Episode Notes
On this episode, we discuss the civil right to counsel (sometimes called “civil Gideon”) movement with John Pollock. The American Bar Association has endorsed a right to counsel whenever basic needs are threatened, and Pollock leads a national coalition seeking to bring the civil right to counsel to all US jurisdictions.
“It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about not losing everything.”
John Pollock is a Staff Attorney for the Public Justice Center and the Coordinator of the National Coalition for the Civil Right to Counsel. He works to establish the right to counsel for low-income individuals in civil cases involving basic human needs such as child custody, housing, safety, and public benefits.If today’s podcast resonates with you and you haven’t read The Small Firm Roadmap yet, get the first chapter right now for free!
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Sam Glover
Sam Glover is the founder of lawyerist.com. He is the co-author of the bestselling book The Small Firm Roadmap and original host of the weekly Lawyerist Podcast.
Aaron Street
Aaron Street is the co-founder and CEO of dashboard.lawyerist.com, the largest online community of solo and small firm lawyers. He is the co-author of the bestselling book The Small Firm Roadmap and is the co-host of the weekly Lawyerist Podcast.
Featured Guests
John Pollock
John Pollock is a staff attorney for the Public Justice Center who has served since 2009 as the coordinator of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel. His work focuses on working to establish the right to counsel for low-income individuals in civil cases involving basic human needs such as child custody, housing, and benefits. He is the author of ABA Resolution 114 (2018), supporting the right to counsel whenever physical liberty is at stake. He is the recipient of the 2018 Innovations Award from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and serves on an advisory committee for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Prior to his work at the Public Justice Center, John served as the enforcement director for the Central Alabama Fair Housing Center in Montgomery, Alabama, where he addressed systemic housing discrimination in rental, sales, lending, and insurance. John also previously served as a law fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. While there, he founded the Heirs’ Property Retention Coalition, a network of dozens of organizations across the southeastern United States working on stopping the forced sales of ancestral property within low-income African-American communities. John drafted the first version of what eventually became the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, a uniform law to reduce forced sales that has been adopted by over a dozen states. John graduated from Wesleyan University in 1994 and from Northeastern University School of Law in 2005.
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Last updated June 28th, 2022