University of Michigan School of Law

The University of Michigan Law School (UMLS) -- through its partnership in the Michigan Poverty Law Program*, -- is in the process of developing a network of skilled attorneys to support the Strong Voice for Children Legal Advocacy Project (Strong Voice Project) that the Law School sponsors with the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan (SAC). Through the Strong Voice Project, the Law School and SAC hope to recruit, train, and support volunteer attorneys to provide reduced fee or pro bono legal representation to children who are 1) excluded from school under legislation requiring suspension or expulsion; or 2) eligible for special education services but are not properly identified for such services or, when identified, receive inadequate services. As the Law School was interested in networking with other schools that were engaged in innovative outreach work to the private bar and committed to encouraging public service within and outside of their programs, it was with great enthusiasm that it joined the Law School Consortium Project (LSCP). Through the LSCP, the Law School hopes to continue its exploration into the ways it, through the Strong Voice Project, can help address the unmet legal needs of low and moderate income individuals and communities.

As a public law school, and, as a public institution, public service has long been a foundational value of the Law School. To that end, the Law School has been dedicated to both educating its students about public interest work and using its resources to serve the State of Michigan. Through projects like MPLP, the Law School has long made efforts to collaborate with community groups to provide legal services to the community. The Strong Voice Project focuses on the development of a statewide network of attorneys by reaching out not only to UMLS alums but also to alumni of other law schools with a common interest in serving a particular need by representing parents and children in need of assistance to resolve educational disputes with their school.

UMLS decided to focus on the education area because, while education advocacy is an identified need among low-income families, it is not a priority issue for most legal services programs in Michigan. Often times, families with moderate incomes find themselves in the same impossible predicament as low-income families – no access to professional legal assistance – as they fall in the no man’s land of making too much money to qualify for any legal services program that might handle education cases but too little money to attract a private lawyer to handle their child’s case. The disparity between the resources available to schools, who often can afford in-house legal counsel or otherwise have ready access to private counsel, and children and their parents, who often cannot afford an attorney translates into an unfair playing field when there is a dispute between the school and the child and his or her parents. The gap in service for education issues is further worsened because of the general unavailability of attorneys fees for legal representation during crucial points in the education process, resulting in a paucity of attorneys willing to represent this forgotten population of children.

Once the Law School identified a need for attorneys to represent children in the educational setting, the natural partner was the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan. Founded in 1975, SAC is the only independent organization in Michigan providing free, non-legal advocacy to students and their parents who are eligible for general and special education programs.

SAC had difficulty over the years in recruiting pro bono attorneys to complement its work through the more traditional approach of using large law firms because they found that many of the larger firms already represented school districts. In addition, SAC found it had difficulty placing even those cases where families could pay a fee, albeit often times a reduced fee. Therefore, with the Strong Voice Project, a more concerted effort to draw from the base of solo and small-firm attorneys began (with continued outreach to larger firms and corporate legal departments). In launching its program, the Strong Voice Project has drawn from the guidance, support, and experience of member schools who already had begun programs with the same goals of developing economically viable and satisfying practices for attorneys while increasing the availability of quality legal services for low and moderate-income clients.

The first stage of this project involved: 1) identifying the basic resources that would be available to attorneys in the network -- both in terms of organizations willing to support and mentor attorneys and reference materials that would assist attorneys in their daily work; 2) identifying practitioners who had thriving practices representing children and families in education matters who were willing to mentor and/or train other attorneys; and

3) providing training to interested attorneys. This first stage is now under way with two rounds of training on the special education process having been completed.

While continuing with the first stage of this project, we have moved into the second phase of training on handling disciplinary matters for children in general education programs. We also are beginning to explore other supports for attorneys who join the network such as an advocates’ website where an attorney could, for example, read about cases in need of attorneys, access resources materials, and gather advice from colleagues. In time, we hope to train enough attorneys to begin leveling the playing field between schools and children and their families by increasing the number of attorneys available to represent low and middle income families who otherwise will go unrepresented as they attempt to resolve some of the most important issues that will affect their childrens’ lives. At the same time, we hope to make education law a viable practice area for an increasing number of attorneys by matching families with skilled attorneys.