Saturday's Lawyers

Bus passengers in Atlanta have been staring at some unusual posters in recent weeks. "They fixed my porch, but then they took my house!" one proclaims. "I'd rather walk clean across town than pay 45-c- for a bunch of greens!" advertises another.

Part of a publicity campaign by the city's Legal Aid Society, the slogans warn the poor--most of them uneducated Negroes--against some common forms of exploitation. They also serve as a warning to the exploiters. Under a Legal Aid Society program, some of the smartest young lawyers in Atlanta's top firms are taking their Saturdays and other days off to defend the poor.

Young lawyers in many cities are representing the poor in their spare time. They handle everything from criminal matters to consumer complaints and even divorces. But Atlanta has one of the most aggressive programs. The Legal Aid Society has 21 regular staffers and 56 volunteer lawyers who spend their weekends hearing complaints in ghetto offices. They are responsible for seeing each case through, even if they must work on it during the regular work week. Their employers do not seem to mind. In fact, the society's board of directors is composed mostly of senior lawyers from the volunteers' firms.

Reducing the Bill. The volunteers are doing pioneer work in a comparatively new field of law: the rights of the poor. In an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Legal Aid Society seeks to have the state's tenant-eviction statute declared unconstitutional because the law makes it all but impossible for the evicted persons to defend themselves in court. Volunteer lawyers are also challenging in a federal court state welfare laws that provide payments for a parent's first three children but none for any born thereafter.

Responding to complaints about high prices and sales of spoiled food, the Saturday lawyers persuaded the owner of a ghetto supermarket to make improvements and to meet regularly with a committee of his customers. Society Director Michael Padnos also arranged to have Grady Hospital, which treats many of the city's poor, review the financial status of certain patients--and perhaps reduce their hospital bills--before bringing lawsuits to collect the money.

The Saturday lawyers try to retaliate against those who take advantage of others' ignorance to make their own living. In a typical case, an illiterate woman came to Legal Aid because she had been tricked into putting up the deed to her home as security for $700 worth of household repairs. After the repairs were completed, a loan company claimed that with interest and other charges she actually owed $1,900. When the company threatened to take over her home, Bill Ide, one of the Legal Aid volunteers, promptly filed suit for his client. Charging contractor and loan company with a "fraudulent conspiracy," Ide asked for $25,000 in punitive damages. The claim against the woman was quickly dropped--and so was Ide's suit.

Starting to Scare. Director Padnos, 33, a University of Chicago Law School graduate, is the man most responsible for turning the Atlanta Legal Aid Society into an effective and exciting organization. "We're just scratching the surface," says Padnos, who wants to double the size of his volunteer staff to 100 lawyers this year. "There are still plenty of people being victimized for every one we help." But the weekend lawyers are at least beginning to fight back against those who once took advantage of the poor without risk of either exposure or interference.

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