Philadelphia Bar Association Young Lawyers Division
Contact:
Marla A. Joseph, Chair-Elect
Philadelphia Bar Association Young Lawyers Division
Penn Mutual Towers
510 Walnut St., Suite 400
Philadelphia, PA 19106
E-mail: mjoseph@sacklaw.net
Website: www.philadelphiabar.org
This program was a winner of the 2001 Law Day Activity Awards.
Activity Summary:
The Philadelphia Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division (the
“Affiliate”) Law Week 2001, April 28 - May 5, 2001, consisted of 18 programs.
The Affiliate’s programs ran every day of the week, beginning with a kick-off program
on April 28, 2001. The overwhelming response to Law Week 2001 was that it has and
continues to get better each year. Both the volunteers and the community left the programs
with a smile and kind words. The requests to continue the programs in the future made the
Affiliate further understand the need for the legal community to participate in the lives
of the community that it serves. This Law Week received rave reviews and is considered to
be the best ever occurred.
The efforts by the Affiliate to publicize the Law Week activities were well received by
the media via Law Week related interviews, broadcasts and articles were publicized through
numerous media outlets including: television shows; articles in newspapers; public service
announcements; on-air radio interviews and coverage of events on major television stations
and radio stations.
Activities:
Lawyer/Doctor in the Classroom: In this perennial program, volunteer attorneys
and doctors go to area schools to instruct students on the legal and medical implications
of drug and alcohol abuse. This event is held throughout the year. The program in May was
coordinated to coincide with Law Week.
Same Sex Couples and the Law Forum: This is the sixth year that this program was
co-sponsored by the Affiliate. A panel of attorneys provided free legal information to
approximately 75 gay and lesbian couples about such issues as estate planning, acquiring
property and other matters. This program is co-sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Lawyers of
Philadelphia.
Essay Contest: Edward F. Chacker Essay Contest: This essay contest, named after
the past Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, is an annual staple of Law Week.
The theme this year was “Can one lawyer make a difference?” The student who
wrote the best essay received a cash prize of $1,000 for college education. The contest
winner was announced at the naturalization ceremony, where the winning essay is read by
the author.
Lawyer in the Classroom: This is a program we run all year. Volunteer attorneys
visit classrooms to discuss law-related topics. We also attend career days to encourage
students to seek out careers in the law. Each day during Law Week, lawyers went to schools
in Philadelphia to interact with the children, providing mentoring, advice and opinions on
legal issues surrounding the community.
Habitat for Humanity Work Day: We had a great turn-out and contributed greatly
to the refurbishing of a needy home in North Philadelphia.
Lawyer for a Day: In this annual program, over 100 high school students spent
the morning with volunteer attorneys and judges experiencing what it is like to be a
lawyer. The students were also taken to various courts, where they met judges who answered
their questions. The students and attorneys were also guests at the Law Week luncheon.
Law Week Luncheon: On the next to last day of Law Week, we invited Law Week
participants to join us in a luncheon at the Bar Association. Honored guests included our
poster contest winners, essay contest winner, and participants in the Lawyer for a Day
program and their host judges and attorneys.
Jury Service National Teleconference: As part of a program of the federal
judiciary, we assisted the local federal court in hosting high school students who
participated in a national teleconference. The students watched a trial and deliberated. A
panel of federal judges, prosecutors and defenders then led a panel discussion, answering
the students’ questions about jury selections and service.
Stepping Out for Seniors: A panel of volunteer attorneys went to an area high
school with informational handbooks provided by the Young Lawyers Division and spoke at an
assembly of about 150 seniors. Topics covered included drunk driving, buying and renting
property, marriage, domestic abuse, credit, employment law, and taxes.
Law Fair at One Liberty Place: During this two-hour program, a panel of nine
attorneys provided free legal advice to shoppers at an area shopping mall. Shoppers were
encouraged to ask questions regarding any area of the law. The panel of attorneys were
very diverse and included lawyers practicing in the areas of real estate, criminal law,
employment, personal injury, bankruptcy, business, medical malpractice, and general civil
litigation. Volunteer attorneys were provided with brochures that contained information
regarding local public interest and social services organizations to which attorneys could
refer in providing advice. Two attorneys from the PBA’s Lawyer Referral and
Information Service were on hand to provide volunteer attorneys with referral information
in the event that a shopper presented a legal problem that required more serious
attention. To encourage participation, throughout the two hours six members of the
Philadelphia Paralegal Association distributed flyers for the event to shoppers.
Kid ID: As part of our Law Fair at One Liberty Place, we ran a Kid ID booth. We
provided parents with Polaroid photo indentification cards and booklets containing
information about how to protect their toddlers and what to do in case of emergencies. We
had advance publicity (newspapers, radio, television and fliers at the information desks
of the mall). On the day of the event, volunteers from the Paralegal Association walked
throughout the mall and the surrounding Center City streets handing out Law Day fliers and
inviting people with toddlers to the ID booth. We gave out lollipops to the kids. We
provided about 200 cards in a two-hour period.
Legal Line Live: Area residents received free legal advice during a special live
broadcast of a local cable TV show, Today’s Law. Viewers called in to two
panels of three attorneys each for free live legal advice. The program was also used to
promote other Law Week programs, including All Week Legal Line. This was the fourth year
of the program, which received dozens of calls because of pre-publicity.
Elementary School Poster Contest: This was one of our new projects. We held a
poster contest for 4th, 5th and 6th graders (public and
private schools) to create a poster interpreting the Law Week theme, “Celebrate Your
Freedom.” We loved the posters that were submitted and thought that the public would
too. We displayed the best posters in a large window of the shopping mall. The winning
students received prize money and were honored at the Law Week luncheon.
Activity Narrative:
The activities that comprised Law Week 2001 were the product of a great combination of
labor and planning. The Philadelphia Bar Association (“PBA”) prides itself on
its community service activities, and Law Week is the true culmination of those efforts.
The PBA conducted a wide publicity campaign to create public awareness of the extent to
which the PBA would service the public during Law Week.
The activities allowed the PBA to expand the public’s awareness of how the law
affects their everyday life. Programs such as Legal Line and the Law Fair allowed the
public to interact one-on-one with attorneys to answer their personal questions about
legal issues that they are facing. Dr./Lawyer in the classroom sent professionals to speak
to children about how drugs, alcohol and violence affect them from a legal and medical
perspective. These programs, along with other Law Week activities, helped to foster the
public’s awareness of the state of the law today.
Moreover, events such as the Student Video Conference, essay contest, and
naturalization ceremony allowed the Philadelphia community to celebrate, express and
understand exactly what it means to be an American by exploring the judicial system,
freedom of speech, and actual United States citizenship.
Every day of Law Week, members of the Philadelphia legal community ventured into the
classrooms of the Philadelphia Public School System in an effort to educate, mentor and
just spend quality time with the city’s youth. Also, hundreds of Philadelphia
citizens were given the opportunity to interact with attorneys on numerous levels, be it
social service, or through the rendering of legal advice. In perhaps the most long lasting
activity, members of the PBA participated in a Habitat for Humanity effort to rebuild
dilapidated housing in the city.
To further foster the spirit of inclusiveness propounded by the PBA, the Law Week
activities were co-sponsored by a number of legal and non-legal organizations. Lasting
relationships were formed with the school system, community organizations that brought out
their membership in response to Law Week, and minority legal associations, which
participated heavily in the celebration.
In order to achieve such a response, the PBA worked diligently to ensure that its
activities were diverse, timely and dealt with current events. Unique programs such as Kid
ID were well received. The legal advice components were all well utilized by the public.
The PBA’s efforts to use the media to spread the word about Law Week were equally
well received. In fact, the on-air legal advice component is annually one of the hottest
and most talked about events.
Overall, the response to the activities from the legal and at large community was
tremendous. The attorneys enjoyed the opportunity to give back to the community, and the
community enjoyed what the attorneys had to offer. As a result, both communities await the
chance to re-create some of the music that was Law Week, and the PBA shall not leave them
wanting. Follow up programs are being planned with hopes of shattering the success margins
reached by this year’s Law Week.
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