Legal Aid Makes History

Gregg Lombardi, Executive Director

Judith Esrig, an attorney in Kansas City, has researched and drafted a 50 page history of Legal Aid of Western Missouri. Ms Esrig’s work captures many proud moments in our history that our staff and supporters will find enlightening. (An excerpt from the history is below.)

We want to collect as many great Legal Aid stories as we can. If you know of anyone we should be talking with to get good and important stories about Legal Aid’s history, please let Shelly Wakeman know. You can reach her at swakeman@lawmo.org. Similarly, if you have pictures or other good Legal Aid memorabilia that you would be willing to let us use for the history, we would be much obliged.

Our hope is that the history will be completed and ready for distribution some time next year.

Excerpt from Judith Esrig’s History of Legal Aid of Western Missouri

“Jack Rabbit” Courts

[When Legal Aid was initially founded in 1910, there were] especially egregious abuses in the Justice of the Peace court system. Creditors garnished the wages of employees of the forty railroads that entered the city. No matter where the employees lived, service of process was made in Kansas City. Workers could not travel back to Kansas City to defend these actions; the result was default judgments in favor of creditors.

In 1910, the Legal Aid Bureau, established by city leaders and Kansas City attorneys, investigated the situation, prompting a change in the Missouri law that governed Justice of the Peace courts – called “Jack Rabbit” courts” by critics. The Bureau, the first publicly funded legal aid facility in the nation, was formed because attorneys and the city’s Public Welfare Board realized that many men and women needed legal assistance, but could not afford to pay for it. Frank P. Walsh convinced six other Kansas City lawyers, James P. Aylward, Edward J. Flemings, Frank E. Parker, S.A. Dew, Elias Grenman, and John B. Gage to spend one day a week, two hours a day, working in the Bureau’s office, which was located at sixth and Walnut Streets. Along with wage garnishment, the Bureau handled threatened evictions, collection of wages, and recovery of property.