
group of dedicated individuals whose tireless exertions and
passionate concern exemplify his very description.
Every week I tweet about the accomplishments of – and
justice won by – our volunteer attorneys: a significant
judgment here, a collection success there, often a great
settlement as well (okay, I don’t really know how to “tweet,”
but I write them and someone else “tweets” them). What
may not be clear is just how hard fought some of that justice
can be, and just how many dedicated individuals – not all of
them attorneys – have to work together to obtain that justice.
Our volunteer attorneys are amazing, no doubt. They are
the best. However, many of the slumlords, con artists and
unscrupulous employers who take advantage of our clients
have so mastered the art of evading justice that it takes much
more than just a skilled attorney accepting the case to hold
them to account.
The worst of the offenders easily evade the marshals’
attempts at service of lawsuits, subpoenas and notices,
may have managed to keep se ܙ]