Talking Legal Aid With Executive Director DarKenya Waller

DarKenya continues the discussion of leading the largest nonprofit law firm in Tennessee by talking about how Legal Aid is funded, how we select our clients, and how potential clients might reach us. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello and welcome to Talking Legal Aid, a podcast that takes you inside Tennessee's largest nonprofit law firm. I'm Dean Hinton, a licensed attorney for legal aid of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands. Whether you're an attorney or a person with a legal problem looking for help, we are here for you. In this episode of Talking Legal Aid, Executive Director Darkinia Waller and I will continue our discussion regarding legal aid's 60-year anniversary. We'll talk about rural counties and we'll also talk about what our priorities are within the firm. Darkinha, welcome back. I remember a few years ago, uh, it was our 50th anniversary, and uh we all uh you know we had a party.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Can you believe that's almost eight almost eight years ago? Nine years ago, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Is this is it that long ago? Yeah. So we're almost 60 now? That's right. Well, at the 50th anniversary, which was a great party by the way, it was it was at the Frist Center. Um I remember everybody gr gathering in the auditorium at one point, and and and and you know, people were donating. It was a donation sort of um uh thing at that point. And I remember Judge Smith was one of the ones. You know, we we get donations from all over, but judges are donating to us. I remember him holding up his paddle and everything to donate.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Um that's one of the things that we're really proud of as an organization um is that justice is just not a partisan issue. It's just not. The the ability to have your issues redressed in a court is just so fundamental and so central, so integral to who we are as a country. Two hundred and fifty years ago, our founding fathers um were were very clear and very intentional about the idea of justice for all um and incorporated it into our founding documents. And so judges give. Um our supporters are are from from everywhere. Our supporters are on the right, our supporters are on the left, our supporters are in the middle, our supporters are uh uh judges, legislators, deans of law schools, Fortune 500 companies, Fortune 100 companies, uh from Microsoft to Facebook to to to everywhere. Uh uh each year we're fortunate that LSC, the Legal Services Corporation, uh works with members of Congress to generate dear colleague letters where uh members of Congress sign on and then um people in the community also sign on in support of legal aid. And our own uh attorney general here, uh Jonathan Scormetti, uh actually leads the charge for attorney generals across the state, uh I'm sorry, across the country, um to sign on to that letter that says that we believe in um the rule of law, we believe in uh access to justice, and we believe that it should not be based on how much you have in your pocket, whether or not you get justice. And so deans of law schools, supreme court justices all sign on every year to say that they support the work that we do.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

You know who loves us? Who loves us? Rural counties. I'm gonna tell you why. Tell me more. Well, I know I think you practice primarily out in Nashville, whenever. Anyway, I'm out in some of the rural counties, Macon County, Smith County, Trousdale County. They love us because there's obviously people who are out in rural counties who are broke, poor, whatever. And whenever they need help, they go to the courthouse, to the clerk's office. And what clerks can't give legal information. So they want someone to give these people legal information, they feel for them, and so, oh, here's Dean Hinton. They're ready to say, hey, Dean, can you please help this person? I might have to refer them to clinic, I might have to do an intake or whatever. But we try to help them to the best of our ability, depending on our priorities and things we've already talked about. But I will tell you that the feedback I've got in rural counties is they're very appreciative of our services for that reason.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

I appreciate that because that that is our goal. We completed a recent civil legal needs assessment with the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services in partnership with our legal aid and a few others across the the state and some additional entities. But the goal of that civil legal needs assessment was really to get a handle on what's happening in the community, what the civil legal needs are. And one of the things that the study found was that we are serving people in every county in the in the state. All 95 counties, from West Tennessee to East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee, we have clients in every single county, and those clients have multiple cases. So we are moving the needle in Macon County. We are moving the needle in Charlesdale and Grundy County by ensuring that legal services are available to help people navigate their legal issues and ultimately be able to solve things or remove barriers for from them being successful in their lives.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Sometimes we'll have clinics out in the rural counties. We just started this in Westmoreland where Krista or somebody on our staff will go out to Westmoreland, just have office hours to address things. And I think just recently they found an issue in Clay County that one of our Cookville people is helping with, one of our Cookville attorneys. So there's other ways I think we're doing outreach. We're always trying to, we're always trying to do more. Again, I think it goes back to the challenge that we have about getting our name out. And it's not just about branding, it's about helping people. And again, I go back to the worst of the worst. I want to hear what's the worst of the worst so I can help so the judges know when I walk in that courtroom that this is a serious matter and legal aid is there to help.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Absolutely. That and that is the goal. That the goal is to find those issues. And absolutely the worst of the worst, but sometimes it is just information. Knowing that you don't have a case is sometimes just as beneficial as knowing that you do. If we can tell you that I understand that you are upset about this particular thing, but the fact of the matter is there's actually no legal redress for this issue. It's upsetting. And despite my disagreement with this decision, there there's no law against being a jerk. You can be a jerk legally, and and it's frustrating. And so just knowing that you don't have a legal case in that matter relieves that person of whatever frustration with the system that no one's listening. It's not that no one's listening, it's just that there's nothing that actually can be done.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

I think also, especially like in custody visitation issues or something like that, where you might be post-divorce, and by the way, we don't do a lot of po I don't do a lot of post-divorce issues, but if someone comes to our clinic and has a post-divorce issue, a lot of times it's like, oh, you know what? Something was filed in Georgia. You need to go back to Georgia to take care of that. Uh that might be a hard discussion because people do not want to hear me say that to them. But if you're on the same lines. You give them a roadmap about now, they can hopefully listen to you or not, but at least you give them the roadmap based upon your experience as attorney. You could give them that roadmap and hopefully they'll take it and run with it. I'm sort of putting that in a negative context, but there are a lot of people who take it and run with it and and and move on.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a lot of opportunities to come back to clinics to get more guidance and honestly just to observe to observe the judicial system. Sometimes sitting in the courtroom prior to your case gives you a lot of information about how you, if you're forced to represent yourself, how you can approach that. Just going in early and listening, or going in a day before and just listening. A lot of times that that folds into your ability to be able to do that. Again, it's not ideal, but it's better than being unprepared or worse, not showing up.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Exactly. If I have an order protection hearing or something like that, and especially if my client's extra nervous, maybe beyond the normal nervousness, I don't always want to be the first on the docket. I want to be the third or fourth or fifth so that client and any witnesses can see how what's gonna happen. Yeah, you could tell them, but then they're observing it, and you could talk, you know, whisper in the courtroom about certain things, but they're able to sort of use that as their it's gonna happen next. And it's a it has a calming effect.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Absolutely, absolutely. Just seeing the process and uh it allows you to kind of tailor your argument.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

I'm looking on our sheet here. We have a little cheat sheet. We serve 48 counties across Middle Tennessee.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

That's right, that's right. Which again feeds to us being Tennessee's largest nonprofit law firm because we do serve 48 of the 95 counties. We are one of three LST funded organizations in Tennessee. We are Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands, but we have counterparts on the East and the West who are also funded by LSC. We have West Tennessee Legal Services, whose principal place of business is out of Jackson, Tennessee. And then we have Legal Aid of East Tennessee, and they cover that side of the state. And so between the three programs, we represent all 95 counties. And I bring LSC up a lot. And what difference does LSC make? Why is that important? To be the recipient of LSC funding basically means you are the designated entity from the federal government that ensures that some legal services, and I always say some because we can't represent everyone, some legal services are made available across every county. The way those funds are distributed, they cover every county in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. So no matter where you go, there is a legal aid office that supports that area. We are not connected in any other way except for the fact that we all are grantees of this particular funding source, but we are not a part of any single legal aid. We are individual organizations, we have our own board of directors, we have our own executive director, we operate independently, but we do work together. We talk to each other, we share information, we share best practices, we co-counsel on cases where it makes sense to do so, but we are separate entities. And so we fit into that larger ecosystem of uh civil legal aid providers who are connected by that. But there are non-LSC funded organizations. There are entities out there that don't receive that LSC funding that do offer civil legal aid. Think of uh Tennessee Justice Center, think of Community Legal Center in Memphis, think of the Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors or JFON. All of these are, or just city in Memphis again, all of these are entities that provide legal services but are not regulated by the federal government. They don't receive that particular funding source.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

For the listener who might wonder about services, West Tennessee might have different priorities than we have versus East. So again, there is some connectivity, I guess you could say, or there is some familiarity, sharing of resources, sharing of knowledge. I don't know if this is absolutely true, but I think East Tennessee, for example, does more custody visitation. There might be in juvenile court more than I am, for example. We're talking about our priorities here in the middle district, but wherever you are listening to this podcast, it might be a little bit different there. And also, my understanding is not everyone does legal clinics. In other words, East might do some, but West might may not. In Gallatin, we do clinics, but I'm not sure if we're the only office that does it. I think Cookville's trying to kick up their clinic. So even within our our firm, we're not all standard or homogenized or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Well, in terms of our priorities, those are all the same throughout our organization. But yes, I I would agree with you relative to other organizations. I mean, it's no different than you going to the American Red Cross asking for assistance with, you know, something that's completely outside of their mission. We have a mission, all of the organizations have various missions and they have various priorities based on that service area. For us, we may not need to have significant resources that focus on people navigating snow or weather issues, but that may be something that's very important in Alaska. Their priorities are focused on their geographic area and their demographics. Ours are the same. Additionally, again, as we've talked about a little bit earlier, it's focused on the needs of that community and then what their resources, what the community's resources can provide. For us, as you speak to custody, that's a challenge for us, whereas that may be less of a challenge in West or or East to provide those services or in what amounts they provide. So perhaps they do provide it, but they're only able to assist 10 people a year, or they don't provide it at all. So there's certainly variations there. And relative to things like legal clinics, all of those things are just relative to you know what capacity each uh service area has. You mentioned our, you know, Gallatin office or Cookville office. We as a program have eight offices across Middle Tennessee. Those offices, of course, are in Cookville, Columbia, Clarksville, Murfreesboro, Gallatin, Tullahoma, Oak Ridge, and Nashville, which is our principal place of business. Each of those offices have so many counties that they are responsible for. And so if you call one office, but your case is in a county that's served by the other office, you may be transferred to that office for further, further assistance because it is kind of localized. And each office caters to the needs of that geographic area. Nashville may be very different from what Tullahoma needs.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

These are legal offices. A lot of times we'll get drop-ins, and people will maybe expect us just to drop everything and help them. It's really not possible all the time. I might be drafting something in the middle of something, I might have a deadline. Someone drops in, they want my attention, and as you know, it probably ain't gonna happen. For one thing, we don't have a retainer. We don't know who this person is. We can't just give legal advice. I think that's might be a common misperception. People that do know legal aid think that, you know, because I'm not always wearing a suit or not always looking like an attorney, that maybe I'm I'm more user-friendly. And I try to be. I think everybody on our staff tries to be, but drop-ins, I don't wouldn't say they're not welcome, they're just not expected. We do refer people like that often to legal clinics, which is a drop-in situation. And you come and we'll be happy to spend some time with you and get you up to speed. But yeah, we're we are a law firm.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

We we are a law firm, and and the analogy I often give is think of it in terms of the medical profession. The same way you can't walk into a medical office and demand to see a law a doctor. It it's a little it's a little different. Now that being said, I mean, some of our offices, you know, may may be able to to swing it in in certain specific emergency cases, but generally speaking, we do have a queue, we do have a line where people can call us and then we you know we get you into our system to try and and process you as quickly, as quickly as we can. That's kind of how we see it. Whether you email us, whether you go online and do an intake, whether you go through our after-hours automated system, whether you walk into our shop, whether you call us during business hours, or access us through a clinic. However, you get to us, we do our best to put you into a queue for consideration. And then from that queue, we consider some of the things we talked about earlier in terms of you know severity and vulnerability and all of those sorts of things. There's not a significant difference between whether you walk in or whether you call us on the phone because we'll collect that initial information and get you into the queue so that we can process it as quickly as possible. And that's a fairness thing of us wanting to make sure that if you call that somehow you're not more or less valuable than someone who walked in or someone who contacted us online. But it is more helpful for us if you were to walk into a medical office to get an appointment scheduled and for us to get you in. Like a medical office, sometimes we are closed for intake, sometimes we aren't accepting new patients. And in those circumstances, unfortunately, we have to shut down, process the people we have, make sure that they receive the high quality legal services that they came to us for, and then we open up again and receive more clients or patients in the medical context.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

And our clients are working families, people from working families, seniors, people with disabilities, DV survivors, people are leaving incarceration and there's some sort of expungement issue or something like that. Those are probably our more typical clients. I know we're always looking for people who are v more vulnerable. In other words, who maybe they can't read and write, maybe they have some sort of disability, those sorts of things. We're always looking for people who would otherwise be excluded even within our priority system.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Yeah, we we tend to focus on the marginalized folks. We we tend to focus on the folks honestly who otherwise may not be able to access our our services, who are in fact vulnerable to, you know, the needs that that they have. And so that's why you get a lawyer, is because you're trying to fight this battle, it may be an uphill battle, or you just don't know enough about it, and you need someone who can step in and support you.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

We talked about income levels. What we try to do, which we almost always do, is help those who are, is it 125% of the poverty level? That's correct. But what what is that what does that mean? I mean, I know what it means, but can you explain it?

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah. And so this goes back to LSC, generally speaking, in terms of some of our guidelines or regulations, if you will. We are expected to assist people who are at or below 125% of federal poverty guidelines. And if you're familiar with federal poverty guidelines, then of course you understand eligibility for SNAP benefits, eligibility for ten care, eligibility for subsidized housing. Most of those things are based on some version of the federal poverty guidelines, 100%, 125%, 150%. And so for us, that's 125%, and that's set federal, federally or congressionally. What does that look like? That looks like a single person making 18,000, 18,8, I think it is, somewhere thereabout or less, or a family of four making around $45,000. When you think of people who are really unable to access justice, these are the folks we're talking about. Now it can be up to 200% of federal poverty guidelines, so a single individual making around $36,000. If there are certain factors that perhaps would reduce their income when you look at it, when you look at things like, for example, childcare. And if that's factored in, that would reduce that higher level. If you look at things like transportation back and forth to work or medical expenses you pay, all of those things can factor into reducing what your income level is to get you under that 125% threshold. And so that's why we encourage people to call. Let us do that analysis because maybe you're not eligible, but maybe you are, if we're able to work through our analysis and see. The other threshold is the asset threshold, which is actually $25,000. You can't have assets more than $25,000, which does not include your primary resident or vehicle. We're talking about other other assets, but again, all of that factors into the analysis that we make in order to see eligibility.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

You mentioned just a minute ago calling in, calling in our clients will call in. What are the ways that our potential clients can reach us to do an intake or to act uh assess where they are?

SPEAKER_01 18:44

And and that really is the starting point. All of our services start with you accessing us, getting to us. And we work really hard to find multiple ways for people to access us. We want you to be able to access justice. And so that does look like calling us at our at our 800 number. You can call us at any time between 8 a.m. and 4 30 p.m. and someone will answer the phone or if you go to our voicemail, somebody will return your call. You can certainly go online. We have where you can access there, access us there. We recently implemented and are piloting an AI or automated voice agent, which is honestly very realistic and very intuitive if you've ever called after hours. It's not available in all of our offices just yet because we are rolling it out slowly, but it's very effective. And after you complete that automated intake process, you'll receive a text message from us confirming uh the call and telling you what next steps are. You can walk in, but typically what happens when you do walk in is that we put you in the queue and we put you in the queue for a follow-up. And you can show up at any of our legal clinics, which are a little bit more of our emergency room, where you can just kind of walk in and see a doctor right away. You can come to any of our legal clinics, and all of those legal clinics are listed on our website. If you go to our website and at LAS.org and just look for free legal clinics, you can locate where they are no matter where you are in our service area to determine where you can walk into a legal clinic. But all of those are ways you can immediately access us and we'll follow up with you.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

One of the things that I encounter is someone said, Oh, I tried to reach you, I left a voice mail. And it it appears, it appears, not maybe not in all cases, but in all some cases, that they called the wrong office. We're in Gallatin, maybe they call Tullahoma or whatever. I'm not sure why that happened. Can you shed any light on that? Is that is that an issue and is there anything we could do about it or not really?

SPEAKER_01 20:38

The best way is to call our 800 number. If you call our 800 number, 800-238-1443, if you call our 800 number, then you'll be prompted to put in a zip code. And when you put in that zip code, you will be routed to the appropriate office. That's really the best way to do it. We maintain some local phone numbers just because some people, particularly in in certain areas, you know, prefer to see a local number. They're not too high on the 800 number, even though it's coming to a local office. But you can always just call directly to those offices and get the same result. But when that does happen, our internal systems then will triage your case to the appropriate office, and someone from that office will ideally give you a call back.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Remind me, where are we with online intakes? Can we do it now through the website or is it coming?

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Where we are with online intake is that we send those to you. If you reach out to us and like to have online intake, we send you the link where you can do that. We have not fully implemented it just yet online intentionally, not because we don't have the technology, it's easy enough to put it on the website, but we want to make sure that the internal triage process is in place. Who's going to take all of those online applications as they come in? And so we're still working through the workflow of that, but we are hopeful that before the end of 2026 we will have that fully online where you can. Access applications through our online portal. But short of that, if you reach out to us and say, hey, I'd rather do this online, we can send you the link to do so.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

My understanding is that legal aid is continuously trying to meet our potential clients where they are. In other words, we're doing these things, we're we're doing online intakes because we realize not everybody works eight to five and not everybody can make that phone call eight to five. You might have your abuser standing next to you or something like that where you can't contact us. So we're we, the all of us, legal aid, is trying to make it easier and more accessible to the public to or to give us information about the intake process.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Absolutely. Yeah. That's where, for example, our automated agent Ava, as we call her, our automated voice agent, comes into play where you can call after hours and where you can end the call if needed, or ultimately, um, if we send a link and you can get that done at your at your leisure and get that back into us. Access to justice is always the goal, which is which means meeting people where they are. We recently had someone who reached out who said that it would be more helpful if I could be sent a paper application. And so we did that. We sent them a paper application for them to fill out and to get back to us. And so our goal is exactly that to to meet people where they are. Our attorneys, particularly during representation, make home visits all the time. Um, wherever the client is in our service area, we drive to where they are. We we have picked people up for court, we've had to send Ubers or or give bus passes because our goal in delivering high-quality legal services is to get you to the finish line.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Along those same lines, you know, we're talking about online intakes and how to access legal aid, how to get to us. Is there anything new or anything coming along those lines that you could share, or are we pretty much exhausted?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Well, I mean, we're always innovating. I mean, that that's the nature of what we do. We're always innovating. And as I mentioned, we we have begun to roll out Ava. It's it Ava is not in all of our offices and it's not available during working hours right now. During working hours, if you uh 8 to 4:30, if you call, you'll get a live person, or you'll be able to leave a voicemail, in which case the live person will call you back. We also are working with text messaging, and so if you call us and we're not able to talk, you may very well receive a text message acknowledging receipt and giving you uh an opportunity to follow up that way. So between the text messaging and what we're really excited about is working towards full implementation of Ava. We're really hoping to be able to be accessible to anyone no matter where you are and no matter what level you are. To that end, I should also mention, we is a very high priority for us. We make sure that there's translation and interpretation services. And so even when we're, you know, talking about you calling into us or or automated systems, having those all translated into ver various languages or being able to interpret it. If you go to our website, that website can be modified into up to 20 different languages. There's an icon on there that you can click, and if Arabic is your primary language, the entire website flips to Arabic.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

If I'm a member of the public and I get a letter from legal aid saying either, hey, you can't we can't take you as a client, but uh, here's some information, or we just can't take you, we can't help you at all. And I say, Well, you know, I wish I could talk to Darkini and tell her hire more people. Well, I can't you can't help everybody, well, hire some more people. So is there a response to that?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Well, I mean, that that is literally my job. That is literally and actually my job. My job is to try to secure the funding necessary to be able to assist people, to be able to hire more people, to reimagine and redesign our structures to be more efficient, to add technology where it's uh needed to help duplicate our services, or not duplicate, but help to increase our services, which is where an Ava comes into play. If we're unable to get to all the calls in a you know quick fashion, an AVA helps us to do that and to be responsive. And so that's part of the innovations that we're trying to implement uh to do exactly that. But I'm accessible, my phone number is accessible, I can be called if if there's something that people want to take up with me directly. But people can also call any of our legal aids. Each of our offices has a managing attorney. That attorney is responsible for ensuring the efficient and effective operation of the offices, and that includes any concerns you may have, whether that's grievance that you may have with something that we did or didn't do, or suggestions that you have that are things that we should or should not do. We're open to have all of those and encourage the feedback.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Yeah, I've been here 10 years, and I think that's the message that I've gotten from management continuously is that we want to hear from the public, we want to hear from our clients, we want to know how we're doing. We always send out grievance forms, we always send out uh surveys and client satisfaction letters, those kinds of things. My understanding is that management always wants more of that. They always want more. It's just a checks and balance kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

It is, and and we read that information, we process that information, and those that feedback actually goes into things we do. I mentioned the civil legal needs assessment that we did. That was a survey across the state where we ask people for feedback in terms of what services we should offer. We keep year-round a link on our website. People can offer feedback in terms of what they think we should be doing, where what areas they think we should be focused on. Every year we determine our priorities and case acceptance policies, which cases we will and won't do, and we pull a lot of that data from that link on the website. But then in addition to that, we send out surveys and we have focus groups. We have multiple focus groups this year in preparation for our strategic planning. But we're constantly trying to reach out to the public to find out what are the things that you find important, what are the things that you need, and trying to balance that against the resources we have available.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

I asked you a minute ago about those people in the public who might say, well, just can you hire some more people? You know, let's get this thing going. I think one of the points is that in the eight years or so that you've been executive director, you have brought on more staff. It seems like we're we keep growing and growing and growing. I know maybe because of certain issues right now, we may not be able to grow anymore, but w when you hire somebody, it's not just a salary, it's office space, it's it's you know, there's a lot of overhead that goes into this whole putting this together. And and by the way, I don't even know, I don't even have access to that information. I just know that just from being around you and Zach and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

I love that because that means that we're being transparent and information is getting to you. But yes, uh, when I started as executive director in 2018, we had a staff of about 7580, and we are currently a staff of around 120, 123. So we've grown exponentially in that regard in order to be able to offer more services to people. We have increased the workload that we've had as an organization and the number of cases we're able to process. We've increased our return on investment, the the financial benefits we are able to return to clients and to the city by helping to uh prevent the use of some of the other social safety nets that are out there. Prevention of people being homeless or having to access the healthcare system in emergency situations. So, yes, we've done quite a bit of work over the last eight years to to increase as an organization and we hope to get back to that. We are maintaining where we are and why we are ensuring our fiscal uh responsibility as an organization not to overextend ourselves but to do as much as we can do with the resources we have. But we we do look forward to continuing growth once we get past this current period of plateauing in terms of growth, because at the end of the day, our goal is to help as many people as we can, whether it's direct representation or just giving them the information they need to change their life.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

And with that in mind, that helping people, I know this from all staffs, you know, recent all staffs, you should as grasp where we we, the royal we, all of us at legal aid, seem to be doing better as far as closing cases, as far as helping people, the numbers have been increasing. At least that's my understanding.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

That that's absolutely the case. And it's just it's an intentionality. It's an intentionality of getting cases in, moving them forward as quickly as possible to a positive resolution, and then getting those cases closed so that we can help the next person. Our goal is always to deliver the highest quality services as expeditiously as we can to achieve the result that the client wants. Whatever that is, we don't we don't predetermine what that result should be, but when they tell us that's what they want and the law provides an avenue for that to occur, then we get after it so we can get that done and move that barrier that might be hindering them from being successful.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

And one of the reasons I bring that up is that I think sometimes whenever I have to tell someone, you know, I can't represent them, can't do full representation, whatever, they sort of imply you're just being lazy or you don't, you know, you don't really want to work or that's kind of thing. But I think, well, I don't think I haven't been here for this long, we're all sort of if you're not self-motivated, you're certainly being pushed uh, you know, by other factors to in other words, our numbers are being watched. We are we are monitored, all of us, for compliance issues, as well as just, hey, are you are we getting the work done? Are we doing the work that we should be doing? And I'm not saying that things always work great. You know, there are what is it, glitches in the matrix. I think we're all all motivated. We all have sort of what I call an empathy gene, and we all sort of err on the side of trying to help. But again, going back to our maybe our original message is we can't help everybody, and but we do want to hear from as many people as we can to see the triage. The triage.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

We we we are very intentional with our hiring um because we do want to make sure that the people we bring on board have this at their heart. We we will pass over someone with an Ivy League education and a Fortune 500 background, accolades from here to there, if we don't find in them a passion for people, a passion to help people who need help. That's who we want. And if we find in you that you have that as a core part of your being, you you're who we want on staff. And so, with that being said, because of that, our staff work for what typically is below the average income for for their counterparts with the same years of service or education. The people that work for us do that because they are committed to the mission. They're committed to helping others. They believe fully in the statement that rent you pay to be on earth is your service to others. It that lives in them, and we look for those people. And so every day they wake up with an with an innate desire to help more, to get after the case, to be able to close this one, get that person situated so they can help the next person, next person there. I am committed to making sure that any person we help gets top-notch service. And I'm not committed to let me put it this way, I'm committed to quality. And that means that I can't overextend an attorney to where everybody's getting below quality, but you're giv helping more people. On any day, I would want us to help less people so that those people get the genuine results that they need.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Right. And one of the things that I've was preached to me is try to help a client holistically. In other words, yes, you're doing a divorce, but do they need SNAP benefits? Do they need something else? You know, let's look at this person and hopefully be able to build them up so that they can start helping themselves if that's if that's their situation.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

That is always the goal is to get people to where they are self-sufficient. And a divorce may get them part of the way, but there are other issues that are impeding that full success, and it is our goal to address all of those so that those aren't barriers. If there are barriers, they're not legal. And in some instances, with the help of our social workers and advocates that we have on staff, the social issues are removed. Those barriers are uh removed and or stabilized so that people can move forward.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

And Dr. Kenya, I don't mean to toot our own horn too much, legal aids horn, but we have people on staff or have had people on staff who've won awards and have been recognized regionally or nationally. I'm thinking uh Krista Scruggs in our office. I know that wasn't a national award, but she just got nominated for something recently. Mary Gillam, I know she's moved on, but she's gotten awards before, I think. Absolutely. Jean Crow, who we mentioned earlier, she's had I I think I called it a building. It's not a whole building, but she has space that was named after her. So there are people historically within legal aid in the last sixty years or so, or whatever we've been around, who've been who've been re recognized for their work.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Absolutely. The beauty of our staff is that these people want to be. They have options, all of us do. We could work anywhere else if we wanted to, but this is our heart, this is our mission. We have people from Yale and Harvard on staff, we have people from Princeton and Stanford on staff because this is what they want to do. They could work anywhere. These are people who are brilliant who took the bar and said, once I get my license, I am headed straight to public service. And so those people are the same people being recognized for these big awards because they could have done that at the biggest firm in the country, or they could do it for the person who can't afford a lawyer who needs them. And they made that choice. And so you have a Liz Leicerson who is recognized by the American Bar Association as the new pro bono attorney of the year. You have a Dave Tarpley who was recognized by the Nashville Business Journal as the Lifetime Achievement Award winner. You have people who are moving needles, who are changing the game. Zach Oswald, who's a 40 under 40. These people want to be here and they want to serve our client. And they could easily charge $700 an hour for what they're offering, but they're making the choice to serve our community.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yeah, and you mentioned David Tarpley, he's been around for, I don't know, almost since Legal Aid was uh formed here. But we have David Kozlowski, we have Bill Bush. We have people who have been around for decades who worked for Legal Aid, as you say, they could have gone and worked somewhere else, but now they've been here uh all the way up until you know retirement.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Yeah, and even our new folks. But yeah, I mean, these are people who not figuratively but literally wrote the laws that we follow in certain areas. When we talk about the consumer protection laws, David Tarpley literally helped to write those. When we talk about orders of protection and child support, Gene Crow literally helped to write those. When we talk about the appellate work and the court cases on the appellate level that helped to interpret the laws that were made, David Kozlowski is on over 40 of those U.S. Supreme Court cases coming out of legal aid. It is a part of our heritage, it's a part of our history. We are the ones who fight for the people who cannot fight for themselves. And typically, those are the laws that need to be created and the cases that need to be tried in order to get the results that impact the masses.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Once again, I'd like to thank Dr. Kenya Waller, the Executive Director of Legal Aid, for coming in to the studio to talk about legal aid. In our next and final episode, we will talk about myths and misconceptions of legal aid as well as the future of our firm. All that next time on Talking Legal Aid. Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Legal Aid. I'm your host, Dean Hinton. Legal Aid of Middle Tennessee's website is LAS dot or G, and the podcast website is legal aid in action.buzzsprout.com. Don't give up hope.