Cynthia Rios, the February Com-munity Legal Services Volunteer of the Month, sets a record for distance traveled from her New York City work-place to the Seattle courthouse for her volunteer shifts at the Housing Justice Project. Rios’s current practice focuses on regulatory banking and compliance work as well as residential and commercial real estate. She was most recently with Sonn and Associates PC, a boutique firm in New York. Her pro bono work relates mainly to housing law.
Rios is a longtime volunteer with the Seattle Housing Justice Project (HJP). She heard about HJP in 2000 when she attended a KCBA seminar and saw a flyer about the program. HJP is a court-based pro bono project that provides legal services to low-income tenants facing eviction. She completed the required training and made her first court appearance in 2001.
Rios volunteered every month and sometimes more often at HJP until she relocated to New York City several years ago. Once she moved, she continued to volunteer at HJP throughout the year. Rios, a native Seattleite, is loyal to her roots, so volunteering here is important to her. She flies home to Seattle for vacations and on bank holidays.
When in Seattle, Rios always volunteers at HJP. She stays current on the law by reading and studying her volunteer manual on the plane and attending various CLEs on Washington housing law. This month she will volunteer for five shifts at the Seattle courthouse. For this incredible dedication, we honor her as our volunteer of the month.
Rios is a graduate of the University of Washington and a 1992 graduate of Northeastern School of Law. Giving back to the community was one of the reasons she wanted to go to law school, so Rios chose Northeastern for its focus on public interest law.
Rios’s mother is her inspiration for doing pro bono work. Her mom has always volunteered significant amounts of time to various organizations, including public libraries and no-kill animal shelters. Rios credits her mother for instilling the volunteer spirit in her.
Rios finds many aspects of pro bono work rewarding, particularly interacting one-on-one with clients. She does not have many opportunities to do so in a regulatory setting. She also likes that HJP works with other agencies to provide a holistic approach to the clients’ legal needs.
She views HJP as a familial-type setting that one does not necessarily find at other bar associations. She enjoys the cooperative spirit of the HJP volunteer attorneys and legal assistants, and each time she volunteers she learns something from the clients or her colleagues.
Rios also credits pro bono work for improving her active listening skills. She is now better equipped to identify her clients’ underlying needs. “As attorneys, we are problem solvers and more focused on the legal issues at hand [rather] than the whole client,” she said. “By listening in this way, we can prevent clients from falling through the cracks and not getting help with other problems.”
Pro bono work gives Rios an opportunity to give back to her community both in New York City and Seattle. In New York, she volunteers on residential real estate cases. She believes that each time she helps a client understand his or her legal rights, she is also helping to spread the word about legal services in the community. Through this process, more and more people who can’t afford legal representation become aware that help is available.
When not working or volunteering, Rios spends time riding horses and running. She does both amateur riding competitions and riding for fun. She recently won second place at a dressage competition. She also has completed marathons in Los Angeles, New York City and Miami and — last month — the Walt Disney World Marathon in Orlando.
HJP thanks Cynthia Rios for her hard work, dedication and compassion.
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