South Texas College of Law Houston has received a generous $50,000 grant from the Texas Bar Foundation to launch a statewide Clinic Volunteer Lawyer Network (CVLN) comprised of South Texas Law alumni attorneys.
The goals of the CVLN are to increase pro bono capacity and to serve disadvantaged Texans with unmet legal needs. Currently, many Texans are turned away because of limited resources. In fact, low-income Texans receive inadequate or no legal assistance for 92% of their civil legal problems.
At STCL Houston’s Randall O. Sorrels Legal Clinics, these statistics represent the everyday reality. Each year, approximately 1,400 qualified individuals come to the clinics seeking legal assistance in critical areas such as family law, estate planning, and domestic violence.
Despite dedicating more than 35,000 hours of support annually, however, through staff attorneys and student advocates — approximately $2 million in legal services — the clinics must reject approximately 35-40 percent of cases annually because of limited resources.
Individuals whose cases the clinics cannot accept must be referred to other organizations offering free legal aid. These organizations face the same overwhelming demand, and a referral does not guarantee an individual will receive assistance. As a result, far too many Texans must navigate the legal system alone, without the resources or guidance needed to effectively advocate for themselves.
“This lack of access to legal representation places a significant burden on the individual and on the community and also undermines the justice system as a whole,” said South Texas Law Associate Dean for Experiential Education and Professor of Law Catherine Greene Burnett. “Our vision for the Clinic Volunteer Lawyer Network is to bring free legal aid to more Texans — helping to address the growing gap between the need and the resources available to address it.”
This Texas Bar Foundation grant will provide critical start-up funding to support a part-time pro bono attorney who will build the CVLN program from the ground up by recruiting legal clinic alumni, creating program policies and workflows, coordinating volunteer trainings, implementing case referral and oversight procedures, and assessing program outcomes throughout the pilot year.
Since its inception in 1965, the Texas Bar Foundation has awarded more than $32 million in grants to law-related programs. Supported by members of the State Bar of Texas, the Texas Bar Foundation is the nation’s largest charitably funded bar foundation.
The grant-funded program will:
- Unlock a new, untapped workforce through clinic alumni specially trained in the legal areas with the highest community need across counties in Texas
- Allow the clinics to refer eligible clients directly to highly trained alumni rather than sending them to outside organizations
- Educate Texans on legal processes and raise awareness for the CVLN through community-wide outreach
- Extend reach beyond Harris County to historically underserved, less populous areas by tapping into the widespread locations of practicing alumni
The clinic’s new, part-time pro bono attorney will serve as the legal and operational backbone of the program, building on successful pro bono models set by leading law firms such as Norton Rose Fulbright.
The CVLN staff attorney will recruit and maintain relationships with a network of 20 volunteer lawyers, pulled from a highly qualified pool of more than 3,000 clinic alumni, and match cases with the appropriate volunteers. This individual will serve as a valuable legal resource, provide counsel, ensure cases are progressing, organize trainings and communications with participating attorneys and student advocates, and conduct community outreach and education on legal procedures and the CVLN.
The project will focus initially on family law, estate planning, and domestic violence — areas where the law school’s legal clinics consistently receive more requests for assistance than they can accommodate. Clients will be matched with clinically-trained alumni attorneys who have extensive experience in these practice areas, enabling them to receive high-quality legal representation that they might otherwise be unable to afford. The program also includes community legal education designed to help Texans better understand their legal rights, court procedures, and available legal resources, including the CVLN.
The alumni who will serve as volunteer lawyers have already expressed interest in continuing pro bono work and represent a uniquely qualified pool pre-selected by legal clinics leadership. These attorneys have received specialized, hands-on training through the legal clinics in areas ranging from family law to estate planning and bring established relationships with clinic faculty and staff.
They also reside and practice law in many Texas counties, from Harris to Montgomery to Galveston. Rather than requiring clinic attorneys to travel long distances for individual cases, the program will connect clients with alumni practicing in their own communities, allowing STCL Houston to help clients beyond Harris County.
“South Texas Law has a large, dedicated network of alumni attorneys who have a passion for providing pro bono services,” Burnett said. “We are grateful to the Texas Bar Foundation for supporting us in providing a structured way to coordinate these alumni attorneys to meet the legal needs of many more people across our region.”
The CVLN will create a structured pathway for attorneys to continue engaging in meaningful pro bono work throughout their careers. Many clinic alumni leave law school with a strong commitment to public service but lack an organized way to continue serving clients after graduating. The program will foster continued professional engagement, providing opportunities for attorneys to deepen their expertise in high-need practice areas while giving back to their communities.
Following the pilot year, the law school will seek additional philanthropic and institutional support to sustain and strengthen the CVLN, enabling South Texas Law to continue connecting underserved Texans with free legal representation after Texas Bar Foundation funding has concluded.
