The last thing a legal-services agency for the poor needs is internal labor strife. Yet that’s just what the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago faces, as its attorneys protest plans to lay off staff and close two of six neighborhood branches.
“When I interviewed for the job I asked whether the job was stable, and Sheldon said yes,” says Norma Barnes-Euresti, an attorney in the Pilsen office. “I turned down another offer to come here. I prepared for the bar exam. Sheldon even asked me to sign what they call a moral-obligation paper, in which I agreed to remain on the job for three years.”
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All these details were explained in a June 8 memorandum from Roodman to the staff, in which he announced that the organization’s planning committee would examine “LAFC priorities and possible ways to contract.” The memo concluded: “We will be doing everything we can to increase our revenues from sources other than LSC in the months ahead. We will also be trying to reduce our expenses, and all of you can assist in this effort. There will be a lot of tough decisions that need to be made in the weeks and months ahead. I hope everyone will take into account that LAFC will not be able to do everything we have in the past.”
Gilbert says Hoellen’s concerns are based on a misunderstanding. “It’s just a bad sentence, really–I wouldn’t read too much into it. The committee wasn’t planning reductions so much as planning our budget. That’s how the sentence should have gone.”
“They want LAFC to be like a big-time law firm, and that’s not what we want,” adds Villasenor. “If we wanted to work for some downtown law firm we wouldn’t be doing this job. We are about providing services–getting a battered woman an order of protection, getting food stamps for someone, getting a family back into an apartment after the landlord has kicked them out. That’s what counts.”
