FROM TIJUANA TO COMPTON, VIA HARVARD LAW

by Martin Berg from The Daily Journal, March 3, 2009  http://www.dailyjournal.com/

 

Banks turning into zombies, markets careening in free fall, law firms discarding lawyers, nonprofits pummeled, fear and gloom everywhere. Where to go for a little jolt of hope and inspiration?

 

How about Compton?

 

That's where I met Luz Herrera, in a storefront office in a former deli on a dreary stretch of East Compton Boulevard next to a beauty parlor.

 

She's just your typical Tijuana-born, East L.A.-raised, Harvard Law School-educated Big Law refugee who decides to open a solo practice aimed at the working poor and entrepreneurial immigrants in southeastern Los Angeles County.

 

And then when she decides to launch a nonprofit, she gets decorating help on television from the "Queer Eye for the Straight Girl" reality show.

 

Herrera, who's 36, is part of the fledgling phenomenon known as "low bono" legal service groups. She started Community Lawyers Inc. to mentor students, offer a self-help center and hook up lawyers who pledge to offer low-cost legal services with those who don't qualify for Legal Aid but can't afford to pay market rates.

 

The organization officially opened the doors to its legal access center Jan. 30.

 

While she's focusing on getting Community Lawyers geared up, she's also been back to Harvard Law to teach, as well as taking on teaching assignments at Chapman University and Thomas Jefferson law schools, while she serves on the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services.

 

Herrera has a lot on her plate.

 

While she wants to serve the needs of Compton and the surrounding area she also has her eye on helping to nurture a model of legal services in which sole practitioners could charge modest fees and provide service to a woefully under-served chunk of the population. That includes small business people who need transactional work, and many undocumented people whom Legal Aid is prohibited from helping.

 

Community Lawyers' self-help clinics are built on the same approach as those in courthouses with one important difference - the courthouse clinics are open during business hours, when many working people are at their jobs. Community Lawyers will offer self-help evenings and weekends.

 

Herrera approaches her work with a mixture of hardy idealism and healthy pragmatism. And you have a role in this, too. "I need money and I need volunteer attorneys," she said. "And we need a couple of computers and printers."

 

She apologized for the shape the offices were in. The place didn't look bad, like an insurance office: cubicles with computers and printers in them, and the restaurant's former kitchen serves as a conference room. It's got to be the only legal nonprofit that was designed with help from the "Queer Eye" team. Herrera explains that a Stanford University alumna worked on the show and thought the office would make a great project.

 

I was curious how Herrera got to Harvard, and then from Harvard to East Compton Boulevard.

 

She was born at a time when going back and forth across the border was much less of an ordeal. Her parents worked at whatever they could get. They bought Mexican goods, brought them across the border and sold them at swap meets. They cleaned offices at night.

 

Her parents were resourceful and compassionate but not political or activist. Herrera realized there was another world beyond her own when she saw barefoot kids selling gum at the border.

 

She was an only child, and her parents emphasized education. "When they cleaned offices and we had no sitter, I would go to these big offices and sit at some executive's desk and do my homework."

 

And every year her until high school on the first day, her father would go in late to work so he could take Herrera to school.

 

She was a good student, buoyed by gifted programs and a high school mentor. She landed at Stanford, where she was active in Latino student government and curricular reform. Between Stanford and Harvard, she did voting rights work. At Harvard, she missed the active support groups that helped her adjust to life as an undergrad. "And you had to really search for a good taco in Boston," but she said her activism was mentored by faculty members such as Charles Ogletree and Lani Guinier.

 

Interning at the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, she found that "impact litigation is not my bread and butter. I wanted more client interaction. I wanted to advance community goals and help people like my parents understand the system."

 

But because she didn't see a clear path to doing that kind of work, Herrera decided she would be a fool to turn down an offer from Heller Ehrman. The experience was frustrating for a new lawyer: She received little of the training that had been promised and no mentorship. In less than two years, she was on her way out of corporate practice.

 

A lawyer in Compton was retiring, looking for someone who could speak Spanish to take over his practice. Herrera decided to make the leap onto East Compton Boulevard and into private practice.

 

She acknowledges she faced many daunting challenges, including figuring out how to bill and clients who couldn't pay. In a 2007 article in "The Modern American," published by Washington College of Law, Herrera wrote candidly about what she went through: "Even though I believed in what I was doing, it was an emotional struggle that I finally won when I stopped comparing my financial status to that of my classmates and understood that the value of my work could not be measured by the digits behind the dollar sign."

 

Now Herrera wants to take the lessons she's learned to the nonprofit world and beyond, for example to Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, where she is setting up a clinical legal education program.

 

Herrera acknowledges the many difficulties facing attorneys who want to serve the community for modest fees. But the needs and the stakes are high, and the nonprofit is determined to help. "It's not easy," she said. "It's not a cookie-cutter way."

 

Bob Cohen, executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, who also provides legal services by contract in Compton and Norwalk, is a big supporter. His agency loaned Community Lawyers software for use in the self-help clinic. "We're all looking at budget and access situations that are quite dire, unlike anything that we've ever seen," Cohen said. "Luz is saying, 'Let's take another approach.'"

 

For more information on Community Lawyers, call 310-635-8182.

Comments

[Steve Berenson]

We are thrilled to have Professor Hererra on our faculty at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and are very excited for her to launch our first transactional clinic.

[College Works Painting Scam]

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