Safe and Stable Families volunteer Farley Ezekiel explains why representing survivors of domestic violence in court is personal to her. 

When it is time to stand with a nonprofit friend who needs help from the breadth of your law firm, how do you build a team that will respond with previously unknown generosity and excitement?

My mom explained that Jennifer had a habit in the following years of calling her when she got scared.
When Jennifer called that day and I answered, it had been nearly 20 years since she and my mother had first met. Over these years, Jennifer kept my mom’s home phone number and knew that she could call it when she was frightened or needed an answer.

AVLF is one of those rare entities that not only sounds too good to be true, but truly is extraordinary in every way — from their incredible staff, to their altruistic mission, to the actual impact that they have on Atlanta’s most impoverished residents.

Funding from the CFGA Spark Opportunity Giving Circle allows us to deepen our impact, continue to build trust, and sustain our programs in the Thomasville Heights Community.

I add the original victim’s and batterer’s child or children. The batterer literally pounds cruel lessons home. The children learn them young, filing them in the backs of minds, to surface later. An impulse to beat or to let a batterer attack can lie in wait, until a threat, tantrum or argument triggers it.

I am a guardian ad litem because I love having a positive impact on families. But I take cases through AVLF because they provide the support I need to be successful in confronting challenging issues and to develop my skills. That’s why I will continue to take pro bono cases through AVLF—and I encourage others to, as well.

We already miss Liz terribly – she was absolutely one-of-a-kind. The kind the legal community, and the larger community, needed more of, the kind of lawyer who made equal access to justice more than just a catch-phrase, and the kind of person that caused Judge Jane Barwick to write this about what her friend Liz Whipple taught her: “That one person, one curly-headed person, can make all others better. And heartbroken.“

Project CEO is a presentation that allows students to show what they have learned from their companies. At AVLF, I have learned the value of client service, giving back to the community by helping the less fortunate, and the importance of paying attention to detail.

One Saturday morning at AVLF I showed up bleary-eyed, half thinking about the Saturday morning activities I was giving up. And then I met Ms. Danielson.

More often than I wish were true, people think of “pro bono legal services” as simply giving a poor person a free lawyer. But pro bono publico (usually shortened to pro bono) does not mean “free,” it means “for the public good.”

Little did I know when I began volunteering with the AVLF Saturday Lawyer Program seven years ago that AVLF would become such a meaningful part of my life. (Written by guest blogger and AVLF volunteer attorney Raj Shah.)