Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Vermont Bar Journal, Fall 2016, Vol. 42, No. 3 | Page 29

VBA: Because there were no other resources at the time?
TG: Yes. In the beginning, as I recall,
it was just Sandy and Jean. I don’t think
they were getting paid anything. I and
many others at VLA started paying attention. It was a grass roots effort. People
started talking more about domestic violence and the importance of representing
people who were the victims of domestic
violence. One of the things I was involved
with, that I feel very proud of, was the creation of a domestic violence working group
in Chittenden County that involved people
from the State’s Attorney’s Office, Gretchen Bailey, Jean Cass, Women Helping Battered Women were all involved in that. We
brought the Police Department in and we
created the first training on domestic violence for police officers in Vermont.
VBA: Oh, wow, and it seems like you
were best able to help with that because
you were with the State’s Attorney, and
you were working at Legal Aid seeing all of
those people that weren’t getting the help
that they needed.
TG: I suppose so, but it is just a matter of the sort of lawyering skills that don’t
apply in the courtroom. If you want to accomplish something, you have to get other
people involved and commit to it or buy
into it. That’s also lawyering.

federal level. Legal Aid was the Legal Services Corporation grantee in Vermont,
and it had been since the early 70’s. VLA
was formed by the Vermont Bar Association among others. If you look at the list
of original incorporators, it was the heavyweights of the 60’s and 70’s.
VBA: But it was designed around the
federal funding that was available to do
specific things, right?
TG: It was focused on the federal funding. There was other funding, but it was focused on the Legal Services Corporation
Grant. But what happened at the federal
level was this one little change, this one set
of restrictions that came on in 1996 which
said that if you are a program that is getting money from the Legal Services Corporation, you cannot do things like lobbying
or class actions. That had actually been the
rule for a while, but now LSC was saying
that VLA could not do lobbying with other
grants. If you were accepting LSC money,
it meant you cannot do any lobbying, even
if that lobbying was not paid for with LSC
money.
VBA: So Law Line started to get the LSC
money and you cannot advocate for law
changes in this state?
TG: That’s right. Law Line cannot do
any lobbying.
VBA: Can you do fundraising? You
probably couldn’t do that either, or does it
depend on what you are asking for?
TG: Yes, we can do fund raising for our
program. One of the reasons why Vermont

Legal Aid came into be