2 minute read
Greater Dayton Volunteer Lawyer Project
Greater Dayton Volunteer Lawyers Project
Advertisement
By Summer Hawks Esq. | WilmerHale
Who would have ever imagined 18 months ago that these would become some of the most repeated sentences in our client or business meetings? We are all very aware of the changes COVID has wreaked upon our “normal” lives. Some changes have been great, some not so great, and some just truly funny. Who knew so many would come to embrace the newscaster’s uniform of business attire on top and pajama pants on bottom?
Some of the biggest changes include the giant leap forward we’ve all taken with the technology in our jobs. Thank goodness this quarantine happened at a time when Zoom, FaceTime, WebEx, and Microsoft Teams enabled us to stay connected from afar. These services have allowed us to put faces with what would have been anonymous voices in past years.
Within the sphere of the Volunteer Lawyers’ Project and the WilmerHale Legal Resource Center, that face to face connection has been invaluable for the community we serve. We assist low-income citizens of the Miami Valley area by providing information and assistance with completing forms for pro se filings in the areas of criminal record sealing, post-divorce family law issues, and juvenile proceedings. These situations are often some of the most stressful, confusing, and emotionally charged events in people’s lives. Much of the time, our volunteers’ most important job is to give the person information that helps the process seem less arbitrary, less severe, and honestly - less scary. The reassuring smile, the dignity of looking someone in the eye as you shake their hand, the pat on the shoulder with a heartfelt wish of good luck and good fortune can do more in the long run than the forms we are helping them fill out. The power of those small gestures would be completely lost if we were all just talking to disembodied voices.
Prior to the pandemic, we were able to meet with and assist people in person at twice monthly clinics. Since COVID, we’ve worked with the VLP to take our process 100% online. The virtual meetings, online notary, editable forms – all took time to setup, but the process has been improving since May of 2020 when we realized the period of quarantine would be much longer than initially thought. While handshakes aren’t the same in our virtual context, the pivot to remote meetings has also opened the door to reach people in need who previously may have had difficulties attending one of our sessions in person. Difficulty in arranging childcare, lack of transportation, inability to take time off work – all of these issues have impeded equal access to justice for the community we serve, and all of these issues can now be more easily overcome with the technology made better through this long time of social distancing.
As more and more people become vaccinated and the pandemic’s most restrictive requirements start to lift, we look forward to resuming our in-person clinics at some future date. But, we will take away the silver lining of a new reality where our services are not limited by physical location and inperson presence.
