Marquette students offer statewide pro bono help throughout pandemic

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Marquette University Law School students are helping provide better access to justice in Wisconsin using a pro bono program started out of necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The program puts students to work answering questions through the American Bar Association’s Free Legal Answers service, which connects people with low incomes to free online legal help for non-criminal matters. Their questions can be submitted online, allowing volunteer attorneys to select which ones they’d like to answer.

Before the pandemic started, Angela Schultz, Marquette assistant dean for public service, would occasionally have students log into the system, especially at times when the university’s in-person legal clinics weren’t seeing much traffic. In March 2020, though, something that had begun as a back-up plan suddenly became a primary source of opportunities for students.

“As soon as the pandemic hit, it was time to think creatively about how we could make pro bono opportunities happen remotely,” Schultz said. “Free Legal Answers was the first one that had already been operating remotely. The whole premise behind it is free legal advice by email.”

JJ Moore, attorney at Legal Action of Wisconsin and a volunteer at Marquette’s legal clinics, has been giving advice through Free Legal Answers since 2018, answering more than 1,200 questions throughout the years. He recognized an opportunity to get students more involved and had plenty of experience in using Free Legal Answers to present a program they’d find useful.

“I feel lucky to be able to help students think about answers and look at problems in a different way,” Moore said. “Not all of the questions that come up have strictly legal solutions. Not everyone wants to hire an attorney or go to court, so finding different solutions to someone’s problem is crucial.”

Moore selects questions related to his expertise and assigns them to law students. The students draft responses and then, before submitting them, receive another round of advice and guidance from Moore.

Moore said he typically sees a vast improvement in students’ writing from the beginning of a semester to the end. Their first drafts, for instance, will often go from consisting of nothing more than bullet points to being fleshed-out papers that are nearly ready for submission.

Since March 2020, 31 students have answered more than 300 questions spanning a variety of subjects related to the law. Many of the inquiries stem directly from anxieties related to the pandemic – unemployment and eviction, for instance. Others concern everyday situations and events that students are likely to encounter as lawyers, such as divorces and possible infringements of individual rights.

Curtis Edwards, a law student, volunteered with the program for about four months during his last semester of law school. He said it’s important to provide access to legal services to the community, especially with the cancellation of in-person legal clinics.

“I think it is wonderful that Marquette Law School was able to respond to these challenges by providing students with a new pro bono opportunity that was both flexible and allowed work to be performed remotely,” Edwards said.

He and Madeline Lewis, another Marquette student who’s been volunteering with the program for five months, found Free Legal Answers to be great preparation for life after law school.

“I believe the legal profession is a helping profession,” Lewis said. “I plan to incorporate pro bono regularly into my future career and think it’s a great opportunity to get students involved in service early on.”

Lewis and Schultz said Moore has been an invaluable resource, dedicating his time to helping students develop the abilities and knowledge they need to be effective attorneys.

“JJ is a gift,” Schultz said. “Part of the goal of all of our pro bono programs is to get students in the habit of engaging with this kind of work, so once they’re lawyers, they’ll play the role that JJ plays.”

Even as in-person events begin to become common again, Schultz doesn’t think students will stop working with Free Legal Answers. Schultz considers the program to be a “small silver lining” in a difficult year, allowing students, most of whom live in Milwaukee, to offer legal help to Wisconsinites who need it most.

With many in-person legal clinics still closed, Moore said it’s now more important than ever to provide people with a virtual means of finding remedies to some of their most pressing problems.

“Not a lot of people can afford to do a consultation with an attorney,” Moore said. “Free Legal Answers is a free option for people to post their questions and get ideas about what they need to do next.”