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| Marcia Walsh |
The War on Poverty, which had begun under President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, continued into 1973. The programs involved in fighting this war were coordinated by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the OEO, and it was this federal agency that established the guidelines for and awarded federal funds to local legal services groups. In 1973, President Nixon decided that the OEO ought to be terminated, and with it the Legal Services Corporation. He appointed Howard Phillips to head the OEO and he directed him to dismantle the entire OEO.
During 1973 and every year for the next several, Legal Aid’s continued existence seemed to me never to be a sure thing. We had to scramble so hard for funds from whatever source we could find. It wasn’t that our legal services weren’t needed by the Kansas City community. It was that Legal Aid might not have enough money to pay the bills. I think my memory on this is accurate,
that at one point we all voted to take pay cuts rather than to lay off any Legal Aid employees.
In 1973, Legal Aid had a north office, a south office, a juvenile office and a central office in Kansas City. I worked in the central office, on the second floor of a building at the corner of 11th and Oak Streets. I remember that Effie Day was already working at Legal Aid, I think in the north office, when I started. [For months there was a pink notice attached to the door leading from the street to the stairs up to our offices, telling us—and our clients—that the building had been condemned by the City and that no one should enter it under threat of arrest.]
Executive Director Lloyd Silverman had hired me to work in the Municipal Court Defense Unit. Others in this Unit when I started were Terry Lechner, Mike Dailey, Frank Zetelski and Tom Notestine. Our managing attorney was Bill Dittmeier and you could not have asked for a better boss.
There were no female prosecutors or judges and I was the first “woman attorney” to appear in Municipal Court on a daily basis and to represent defendants. [I use the phrase “woman attorney” even though I don’t like it. I agree with Gloria Steinem, who said: “Whoever has power takes over the noun—and the norm—while the less powerful get an adjective.”]
In fact, until December, 1973, there was really no municipal courthouse. Instead, Court met in two locations: at the top floor of the police station, where a large elevator opened right into the courtroom. There the “custody defendants,” those people held overnight in custody for inability to post bond, were seated—and sometimes sleeping and snoring—in the open-door elevator, waiting for us to interview them and for the judge to call their cases. The other location was the second floor of the Continental Trailways bus station at 11th and McGee.
It was exciting and interesting work, and fast-paced. We were in court every morning, representing defendants in trials and pleas and probation revocation hearings. We represented clients who had come into our office and about whose cases we knew something in advance of the trial, and we represented defendants whom we met and interviewed for the first time in court that morning.
There were six Legal Aid attorneys and seven active courtrooms. Every judge expected us to be in his courtroom when any case was called on which Legal Aid had furnished an entry of appearance and also when that particular judge wanted to appoint a Legal Aid attorney to represent a defendant on the spot. We were kept running. And if one of us was sick, or was signed out for a vacation day or week, our Unit called on attorneys from other Legal Aid offices for help. They always came through for us.
When we returned from morning court, we interviewed clients. Four of us shared one office, about 12 feet by 12 feet. Two big metal desks were crammed back to back into this space. We could interview only one client at a time in that office. The three attorneys not involved in the interview were either still in court or waited elsewhere on the premises so that our client’s privacy could be respected.
In the afternoon, we typically had fewer clients scheduled in court and there were typically fewer court appointments, so only two of us went to court. The others interviewed clients and did any required research.
That was Monday through Thursday. Fridays were different. Friday mornings were usually light dockets in court. Two of us did not go to Municipal Court but instead went across the street to Circuit Court to handle the de novo appeals from Municipal Court. Municipal Court had no Friday afternoon docket and we did not interview clients on Friday afternoon. I remember taking long lunches at the Vineyard or at Bryant’s or some other restaurant on Fridays, and talking about cases, and discussing possible defenses and arguing search and seizure issues. On Friday afternoons, we did research, wrote briefs and motions and prepared our cases for the upcoming week.
I remained at Legal Aid for 10 years, in the Municipal Court Unit for about five years, and then at the juvenile unit, the consumer unit, and the litigation unit. I was then elected by the City Council and the Mayor to be a judge in Municipal Court, becoming the first full-time judge who happened to be a woman at any judicial level in Kansas City. The day I was appointed, a Legal Aid attorney/friend said she thought it was maybe more significant that the Council had chosen a Legal Aid attorney for the judicial position than that they had chosen a woman.
[In celebration of Legal Aid of Western Missouri's 50th anniversary, we will feature guest bloggers. If you have memories of Legal Aid you would like to share in a guest post, please contact Karen Cutliff - kcutliff@lawmo.org.)
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