This year’s firm pro bono award goes to a venerable south county senior. The Curran Law Firm, located in Kent, celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, capping a long and distinguished record of community service in south King County.
Founded in 1948 by James Kelleher and James P. Curran, the firm has been known by a succession of names, reflecting mergers and the passage or arrival of partners. Over the decades, colleagues knew the firm variously as Kelleher & Curran; Curran & Ratcliffe; Curran & Curran; Curran, Kleweno, Johnson and Curran; Curran, Kleweno & Johnson; and Curran Mendoza.
But through all those years, valley residents simply called them the “Curran” firm. Honoring both founder and local custom, on January 1, 2007 it became the Curran Law Firm.
Today, the Curran Law Firm is widely recognized in south King County for its decades-long commitment to community service and pro bono representation. In addition to receiving both the 1994 and 2008 KCBA pro bono awards, Curran has received community service awards and certificates of appreciation from the Legal Action Center, the Association of Legal Administrators and the Children’s Therapy Center.
“The Curran firm also helped build our Kent legal clinics from the ground up,” says Rebecca Fogarty, program manager of KCBA’s Neighborhood Legal Clinics. “It’s often difficult recruiting volunteers in south King County, especially in family law, and today they really keep these clinics going.”
Ten Curran employees are active clinic volunteers this year, including Jane Rhodes, a firm principal, and paralegal Sandy Prehm. Rhodes and Prehm both downplay their long-term contributions to the clinics’ success, emphasizing instead the group effort and depth of commitment shown by all clinic volunteers.
“Other attorneys and assistants are just as devoted, just as faithful to the clinic’s purpose and success,” says Prehm, a volunteer since 1992 and clinic scheduler since 1994. “Many have worked with the clinics for years. It’s just an amazingly consistent crew.”
This year, Rhodes and attorneys Theresa Ahern, Chad Horner and Shana Thompson are volunteers with the Kent Family Law Clinic. John Casey, Mark Davis and David Huhs provide their services at the Kent Legal Clinic. Cindy Geray, Tammy Peters and Prehm are clinic assistant volunteers. In 2007, Carmen Bautista, Pete Curran, Brie Hopkins, Tom Stone and Diana Zottman also provided pro bono support to this public service program.
What keeps many volunteers returning year after year? Rhodes was a pro bono attorney with the Kent Legal Clinic from its opening in 1984 until 2005, when the Neighborhood Legal Clinics opened its Kent Family Law Clinic. Since then, Rhodes has served as the clinic’s overall clinic coordinator, as well as a volunteer attorney.
“It can be exhausting at the end of a long day to just pack up and go to the clinic, and the work can be emotionally draining,” she confesses. “But it can be extremely rewarding, as well. Grateful clients — and most of them are — really make it all worthwhile.”
Davis, a Curran principal and 20-year veteran at the Kent Legal Clinic, also looks back on his years of service as time well spent. “A few years back I met an older gentleman, a client at the clinic who was really down on his luck,” he remembered.
The client had no family and was homeless, but had been offered lodging in an old trailer on a friend’s wooded property. When fall came, the leaves fell and the trailer and its occupant were exposed to view. After neighbors complained to the City of Sea-Tac, the city issued an eviction notice that would leave the lodger homeless one week before Christmas.
“I agreed to help him pro bono after our meeting at the clinic,” Davis says, “and I found a couple of loopholes that bought him an extra 60 days to find another place to live. My family and I put together food and clothing and delivered it to his trailer a couple of days before Christmas. We shared a cup of coffee before I wished him a merry Christmas — one of the best I ever had.”
The KCBA Pro Bono Award is an acknowledgment of firms that widen their community’s access to legal justice, creating a lasting impact on that community’s welfare and quality of life.
“It isn’t the achievement of any one attorney at our firm that deserves special recognition,” notes Huhs, who also is president-elect and a member of the board of the South King County Bar Association. “All Curran attorneys are involved in community service activities and non-profit boards, and almost everyone volunteers regularly for the neighborhood legal clinics.
“When considered cumulatively, the amount of potentially billable time spent for the betterment of a community is significant. It is only with a firm’s understanding and support that its attorneys can make this type of impact and commitment.”
“The Curran firm attorneys are just huge players in our Kent family law and general legal clinics,” adds KCBA’s Fogarty. “When you consider Curran’s size and longevity, and the large percentage of the firm that is providing pro bono services in the Kent Valley, it’s an amazing contribution.”
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