By Victoria Langdorf
The poor, disabled, homeless and abused have friends among Utah lawyers and in the Utah Legislature who are pushing to build a community legal center in Salt Lake City that would provide free legal assistance for those who can least afford it.
The proposed SB44 would appropriate $800,000 to the Pete Suazo Memorial Community Legal Center.
“Most people think that if you need a lawyer you can get one in this country,” said Fraser Nelson, executive director of the Disability Law Center. “If you get accused of a crime, you get free representation. But people who just need legal assistance don”t get a lawyer.”
The bill”s sponsor, Senator Lyle W. Hillyard, R-Logan, said the center would bring together five major non-profit law organizations that provide legal services for those who cannot afford it.
“The range of our clients is very, very broad,” Nelson said. “We represent the people living in the developmental center down at BYU, the prison and the state mental hospital.”
Nelson said the Center provides a simplified way to access available services.
“A family that may be facing an abusive situation could also be facing eviction or might have some issues with disability,” she said. “If they could just go in one door and get everybody, it would be much easier.”
The Center will have classes to teach people how to represent themselves and fill out legal forms on the Internet. Also, the Center will offer continuing education for lawyers.
“We offer classes on the kind of law that we do,” Nelson said. “Lawyers love our training.”
In exchange for cutting-edge legal education, lawyers must promise to take a case or two that pertain to their training.
“It”s about creating access to justice for every member of our citizenry,” Nelson said.
Hillyard said lawyers are obliged to assist those who need legal service with either pro bono work (free representation) or monetary contributions.
“Lawyers have a monopoly on access to the courts, so they are required when they take their oath of office to work to increase access to justice,” Nelson said.
“One of the ways they can do that is by representing people for free, or they can help agencies like ours which is set up by our society to fulfill the promise of justice for citizens that can”t afford a lawyer,” she said.
Hillyard said he sponsored the bill because he was supportive of the concept of the community legal center and even more supportive of doing something in the memory of Pete Suazo.
Suazo, a former Utah state senator, died in an ATV accident last summer.
In a statement written a week after Suazo”s death, Sen. Howard Stephenson described him as compassionate, untiring and dedicated.
“It would be wonderful to have this building really speak in its name to the principles we all work toward, which are principles Pete Suazo really represented in his life,” Nelson said.
Hillyard said under normal circumstances the legislature might have been less supportive of this bill, but because the center will be named for Suazo, the bill has a good chance of passing.
“We think it would be a good tribute to him,” Hillyard said.
