Do Not Go To Your Left by David P. Bobzien, Esq.
In the May-June 1999 issue of Modern Maturity, essayist Roger Rosenblatt offered his Rules for Aging, and his number three rule was "do not go to your left." He pointed out that going to one's left is a basketball term for strengthening one's weakness. Theoretically, a right-handed player will improve his game if he learns to dribble and shoot with his left hand and move to his left on the court. But Rosenblatt doesn't buy this when it comes to living our day-to-day lives. In life, he suggests, attempting to strengthen a weakness makes you grow weaker. If, on the other hand, one keeps playing to strength, people will not notice that one has weaknesses. Rosenblatt knows, however, that people don't believe him and "will go ahead and take singing lessons or write that novel anyway."
I think that his rule should apply to practicing law too, and I humbly offer an example of my going to my left when I probably shouldn't have. But first, let me give you some background. The Fairfax Bar Association runs an effective pro bono program that is designed to supplement the work of Legal Services of Northern Virginia by assisting people who have incomes that are, in many instances, slightly higher than those served by LSNV, but who are still too poor to hire lawyers.
The Fairfax Bar calls its service the “Neighborhood Outreach Program” and provides it at several County–run homeless shelters and neighborhood resource centers. One of those centers is the Franconia Family Resource Center, which is located in the basement of a large, subsidized apartment complex on Commerce Street in Springfield. The center provides the connection that the residents, who are virtually all Latino, have to County services and the pro bono program. The residents, for the most part, are the working poor, and most of them work in the building trades, in lawn maintenance service, and as domestics, and they often hold down multiple jobs.
For several years, I have been volunteering at the center every quarter. Sometimes I can help a client on the spot. With the assistance of a bilingual County Department of Family Services employee who staffs the center during the day and graciously schedules the clients and stays on to translate through the two-hour pro bono session offered one or two evenings a month, I can sometimes help clients during the session or do some research and get back to them later. But more often than not, I am relegated to diagnosing the legal problem, writing it up, and forwarding it to the Fairfax Bar’s full-time pro bono coordinator for her referral to another volunteer, who will handle the matter from there.
That’s where the frustration comes in. As a local government attorney, I have reluctantly concluded that it’s really difficult to undertake “representation” of a pro bono client. The client may be confused regarding my role, and why not? When I give my County business card to a client with a promise that I will get back to her with an answer, and I hand the card to her at a County-run center, it’s likely that she thinks that this is another government service, my concerted efforts to explain my true role to her not withstanding. How would I then go about contacting her employer to seek the money she says he owes her without raising the inference that the County Attorney’s Office was after him? And if I had to go to court in Fairfax, what judge, let alone court personnel, and the tax-paying public, would not be confused as to what I was doing there on behalf of this woman?
It’s because of my frustration over realizing that representational service, at least in my estimation, is almost impossible, that I became intrigued in 2007 when LSNV offered a two-hour CLE on “uncontested divorces,” with the “cost” being a promise that the participant would handle three uncontested divorce cases in the future. The announcement of the program promised a how-to-guide to handling uncontested divorces in the three courts served by LSNV: Fairfax, Arlington, and Alexandria, the latter of which I would later learn is referred to by some “matrimonial lawyers” as Las Vegas on the Potomac. More important, it brought me the promise of being able to have a client to whom I could make abundantly clear that I was not assisting her on behalf of the County and being able actually to go into a court, other than Fairfax’s, where the judges, court personnel, and public (even if anyone knew who I was), might more easily understand my role in representing a “civilian” client.
The “uncontested divorce” CLE offered by Legal Services of Northern Virginia, was everything I could have wanted and more. Not only did the CLE review the current law, it explained the procedural differences among the circuit courts in Fairfax, Arlington, and Alexandria, where LSNV provides its services. The CLE also provided a CD-ROM with fill-in forms for every stage of the process in each of the jurisdictions in a variety of circumstances—everything from a cooperative defendant to a jailed defendant. Piece of cake, right? Wrong, for at least two reasons.
First, I forgot that knowing the law is not practicing the law. As I bumbled along contending with the various steps in the process that would have been second nature to a lawyer experienced in divorce law, it occurred to me that I had not handled a divorce of any kind since I left private practice in 1979. I soon realized that it would take a lot longer than I would have expected in things both large and small, down to double-checking the number of copies of the Complaint I would have to file with the clerk. Second, I forgot a lesson I had learned as far back as 1969, when, as a second-year law student, I was doing intake at the Charlottesville legal aid society: it is sometimes more difficult to work with poor clients.
I learned from the CLE that the Alexandria Circuit Court was the most “relaxed” in its procedures, and I knew and considered as friends all three of its Circuit Court judges. Alexandria was definitely the place for me. Now all I needed was a client. Soon after the CLE, LSNV sent me a file on my first client. I immediately contacted her to set up a meeting at the LSNV office in Alexandria, which was fairly close to her home and reachable by public transit. At the appointed time I arrived and waited…and waited…and waited for over half an hour, only to find out later that she had arrived one hour after the scheduled appointment and had arrived drunk. To LSNV’s credit, staff told her that LSNV would not be able to assist her. Shortly thereafter another file arrived, and this client met with me as scheduled and emphasized that she was anxious, as in a big hurry, to get divorced.
Since I barely knew where the courthouse was located, I cautioned her that, even though uncontested, (with me) the divorce could take some time. She promised that she could get her husband to sign an acceptance of service of process and waiver of further service of process and notice before a notary public, as required by law. I mailed her the necessary forms and pleadings with strict instructions that she was to have her husband sign the papers before a notary public. While it appears that she obtained her husband’s signature, she had her signature notarized but not her husband’s. When I brought this to her attention, she told me that she would do it correctly, and I sent her a new set. Several weeks went by, and I heard nothing from her.
When I finally was able to contact her, she told me that she had been in a coma for an unspecified period (first time I ever heard that one) and, furthermore, that her husband was now unwilling to cooperate. Back to the drawing board. I eventually obtained service by posting at an apartment where the husband was supposed to be boarding. After the required time to respond had come and gone, I called chambers to schedule an ore tenus hearing, at the conclusion of which, if successful, my client could go home with a signed decree. LSNV advises pro bono attorneys to advise the courts of their status, and doing so certainly resulted in express service in the Alexandria Circuit Court.
On the fateful day, my client and her witness arrived exactly at the time I had requested them to be there, which, just to be safe, was one-half hour before court was to convene. I found our case on a “short” docket, but mercifully either the judge or her clerk had placed us second, so I could see how the questioning was supposed to be done. It worked. Relying on a script that used all leading questions to establish the allegations in the Complaint, we were through in ten minutes, with the judge allowing me to “walk” the file, containing the signed final decree, down to the clerk’s office where certified copies were made. With hearty handshakes, my client and her witness were out the door five minutes later, divorce decree in hand. In all, it took almost a year (including the break for the coma) for my simple, uncontested divorce to reach conclusion.
Even though I had spent way too much time on something that a competent divorce lawyer could have done incredibly more efficiently, I got what my client wanted, and I left the courthouse feeling as exhilarated as I had ever felt at any time during my legal career. I probably should not have gone to my left, but as Roger Rosenblatt knows, we always do.
© 2010 David P. Bobzien, Esq.
David Bobzien — County Attorney for Fairfax, Virginia — is past president of the Virginia State Bar and has served the Virginia State Bar in other capacities, including as a member of the VSB council, the executive committee, the budget and finance committee, and as past chair of the local government law section. He is past president of the Fairfax Bar Foundation and the Local Government Attorneys of Virginia.
Updated: Feb 11, 2010
