The Atlanta Lawyer April 2012 | Page 16

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]