24th Annual Goldmark Award Luncheon

Fredrickson Goldmark Acceptance Speech

February 26, 2010

Thank you Greg for that introduction. I'd also like to thank David Leen for the wonderful profile he

wrote for the King County Bar Bulletin. Unlike most of David's stories, there were a couple of things 

in that story that were actually true. Thank you David and Sheila for your friendship.

I am delighted and honored to accept this award. I can think of no greater honor that you could

bestow on a legal aid lawyer than the Charles A. Goldmark Award. Thank you to the Legal

Foundation of Washington, its staff and board, and to all its sponsors and supporters. Today also

offers an occasion to remember Chuck Goldmark and his family and honor his leadership and 

support for this work. I also congratulate the Bar's Board of Governors and the Bill and Melinda

Gates Foundation on the recognition they've received today.

Thank you to members of the court, bar and community leaders, public officials, law school leaders,

faculty, staff, and students, to the many lawyers in the audience, to my many friends, and to others for

being here today.

I'd also like to thank my Northwest Justice Project colleagues and my friends who took the time to

nominate me for this award and say so many generous things about me. I was deeply touched by your

kind words and, indeed, your expression of support was itself a great reward. Thank you for thinking

of me and sharing this day with me.

There are too many people here today who have touched me professionally and personally to be

acknowledged and thanked by name. I think you know who you are. Please indulge me and forgive

me, however, for introducing a few guests.

I've always been fortunate to have the love and support of my family. I'm happy that my sister, Judy

Fredrickson, my sister Cathy Maxwell, and my brother Dennis Fredrickson and his wife, Jan

Wingenroth, can be here today. My mother, Marion Fredrickson, who will be 99 in April is unable to

be here today, but is doing fine and eagerly awaits a full report from us.

I'm sure many of you remember that one teacher who had a major influence on your life. For me, that

teacher was my high school humanities teacher and debate coach, Les Smith. I doubt I would have

gone to law school and become a lawyer if it hadn't been for Les. I never thought I'd have a chance to

thank him in such a public way so I'm happy that he came and I can thank him now for all he's done

for me.

You've met Greg Dallaire. Greg introduced me to legal aid work, hired me for my first law job, and

taught me and motivated me to try to do legal aid work at the highest professional level. I thank him for

that.

Lawyers tend to get most of the recognition and awards for this work. There are, however, scores of

people who are not lawyers who are committing their professional lives to legal aid work helping poor

people in Washington.

Gail Turner has been doing legal aid work almost as long as me, having started at Seattle Legal

Services Center in 1973. She's a paralegal on the CLEAR line at NJP and was a housing paralegal at

legal services who I've had the good fortune to work with for over 30 years. There is no finer or more

effective advocate on behalf of poor people and I'm honored to have her as a colleague and a friend.

Finally, I'd like to introduce my legal assistant, Bridgette Murphy. Her gentle and not so gentle

reminders help keep me focused and organized and I thank her for that, for her patience and good

humor, and for her friendship.

There are four things I'd like to say to you this afternoon. I number them, not only because I'm a

lawyer and like to number things, but also because you may take some comfort in knowing when the

remarks are coming to an end. When I mention number four, you'll know we're close.

First and foremost for me, this work is about our clients. It's a great privilege to be able to do this

work. I've tried never to take that privilege for granted. It's a privilege because we have the opportunity

to help poor people try to squeeze a little bit of justice out of a frustrating and often stingy system that

is rife with injustice. Legal aid work involves more than just assuring procedural due process for our

clients. It is also a much more ambitious quest to achieve social and economic justice for poor people.

It's been a great honor over the years to assist thousands of clients who faced their often daunting

legal problems with great courage, perseverance, and dignity. When I reflect on the clients who

described their plight - homeless or living in squalor, not having enough to eat, unable to get medical

care, hounded by collection agencies, often the victim of gross injustices, it angers and saddens me

that all too often, some insist on attributing their plight to personal failures, not to the structural failures

that seem so apparent to me.

A good friend from law school who some of you know, David Kader, is a law professor at Arizona State

University in Tempe and he and a colleague have edited a poetry collection that's coming out next

month titled, Poetry of the Law: From Chaucer to the Present.

I was looking at the book's table of contents and saw a poem by Martin Espada titled "The Legal Aid

Lawyer Has an Epiphany." I don't read much poetry, I'd never heard of Espada, but I was curious

about this epiphany - maybe I'd had one too and just hadn't noticed - and I knew I had to read this

poem.

I found the poem in a poetry collection of Espada's titled City of Coughing and Dead Radiators. It

turns out that Espada had been a legal aid tenant lawyer and was a supervisor for six years at Su

Clinica Legal, a legal services program for low-income tenants in Boston. He's a professor of English

now.

I'm not going to tell you what the legal aid lawyer's epiphany was. You'll have to discover that yourself.

Instead, I'm going to read an Espada poem that reminds me of my many years representing tenants.

It's titled "Tires Stacked in the Hallways of Civilization:"

"Yes, Your Honor, there are rodents,"

said the landlord to the judge,

"but I let the tenant

have a cat. Besides,

he stacks his tires

in the hallway."

The tenant confessed

in stuttering English:

"Yes, Your Honor,

I am from EI Salvador,

and I put my tires

in the hallway."

The judge puffed up

his robes

like a black bird

shaking off rain:

"Tires out of the hallway!

You don't live in a jungle

anymore. This is a civilized country."

So the defendant was ordered

to remove his tires

from the hallways of civilization,

and allowed to keep the cat.

I think about my many clients and their daily challenges when I read Espada's poems.

They remind me why I do this work.

Second, we are fortunate to have a great legal aid community here in Washington. That broader

community not only includes Northwest Justice Project and Columbia Legal Services, but also our

many Alliance members who represent poor people in this state. That community has been like an

extended family for me and I have made many lasting friendships over the years with the scores of

people who did this work in the past and continue to do this work now. Many of them are in this room

today.

The reputation the legal aid community enjoys in Washington is no accident. We have had great

program leadership that has dealt so ably with the financial crises and political assaults that have

periodically threatened our work. Early on our leaders encouraged a culture of excellence in legal aid

work and urged us to try and practice at the highest possible professional level. That culture has

continued to this day because of our good fortune in having leadership that's possessed great

intelligence, vision, and commitment.

Nobody can do this work well without the support and encouragement of colleagues and co-workers.

As I mentioned before, it's not only lawyers, but also paralegals, legal assistants, receptionists,

accounting and IT staff, law clerks, and volunteers who help us to do our job. I thank all of them.

There are many people in this room today who deserve this award for their accomplishments. I'm

honored to accept this award as their representative and as recognition for all of the work my legal aid

colleagues have done and continue to do.

Third, we are also fortunate in Washington to have broad support from the bench and bar and our

other partner organizations. I talk to legal aid lawyers throughout the country and, sadly, this broad

support is not always enjoyed elsewhere. Although we enjoy great support, however, we all know that

now is not the time to be complacent. As the need for legal services continues to rise and resources to

help those in need dwindle, everyone who cares about this work must renew their resolve to support it.

The Washington State Supreme Court has shown great leadership in advancing the cause of legal

services for the poor. The Washington State Bar Association and local bar associations are also to be

commended for their leadership and support. The Washington State Legislature, even in a brutal

budget climate, has reaffirmed its commitment to providing financial support for legal services for poor

people. As the state continues to reel from a national economic crisis and the legislature deliberates

over its budget proposals as I speak, I hope that commitment will continue.

The Legal Foundation of Washington, LAW Fund, the Office of Civil Legal Aid, and our other funders

and supporters have much to be proud of for their indispensable role in sustaining this work.

Volunteer lawyer programs, their staff and volunteers, have provided essential help to poor people

and have been staunch supporters of this work. The three Washington law schools are also important

partners in our work. I also don't want to forget our friends and colleagues in the defender community.

There's a lot we can learn from each other. We need each other's support. Last, but certainly not

least, lawyers and law firms generously support our work politically and financially and lend their

expertise to help our clients. I think I speak for all of my legal aid colleagues in thanking all of you for 

your leadership, your commitment to social justice, your support, and your friendship.

Fourth, when you've been doing this work for almost 40 years, you eventually accept that unless there

are some astonishing advances in medicine soon, you are probably closer to the end of your legal

career than you are to the beginning. Many of us feel a personal responsibility to help the current

generation and future generations continue this work and toward that end my good friend and

long-time colleague Lynn Greiner and I are co-chairs of the Access to Justice Board Law School

Relations Committee. One of the Committee's goals is helping law students pursue public interest

work.

Law students are the future of our legal aid practice. We owe it to them to not only inform them about

that practice, but also give them an opportunity to gain practical experience while they're still in law

school. We also owe it to them to help remove barriers to a legal aid career after they graduate.

We can help by relieving law students from the often crushing law school debt that limits their career

choices after graduation. We can do that by supporting loan repayment programs and loan

forgiveness programs for those doing public interest work. We can also work on the development of

post-graduate fellowships for legal aid work that will enable recent law school graduates to pursue

their professional goals and provide much needed help to Alliance members and their clients. Seattle

University School of Law has set a great example by funding its Leadership for Justice Fellowship. I

hope the other Washington law schools will follow that example. They will need our help.

Finally, I'm sorry to say that we haven't accomplished more in the last 40 years to eradicate poverty or

at least ease the burdens of poor people in this country. It's not because some of us haven't tried.

Sadly, in some ways things seem worse now than they were when I started. I realized early on in my

legal career that the struggle for social and economic justice would be a long journey - a journey that

would not be completed in my lifetime. Nevertheless, the goal is worth the struggle and I remain

optimistic that the injustice we see around us ultimately "will not stand." I have absolutely no regrets

about the career path I chose and I can't think of any work, even janitorial work, that could have been

more satisfying personally and professionally. I'm proud to call myself a legal aid lawyer.

Thank you for this honor and thank you for being here today to share it with me.