Young Lawyers on Board

Advocacy group honored for approach to grooming leaders

The road to the boardroom begins in a borrowed, nondescript rectangular space in a Catholic Charities building

on the rough-and-tumble west side of downtown. Here on a Wednesday night, a half-dozen law students and recent law-school graduates sit around a conference table and perform a major function of a board in training: They arrange items donated by a local speedway, a travel agency, a video store, and a wine shop in baskets, which are then dressed up to draw the highest possible bids at a fund-raising auction.

“Another thankless task,” jokes Jeff Boxer, vice president of the Young Professionals Board of the Western Law Center for Disability Rights, a legal advocacy organization affiliated with Loyola Law School Los Angeles. “That’s what we’re here for,” adds Mr. Boxer, a lawyer who represents labor unions.

In between bites of pizza and sips of Pepsi, he and his colleagues wrap the goodie baskets in pink cellophane. But during this and other meetings, the participants also learn about how charity boards elect and govern themselves. They discuss how board members build networks of potential donors. And they talk about the best ways to ask others in their profession for money.

But there’s more to it than that, members say. The Young Professionals Board allows students who gain class credit by volunteering at the center and lawyers who once were interns at the organization to maintain ties with Loyola Law School and to people with disabilities.

“It keeps us connected to the community and to other organizations that are looking to help people who are disabled,” says Mr. Boxer. “It allows us to continue to spread the word about the Western Law Center.”

Advocacy Group Was Founded in 1975

Started four years ago by Eve L. Hill, executive director of the Western Law Center for Disability Rights, and a group of Loyola Law School students, the young board’s work — unglamorous though it sometimes might be — is viewed as pivotal to the success of the organization. The center, formed in 1975, is the oldest legal advocacy group in the United States devoted to serving people with a wide variety of disabilities.

The Western Law Center’s approach to cultivating leaders has been deemed novel enough to garner national accolades. This week the center is scheduled to receive the most prestigious organizational leadership award given annually by Independent Sector, a coalition of 600 charities and grant makers.

“Training a board of new leaders isn’t something that most groups do,” says Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector.

The Western Law Center staff includes people who have disabilities, something that also impressed Independent Sector, Ms. Aviv adds. “They encourage people with disabilities to become leaders, and not merely recipients of services,” she says.

When the leadership award was announced in September, Independent Sector lauded the organization for providing mentors to people with disabilities and for offering classes, including American sign language, to staff members.

“Anything I can do to keep people, I’ll do,” says Ms. Hill, who handled disability cases as a lawyer with the federal Department of Justice before being named to lead the Western Law Center in 1998. “If people want to learn more about disabilities and try new things, then I’m all for giving them the opportunity. I hate to have to hire new people.”

She adds that continuity is especially important for an organization that often fights lengthy, class-action court battles for its clients from its offices here on the Loyola Law School campus, a squeaky-clean modernist set of edifices designed by the internationally acclaimed architect Frank O. Gehry, amid a bleak, unwashed section of the city.

Expansion Plans

The Western Law Center, which has won several landmark class-action suits in California for its disabled clients, has plans to expand its services beyond Los Angeles — where it annually comes into contact with tens of thousands of the county’s 1.7 million disabled people — and into San Bernardino and San Diego Counties, and possibly a county in the northern part of the state as well. But it will need more money to do it.

Instead of relying solely on legal fees and money from the university, as happens at many other law school-affiliated clinics that offer hands-on educational opportunities to students, the Western Law Center raises and maintains much of its own budget of $1.7-million annually. However, grants and donations from individuals haven’t always been easy to come by.

The organization’s fund raising has been too dependent on Ms. Hill, she says. She frequently gives talks to groups of prospective donors and maintains regular contact with current ones. Still, she says, “it all takes too much of me. This isn’t what I went to law school for.”

One reason the Young Professionals Board is so important is that it raises funds and organizes special events on its own, Ms. Hill says.

“It takes pressure off of me and the board,” she says.

Ms. Hill started the Young Professionals Board with the hope that its members would one day be prepared to join the Western Law Center’s Board of Directors — and bring some money with them.

“It’s often difficult to find people who not only know about disabilities and law, but how to raise money as well,” says Ms. Hill.

“I can’t wait for society to create my board, so I’m trying to create my own,” she says. “The Young Professionals Board is a way to take volunteers who aren’t yet ready for board responsibilities and get them ready.”

None of the 20 active members of the Young Professionals Board or any past members have yet ascended to the Western Law Center board, because they are still busy gaining experience, Ms. Hill says. But a handful have joined the boards of other Southern California charities.

Several members say they plan to take the lessons they have learned with them as they do charity work elsewhere.

“For the fresh-out-of-school types, this is perfect,” says Grace Fisher Adams, a lawyer at the National Aeronautic and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in nearby Pasadena. Ms. Fisher Adams, a member of the Young Professionals Board for four years, has been on a handful of boards. “Young lawyers can get acquainted with governance issues and what the real functions of a board are.”

Landmark Law

The organization was founded by friends of A. Milton Miller, a wheelchair-bound lawyer who died in 1974. One of Mr. Miller’s goals was to start a legal advocacy group to help others with disabilities. After his death, his friends formed the Western Center on Law and the Handicapped in his honor.

Western Center took on both its current name and student volunteers in 1983, when it moved to the Loyola Law School campus. (Loyola Law School is affiliated with nearby Loyola Marymount University.)

Since then, it has won numerous cases involving disabled people and served as a mediator in hundreds of others. It has been aided since 1990 by the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, a law that requires federal, local, and state governments to make their facilities and programs accessible to the handicapped. The law also requires that employers of more than 15 workers and owners of buildings open to the public, such as restaurants and stores, make modifications so that disabled people can use their facilities.

Western Law Center’s court victories have led to:

• The installation of 10,000 “curb cuts” — indentations placed in sidewalks on street corners that make it easier for people in wheelchairs to travel — in Los Angeles County.
• Modifications of bathrooms in 50 Los Angeles County courthouses so that they are accessible to people in wheelchairs and to people who have problems opening doors.
• A determination that a parent’s disability does not automatically mean that a nondisabled parent can gain custody of a child. The 1997 case has become a precedent used by lawyers for disabled parents in custody suits.
• A preliminary injunction stopping California’s plans last year to close a rehabilitation hospital in Downey, Calif., that annually serves 9,500 people, many of them disabled. The lawsuit over Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center is now being settled, but Ms. Hill says the hospital will remain open.

Western Law Center’s work has reverberated beyond California, say leaders at some other organizations that serve people with disabilities.

Curt Decker, executive director of the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems, an organization in Washington that provides legal services to disabled people, says that Western Law has made its mark by focusing on problems that face large numbers of people.

“They’re more like a think tank in that they can pick points where they might have a large impact, then act on them,” says Mr. Decker. “They’re a rarity in that they have a whole staff of lawyers who are experts in disability law.”

4,000 Calls a Year

Ms. Hill and her staff of 22 lawyers receive more than 4,000 calls per year from disabled people seeking legal help to protect their civil rights.

The staff takes about 30 cases for trial, and refers dozens more of them to the organization’s Disability Mediation Center, which functions as a go-between in disputes involving employers and employees, landlords and tenants, and sometimes divorced spouses who are battling over the custody of a child.

“Everything we do has several goals,” says Ms. Hill. “We not only want to win a case, but create a model so other entities will have an idea of how we solved a problem. Sometimes, that means making a strong class-action statement. Other times, it’s helping parties resolve a conflict without going to court.”

When pressing businesses or governments to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Western Law Center always sends a letter outlining how problems can be corrected before filing a lawsuit, says Carolyn R. Young, who joined the staff last year after becoming disenchanted with practicing law privately. Ms. Young, who has a paralyzed arm, says that disability lawyers sometimes have a bad rap.

“Sometimes, they are perceived as being out there to make a quick buck,” she says. “We’re very aware of that, so we bend over backwards to give people the chance to make changes.”

Still, in the past 11 years, only one organization has voluntarily made the required changes, Ms. Hill says. Such reluctance by organizations to comply with federal law has often led the Western Law Center to court.

National studies show that, despite some progress made since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, the 54 million people in the United States with disabilities still have a greater need of legal help and other services than does the general public.

In a report released in June by the National Organization on Disability, an advocacy group in Washington, 22 percent of workers with disabilities reported being discriminated against while on the job. The rate of employment of people with disabilities is less than half of that for those without them.

In general, people with disabilities make less money and are less happy with their lives than people who do not suffer from disabilities, the report found. Three times as many people with disabilities live in poverty as do those in the population at large.

Broadening Its Services

The Western Law Center’s mission has expanded as the awareness of certain types of disabilities has grown.

Four years ago, the organization added the Learning Rights Project, which provides legal services and information to parents of children in public schools who may not be receiving satisfactory educational opportunities. The project’s founding director, Janeen Steel, who suffered from learning disabilities before becoming a lawyer, and three other Western Center staff members take on the cases of 100 children each year.

The organization has also grown to include a clearinghouse for information on the rights of cancer patients. The group’s Cancer Legal Resource Center opened in 1997 and has informed people about how best to deal with being laid off or denied health coverage because of their condition. The center receives about 300 calls per month from all over the United States.

Given the Western Law Center’s desire to continue expanding, finding money for all of these programs and ones that will open in the future is a daunting task, says Ms. Hill. She has started a corporate advisory board, which will hold its first meeting in January. It will, she hopes, garner donations as well as serve as a bridge between disabled workers and employers.

Ms. Hill has also changed the structure of her organization to include two development managers, who will eventually replace the one interim fund raiser now at the organization, she says.

“The idea is that so much of the fund raising would no longer fall on me and that we’d be in a much better position to grow in the long term,” she says.

But she pins much of her optimism about the organization’s future on the Young Professionals Board. In the past two years, the young board has elected its own officers and written articles on how it will be governed. In many ways, it is acting exactly like a governing board, Ms. Hill says.

After the young-board-organized annual gala this week raises some money, she will look to hire her new fund raisers. Even though no young professionals have taken a seat on Western Law Center’s board, the members-in-training are already having an impact, Ms. Hill says.

“They re-energize me — and I’m always looking for ways for us to re-energize,” she says. “They’re a good way to get other young lawyers and law firms to support our work. A partner might get you money, but it’s the associates, like those on the Young Professionals Board, who will get you volunteers from other firms, or a band, or vodka for a gala, or silent-auction items. They’ve got a lot of confidence they can do board functions, and that’s a good start.”

THE WESTERN LAW CENTER FOR DISABILITY RIGHTS

History: Founded in 1975 as the Western Center on Law and the Handicapped to provide legal advocacy services to the disabled. Its name changed in 1983, when it moved its offices to the Loyola Law School campus.

Mission: To provide legal representation in accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 to people with a wide range of disabilities, to provide information to people with cancer or with disabilities, to advocate on behalf of disabled people through class-action lawsuits, and to mediate disputes disabled people have with employers and others.

Finances: Had a budget of $1.7-million in 2003, raised mostly from foundations and other private sources.

Key officials: Eve L. Hill, executive director; Nicholas DeWitt, president of the board.

Address: 919 South Albany Street, Los Angeles, Calif. 90015

Web site: http://wlcdr.everybody.org