CBA Record October 2017

PRO BONOWEEK 2017– FOR THE SAKE OF THE COMMUNITY

By Margaret Benson

Pro Bono Week 2017 For the Sake of All the Elsies

I n the early 1980s I was the newest legal aid attorney in my office. As a result, I got the emergency call. A caseworker from Chicago’s Department of Human Services had a deaf 80-year old client whose eviction hearing was that afternoon at 2:00. Elsie lived in a gentrifying neighbor- hood and her building’s new owners were converting to condos. Finding a new apartment was challenging–she couldn’t use the telephone, insisted on looking at

each potential apartment herself, and didn’t like anything. I met my client that afternoon outside the Daley Center courtroom. I knew her as soon as I saw her shuffling toward me. Elsie was old, with grizzled, white hair. She wore a heavy wool coat, although it was July, carried four dirty shopping bags stuffed full of papers, and had a huge goiter on her neck. Even in a courtroom swarming with wretched looking people, Elsie stood out.

I handed her my business card. She peered at it and bellowed, “ARE YOUMY LAWYER”? Everyone stopped and stared. “THEYWANTTO EVICT ME. I’VE LIVED THERE 15 YEARS.” We sat down on a hallway bench and I asked her, in writing, for her court papers. Rummaging through one of her bags, she handed me a wad of grubby papers. After looking through them, I wrote, “Do you have a lease?”

36 OCTOBER 2017

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