Tennessee Bar Association Public Service Awards

Each year the Tennessee Bar Association recognizes outstanding service by attorneys and law students who have dedicated their time to helping others. The awards given are the Harris Gilbert Pro Bono Volunteer of the Year, the Ashley T. Wiltshire Public Service Attorney of the Year and the Law Student Volunteer of the Year. Read the stories of those recognized here.

Harris Gilbert Pro Bono Volunteer of the Year

This year’s Harris Gilbert award is presented to Chattanooga attorney SUSAN GRUBER. The award recognizes private attorneys who have contributed significant amounts of pro bono work and have demonstrated dedication to the development and delivery of legal services to the poor. The award is named after Gilbert, a Nashville attorney and past Tennessee Bar Association president, who exemplifies this type of commitment.

When she was growing up, Susan Gruber admits she didn’t have a dream of being a lawyer: she says she always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. When she made the decision to enter Duke School of Law, she says she was not thinking so much about how her law degree could help people, but was “focusing on what the law could offer me — a good paycheck and stability.”

That it did for several years after she graduated in 1993, as she worked for a large firm in Fort Worth, and later as a staff attorney at a state appeals court in Texas.

SUSAN GRUBER Harris Gilbert Pro Bono Volunteer of the Year

She practiced law until her first child, a son, was born, and later she had a daughter. She says she thought she would go back to work eventually, “but things changed.”  Her husband works for an airline and travels a lot, she explains, and is gone for days at a time. So when he was transferred to Kentucky, they made the decision for her to continue to stay home with the children. Not qualifying for reciprocity, she was not licensed in Kentucky, so she began volunteering for their church and various organizations. But she soon realized that even without a law license, she could do more.

“I had skills I could put to use that others didn’t,” she says. With that, she began volunteering at Legal Aid of the Bluegrass. Then in 2010, her family made another move, this time to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“I had been happily doing the stay-at-home mom thing,” she says, “but wondering what I would do in the next phase of my life.” So she looked up Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET) and asked them if she could help.

“I started volunteering at Legal Aid for two reasons. One, I believe in Legal Aid and two, I thought it would be good for me, to be prepared in case I needed to step up and be the primary bread winner.” Because, as in Kentucky, she was not licensed in Tennessee, she says the help she could give at that time was about the equivalent of a law student.
She recalls one case that she was helping with, where a young woman was being pressured to move out of her apartment because the landlord didn’t approve of the relationship she had with a man from a different ethnic group. It was winter and the landlord came with a group of men, took the outside door off and removed her appliances and heating unit.

“The fear in her voice, I can feel it shivering through me right now,” Gruber says. “She was terrified of what they might do next and afraid for her daughter. I was astounded that somebody could do this and think he could get away with it.” When the attorney who was working on the case called the landlord, he didn’t deny it. She describes how the attorney remained completely calm and explained how that was against the law.

“I thought we were going to get some backlash, but he backed down, once he realized she had contacted a lawyer who was on her side. He was like a big ole bully. All it took was one phone call from a legal aid lawyer,” she says. “How powerful that was to be an attorney.” The man put the door and appliances back and had to pay costs. “I will never forget his backing down the moment he knew an attorney was on her side.”

During that time, Gruber made sure everyone knew that she was not acting as a lawyer, but she “got tired of that.” So she took and passed the Tennessee bar exam in 2014.

“Now I can call myself an attorney in Tennessee,” she says with pride. “I didn’t expect that to mean as much to me as it did.” She says she was surprised that becoming a licensed attorney made such a difference for her because it meant that she could do so much more for clients. She could work independently. (She points out that by keeping up with her continuing legal education, registration and privilege tax, she is “actually paying … for the privilege to be able to help people.”)

In one case she represented “a lovely grandmother whose Social Security check was being garnished unlawfully. She couldn’t get answers from anybody.” It took Gruber “a long time to track it down through the Treasury Department. It turned out that an insurance company had coded something wrong on one piece of paper. That one mistake turned into years [of her missing her payments]. Being able to fix that for her and get all her money back was incredibly rewarding for me,” she says. “Without Legal Aid, who would’ve helped her?”

Gruber readily admits, like most lawyers doing pro bono, that she gets as much from helping her clients as they are getting from her. “I find I’m getting an education on what the world can be like for some people. If I didn’t see what I see first-hand it’s hard to imagine what people have to deal with,” she says. “You hear about those things on TV or read about in the paper but when you sit across from someone face-to-face, you get a whole different perspective of life.

“They come to me in moments of desperation. [Getting a lawyer is] not the first thing they think of. They are usually at the end of a crisis when they can’t handle it anymore. They share parts of their lives that they might not want to share with the world. I feel privileged to be able to help them in their most troubled times,” she says. “We are there for people who have no place else to go.”

Of all the places she has worked, Gruber seems to like Chattanooga best. “I am amazed at how generous the people of Tennessee are; and through my volunteering at LAET I feel like I am also part of Tennessee.”

Part of her love for the area is how the legal community in Chattanooga has accepted and supported her, she says. “I’m a bit of an anomaly because I don’t have a regular paying job,” she admits. “The way we have organized our lives suits our family. It worked for us but wouldn’t work for everybody.”

She credits the attorneys, paralegals and staff at Legal Aid for supporting her, too. “They have so much experience and dedication to what they are doing. They have encouraged me to take on new things. They are great mentors to me.”

She is involved with the Southeast Tennessee Lawyers Association for Women (SETLAW), which she says has also helped her. There are “all these women who are professionals balancing their lives — I am in awe of what they are able to do, [having] full-time careers, families, and they volunteer on top of that! I’m like the one who doesn’t fit in but they have been very welcoming to me,” she says. “I feel very grateful for their acceptance of my choices regarding my career and my life.”

All these years after starting law school, Gruber says she has changed her attitude from just looking for a good way to earn a living. “I have come around completely on that. Now I’m focusing on what I can offer others, not just what the law can offer me.” Being a mother, as well as getting older, has given her a different perspective, she says. “I’m not the same person I was.”

She is not just saying that. She does help others — a lot and for free. Gruber volunteers in the LAET office six to eight hours every week, and has assisted with more than 60 cases in the last three years.

“The amount of hours she has spent working for clients can’t be counted,” LAET’s Paige Evatt wrote in her nomination of Gruber. “Her work goes far beyond her office hours. She is constantly researching, communicating with clients, and thinking of ways to best help those she serves.”

Gruber, at 50, recognizes her good fortune and her “blessed life,” enables her to volunteer like she does. “My job is a homemaker,” she says. Her son is now in college and her daughter, a senior in high school. Gruber is also a volunteer at Catholic Charities doing related legal immigration work once a month, is on the board at the Tennessee Alliance of Legal Services (TALS), as well as doing some non-legal volunteer jobs.

“I see people volunteering in all sorts of capacities around me all the time, donating hours and hours of their time and resources to scouting and youth sports, literacy programs. I believe in them all but I can’t help everywhere,” she says. “Legal Aid is where I can help. That’s part of why I volunteer there.”

— Suzanne Craig Robertson

Ashley T. Wiltshire Public Service Attorney of the Year

The Public Service Award is given to an attorney who has provided dedicated and outstanding service while employed by an organization that is primarily engaged in providing legal representation to the poor. This year’s award is given to RICHARD TAYLOR JR., public defender in the 23rd Judicial District.

Richard Taylor, or “Rick” to his friends and family, has done all he can in the Public Defender’s office to break the cycle of addiction for drug and alcohol offenders. Break the cycle, he contends, and communities see enormous benefit — taxpayer money is saved and streets are safer.

But Taylor’s intense commitment — what makes him spends nights and weekends volunteering his time — is to the offenders themselves, who he describes as decent people facing a serious problem.

RICHARD TAYLOR JR. Ashley T. Wiltshire Public Service Attorney of the Year

“The very first docket call I had in Cheatham County, I realized 80 percent of the people I had been appointed to represent were not there because they were bad,” Taylor says. “It was because of substance abuse.”

Substance abuse is a significant issue in the 23rd Judicial District, where Taylor, 61, serves Cheatham, Dickson, Houston, Humphreys and Stewart counties as assistant public defender. Taylor recognizes the strong correlation between drugs and a number of crimes, which are fueled by addicts.

“You can’t be a lawyer in criminal courts and not realize that most of the people are there because of the chemical dependency issues,” he says. Addicts are beholden to their dependency, and that often leads to crimes like theft, burglary, check forgery, prescription fraud and more.

Imagine one ordinary day in Ashland City courts, in which Taylor dealt with nine separate Wal-Mart shoplifting cases. These aren’t despicable criminal masterminds Taylor is reckoning with. They are people, often from low-income backgrounds, suffering from a condition that affects millions in America.

If treated normally in the justice system, the offenders could face jail at a time when facilities are overcrowded already, and even after release, there’s a large chance that they will be back. Not only is their repeat offense a public safety issue, Taylor says, it’s also costing taxpayers big money to keep them in the prison system.

That’s why rehabilitating drug and alcohol addicts is the best option, both for the offender and for the community they live in — and that’s where Taylor and the 23rd District’s Drug Courts come in.

“The Drug Court program is the best thing our office has ever implemented in our district,” Taylor says. “Our recidivism rate is just around 10 percent.”

The Drug Court program offers a chance at treatment for addicts, so that they can fully recover. And Taylor has been the district Drug Court’s fiercest advocate and servant.

“Most people in the community know who he is,” says Kevin Batts, director of the 23rd District Drug Court. “He’s ‘Lawyer Rick.’ People gather around him; they listen to his stories and his advice. And he goes the extra mile with the Drug Court.”

It’s been Taylor’s passion to see those who enter the Drug Court, all of whom are nonviolent offenders, complete treatment and recover.

“You can’t punish the addiction out of someone,” Taylor says. The average offender doesn’t want to be an addict, he says; they want to be able to legally drive a car, to get and hold a job, and to have money to support their families. But their addiction controls their lives.

In the 16 years he has been doing this work, Taylor doesn’t just sign off on these proceedings. In addition to the more than 1,000 referrals he has made for offenders to attend treatment, he has personally transported more than 600 individuals to treatment centers, sometimes located hours away from his district, when the client has no other way to make it there.

“He figures out a Saturday or a Sunday and he does it on his own dime,” says Batts. “He does the same thing with their family members, too — he makes sure the whole family is taken care of, that they understand what the process is.”

But treatment alone isn’t enough. Taylor said that after the first year of the Drug Court’s program, he crunched the numbers and saw around a 53 percent relapse rate. The people who went through the program did great while they were there, but once released, they would get back home to the same circumstances they left.

Taylor saw a need, and he put personal capital in to make things better. Around that time, Taylor’s grandmother died and left him a little money, which he used to rent a duplex in Dickson, Tennessee. One side of the duplex was able to hold six men coming straight from treatment, and that became the first Sober Living Residence.

“We had them for about a year,” Taylor said. He recalls putting a Christmas tree in the home. Soon after the first, he worked to open another house right up the street from the original residence.

“At the end of 18 months, instead of losing 53 percent, our retention rate had gone to 91 percent,” Taylor said. Today, 15 years later, there’s a much larger residence in Tennessee City that can hold up to 35 men, and an additional women’s home that can house 23. Some of them have never completed high school, never held a job for more than three months or never had a steady residence. The stability provided by the Sober Living Residences gives them the opportunity to finally turn around.

The success stories have made Taylor’s work memorable and worthwhile. One, Amy, had her fifth DUI and four counts of felony reckless endangerment. She had been to treatment nine times prior. When she made it into the Drug Court program, Taylor personally drove her from Dickson County to a treatment center in Memphis, and was able to talk with her for the duration of the three-hour drive. He asked her, “What do you think you’ll hear this time that you haven’t heard the past nine times?”

“She just looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know,’” Taylor recalls. “But she graduated and came back to our Drug Court program, got custody of her children back, and now she is a major spokesperson for a treatment facility.”

Another was a man in the Sober Living Residences, Tommy, who owed $32,000 in fines to the state from his crimes. Taylor went with him to court in several different counties to speak on his behalf and attest to his progress in the program.

“He’s got a car now,” Taylor says. “He hadn’t been able to legally drive for years. But he came to us with a plan: he had saved $2,300 and found a car that fit that budget. Now he’s licensed, he’s insured.”

Tommy, like every resident in Sober Living, is required to create and present a plan before they are released. Taylor spends personal time with clients to make sure that they are prepared for the world outside.

“His work is not done until he helps the client map out a plan for improving his life,” Batts says.

Batts stressed that Taylor could be “making a fortune” in private practice, but that he chooses to stick with public service. Perhaps the reason is because Taylor never wanted to be an attorney; he grew up fascinated with geology, majoring in archeology and anthropology in college, but then went on to graduate from the University of Tennessee College of Law.

Taylor says he sticks with it because he’s dealt with his own problems in the past, and “it’s a fundamental aspect that people who’ve dealt with problems — they want to go back and help people who are struggling with the same.

“I need to be doing these things,” he says, “to preserve the benefits that I’ve been given.”

— Katharine Heriges

Law Student Volunteer of the Year

This award recognizes a Tennessee law school student or recent graduate who provides outstanding volunteer services while working with an organization that provides legal representation to the indigent. This year’s honoree is Kirsten Jacobson, a 2016 graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Law.

Kirsten Jacobson admits that she did not really know what to expect from attending law school, but that her “interest in working in the public sector” and supporting non-profit organizations was enough of a draw for her to make the decision to apply. She jests that she “probably wasn’t the best person” to be accepted into law school due to her lack understanding about what her legal education would entail, but it did not take long for her to figure it out. Soon she was absorbed with pro bono service and the access to justice community.

If law school seemed an unlikely path from Jacobson’s perspective, those who worked with her during her years at the University of Tennessee College of Law quickly recognized a perfect fit for a legal career. Doug Blaze, University of Tennessee College of Law Professor and director of the Institute for Professional Leadership, noted in his nomination that Jacobson is a “leader among leaders” and has “without reservation, displayed a level of dedication that is unmatched in my work with students.”

KIRSTEN JACOBSON Law Student Volunteer of the Year

Law School: 3 Years of Service & Leadership
Jacobson, 25, had lived in Nashville as a child and says she always knew she wanted to come back and attend Vanderbilt University. She did, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in political science and human & organizational development in 2013. However, when the time came to select a law school, it only took Jacobson one visit to Knoxville for her to know that the University of Tennessee College of Law was “where I had to go.”

Jacobson served as a volunteer her entire law school career, directly providing more than 900 hours of pro bono work over three years. She also served as director of UT Pro Bono in her third year, after working as special events coordinator for the organization during her first and second years. Being active with pro bono and the access to justice community came naturally to her. It “aligned with why I wanted to go to law school and what I want to do professionally,” she says.

Working with UT Pro Bono was especially suitable for Jacobson, as she is skilled at and enjoys doing the behind-the-scenes work, “organizing the clinics, recruiting volunteers.” Those who worked alongside her, including Brad Morgan, associate director for UT’s Institute for Professional Leadership Development, added that she “not only provides meaningful service to … the community, but she also inspires others to engage in similar work.” In addition to her intellectual abilities, Morgan lauds Jacobson’s “talents with respect to project management, attention to detail and organizational skills [that] served her well as a class leader; both in deed and in thought.”

The proof for her powers of inspiration are apparent from the numbers related to student engagement with pro bono. Specifically, Blaze noted that Jacobson’s “impact extended far beyond her direct service. Under her leadership, the number of students participating in UT Pro Bono has increased to more than 40 percent and the number of hours expanded by students exceeded 10,000 during her year as director.” This is up from 12 percent of law students volunteering a total of 800 hours just five years ago.

While a primary focus for Jacobson was recruiting and organizing clinics and pro bono events, she also enjoyed providing direct service. She says that one of her favorite pro bono projects in law school was working at a clinic for homeless individuals with the Knoxville Area Rescue Mission. This clinic provided great opportunities for direct and meaningful client contact: law students conducted intake, consulted with supervising attorneys to frame legal answers and then had the opportunity to talk to the clients again, delivering the advice and providing life-changing information and referrals.

It was when working at pro bono clinics that Jacobson says she realized so many of the clients have experienced trauma and that many of the legal issues they presented were not terribly complicated; they just needed support and practical advice. It was in these situations that she realized how much of a difference volunteer attorneys can make for underserved clients. 

In addition to her leadership roles with UT Pro Bono, Jacobson worked as a student attorney in UT’s Domestic Violence Clinic and held internships with Judge Steve Sword in Knox County Criminal Court and the federal public defender for Middle Tennessee.

Post-Graduate Fellowship: Equal Justice Works & TALS
Based in large part on her exemplary service during law school, Jacobson is the recipient of a prestigious two-year post-graduate Equal Justice Works (EJW) fellowship working with the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services (TALS). Her EJW project is focused on expanding access to justice in Tennessee through technology and increasing civil legal service availability to the 1.2 million Tennesseans living in poverty. Specifically, Jacobson’s project focuses on developing new technology platforms for TALS, including a legal assessment and digital literacy courses for TALS clients.

“Growing Internet access among low-income communities in Tennessee creates an important opportunity to use new technologies to tackle the state’s interconnected problems of poverty and barriers to civil legal aid,” Jacobson says.

TALS Executive Director Ann Pruitt adds, “With Kirsten on board as our Equal Justice Works Fellow, we can accomplish game-changing technology-related projects that will make legal help more accessible to disadvantaged Tennesseans. Her first project is creating an automated legal wellness check-up tool that will provide users with a personalized report identifying the top legal risk areas in their life and connect them to resources to address those risks.” Jacobson’s EJW project is sponsored by International Paper, a long-time leader in the access to justice community that supports a number of initiatives that help leverage technology to connect with otherwise underserved Tennesseans.

In addition to the specific work focused on Jacobson’s fellowship, she is a critical part of the TALS team in many ways, including supporting legal relief for victims of the devastating East Tennessee wildfires, serving as the first voice clients may hear when they call the HELP4TN legal helpline. She says that taking on these types of responsibilities is a wonderful aspect of the unique environment and community at TALS.

“I love being at TALS,” she says. “I have so much support and appreciate being treated as a respected colleague and serving as part of the staff team.”

Jacobson said that though she is not sure what she will do at the end of her fellowship, she knows she wants to stay in Nashville and continue to work in public interest legal services. She also noted another of the reasons she loves being at TALS is the opportunity it is providing to truly understand more about Tennessee’s access to justice community, something she plans to remain involved with for years to come.

— Elizabeth Slagle Todaro
 

Suzanne Robertson is editor of the Tennessee Bar Journal, Katharine Heriges is the Tennessee Bar Association’s communications coordinator,  and Liz Todaro is the TBA’s access to justice coordinator.