Poverty impacts tens of thousands of people in Western New York, and many of those living in poverty can’t get legal help. On Wednesday, May 18, lawyers, students, community partners, and others committed to access to justice will join together at University at Buffalo School of Law, State University of New York to explore these issues in a conference entitled Social Justice in Western New York: How Pro Bono Scholars and Other Volunteers Change Lives. This event will highlight some cutting-edge access to justice issues that UB Law School Scholars have researched, and some ethics issues that are presented in social justice work.
This conference celebrates one way of addressing the access to justice gap with the continuation of the New York Unified Court System’s Innovative Pro Bono Scholars Program. This spring, eight SUNY Buffalo Pro Bono Scholars have joined other selected third year scholars from around the state and spent their last semester of school in full-time pro bono service for people of limited means in western New York. Like their colleagues across the state, Scholars have worked at placements with several local legal services providers in both Buffalo and Rochester, providing more than four thousand hours of essential legal services to underserved individuals and learning essential practice skills in their last year of law school.
Opening remarks will be provided by Mindy Jeng, Executive Director of Pro Bono Services for the New York State Office of Court Administration. As former Chief Justice Jonathan Lippman put it, the Pro Bono Scholars program was designed “to close the justice gap between the finite legal resources available and the desperate need for legal services for the poor and people of modest means” noting that “In recent years, more than 2 million people annually have come into our court system without a lawyer or the funds to hire one.” UB Law’s Scholars have directly helped many Western New Yorkers “facing the loss of life’s basic necessities – they are fighting to keep a roof over their heads, fighting to keep their children, fighting to keep their sources of income and healthcare. Our courts have truly become the emergency rooms for society's worst ailments …”
Through the lens of new providers in this work, UB Law School’s Scholars have undertaken deep research on poverty issues they have seen through their volunteer work. Scholars will present results of their research in a series of short panels.
Having Scholars work in various Western New York settings has also provided some interesting insights into ethical issues. Professor Kim Diana Connolly, who has been teaching the UB Law Pro Bono Scholars Seminar and teaches ethics courses as well as clinics, will provide 0.5 hous of CLE ethics training with opportunities to reflect on some ethical issues presented in access to justice work.
