Solo practitioners and big firm lawyers alike were honored for the many volunteer hours they've devoted to helping those in need gain justice—along with staffers for several innovative pro bono programs—at the Atlanta Bar Association's annual Celebrating Service luncheon on Friday at the Commerce Club. Jon Rapping, the founder and president of Gideon's Promise, put the awards into perspective in his keynote speech. "As a profession we've fallen short on providing equal justice in America," Rapping said, "but a small group of us are inching justice forward, and it's the people here in this room." Sean Ramsey, for instance, was arrested last year for standing outside Atlanta City Hall holding up a cardboard sign that read: "homeless, please help." Unable to post $200 bond, Ramsey spent 2.5 months in jail without seeing a lawyer—until the Southern Center for Human Rights challenged his detention. Despite the many cases where the underfunded U.S. criminal justice system has failed to provide "equal justice for all," it "keeps pressing ahead," said Rapping, a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellow, who started Gideon's Promise in 2007 to train and support public defenders. "With funding for 100 units of justice, we force through 500 units of justice every day—and never mind the consequences for people," he said. This is "ordinary injustice" in the United States, Rapping said, referencing the book of the same name by attorney and journalist Amy Bach, who spent eight years investigating systemic courtroom failures in America and found an "assembly-line approach to justice." "We have come to normalize injustice," Rapping said, adding it's not because people are heartless or don't value justice, but because they've become inured to the system. The experience of people like Ramsey are "stories of breakdowns in our systems," Rapping said, in housing, in education, and other areas of society. Those kinds of societal breakdowns are what the volunteer lawyers and programs recognized by the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, Atlanta Legal Aid Society and the Atlanta Bar Association have spent many hours trying to combat on behalf of their clients. AVLF Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton was honored as AVLF's Safe and Stable Homes Firm of the Year for its strong turnout for the Saturday Lawyers program and work on the group's pioneering new Standing With Our Neighbors project, which addresses the systemic housing and education issues that Rapping addressed. AVLF lawyers and staff work on-site in eight Atlanta schools in low-income neighborhoods to help students and their families obtain apartment repairs from landlords and fend off evictions—with crucial assistance from volunteers at Kilpatrick and other firms. Kilpatrick has worked with AVLF's team at the Barack & Michelle Obama Academy—notably Jared Welsh in his work for the tenants of a Peoplestown apartment complex and Jennifer Blackburn, who has taken three tenant cases this year alone. Improving and stabilizing students' living conditions addresses the systemic housing and education issues that Rapping addressed, which has translated into better school attendance and performance and reduced enrollment turnover. "If every law firm paid as much attention to pro bono as Kilpatrick Townsend, our city's justice gap would quickly be eradicated," said AVLF's Erik Provitt, who presented the award.
Solo Darryl Davis received AVLF's Volunteer of the Year for Safe and Stable Homes. He has taken six cases from the group's Saturday Lawyer and Eviction Defense programs this year alone—and spent more than 400 hours on his AVLF cases since 2015, including several last-minute evictions.
Jennifer Fairbairn Deal of Kilpatrick won AVLF's Safe Families Office Volunteer of the Year. In her almost seven years volunteering with the Safe Families Office at Fulton County Superior Courthouse, she's taken more than 20 cases to help domestic violence victims with protective orders and other issues.
Rebecca Hoelting of family law firm Hoelting & McCormack received AVLF's Family Law Program Volunteer of the Year award. She has volunteered with the program since it launched two years ago and this year represented a client in a case that went all the way to trial.
Vanessa Kosky, a solo handling criminal defense, family law and immigration, won Guardian Ad Litem of the Year. Kosky and all of her office staff speak Spanish, so she's been able to help with several custody cases the group could not have done without her, said Provitt, the presenter. Atlanta Legal Aid Renae Wainwright of Kilpatrick and solo family lawyer Mindy Pillow, herself a former Kilpatrick associate, were Legal Aid's volunteers of the year for their work on adoption cases.
Atlanta Legal Aid's executive director Steve Gottlieb presented Emory Law School's Rita Sheffey with the group's Extraordinary Pro Bono Award. As the assistant dean for public service, Sheffey "has turned Emory Law School into Pro Bono Law School," he said. Atlanta Bar The Atlanta Bar recognized longtime staff members at three programs it sponsors through the Atlanta Bar Foundation: the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network (GAIN), the Truancy Intervention Project (TIP) and the Summer Law Internship Program (SLIP) for their life-changing work with clients over the years.
Alpa Amin, GAIN's legal services director, won the Atlanta Bar's Rita A. Sheffey Public Interest Award for her work training and mentoring volunteer lawyers to represent immigrants who are victims of human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault.
TIP's executive director, Jessica Pennington, received the bar's Pro Bono Service Award. Since its launch in 1992, TIP staff and more than 2,000 volunteer lawyers have worked with more than 10,000 truant children referred by courts or schools, serving as advocates in court and with the schools' management. More than 86 percent of their young clients have not returned to juvenile court. "Jessica has touched the lives of thousands of Atlanta's children and the volunteers who help them," said Atlanta Bar president-elect Ryan Walsh, who is also the son of Terry Walsh, the retired Alston & Bird partner who started TIP when he was Atlanta Bar president at the urging of Judge Glenda Hatchett.
Judge Cynthia Adams of Douglas County Superior Court presented the bar's Community Service Award to SLIP. Through the program, about 730 Atlanta high school students have landed paid summer internships to learn what being a lawyer is like, all under the demanding yet encouraging tutelage of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough partner Wade Malone and Natasha Perdew Silas of the Federal Defender Program, who started SLIP 26 summers ago. The students' experience in law firms, courts, judges' chambers and corporate law departments has been life-changing for some, including Adams herself, a SLIP alumnae who said her participation as a Therrell High School student inspired her to apply to law school. She became a judge just last year.
Atlanta City Councilwoman Natalyn Archibong, a lawyer by training, received the group's Public Service Award for her work since 2001 as the District 5 representative. The presenter, Nicole Iannarone, said Archibong decided to run for city council when she realized, after many years of civic involvement, that instead of talking about the changes that needed to happen, she should make them happen.