Need legal advice? There’s a free attorney clinic happening on Jan. 20 in Greensboro

On Jan. 20, in honor or Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Greensboro Bar Association is hosting its second annual Ask-a-Lawyer day in which attorneys will be available to offer legal advice for free. The event takes place at the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce at 111 W. February One Place from 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.

To talk about the event, we caught up with attorney Jon Wall of the Higgins Benjamin Law Firm.

This is the second time you have done this event. Tell me how it got started.

Gerald Walden, the general counsel with the Fresh Market, was president of the Greensboro Bar Association last year and he floated the idea out there. And we said we would give it our best shot because it makes perfect sense.

Some people think of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday, but in fact, it’s supposed to be a day of service. And for lawyers to donate their time is a wonderful way to celebrate both Martin Luther King Jr. and to give back to the holiday.

It’s important to realize the vital role that attorneys place in the Civil Rights Movement, especially if you think about attorneys like Thurgood Marshall or even local attorneys here. So it makes perfect sense to offer something back.

How does the event work?

We’ll have 20-40 lawyers volunteering throughout the day. Last year, if you could imagine a legal issue, there’s a chance it came up. They run the gamut from people asking, ‘I got a subpoena, what do I need to do?’ to people asking about employment law.

We’ve also got family law issues. We get landlord/tenant issues or people having issues with their neighbors or home-owner associations. Then there’s a fair amount of small business questions that come up.

We usually like to spend about half an hour to an hour with each participant, but we like to keep it around half an hour. Some issues take longer than that.

Also we recommend that if there’s a document involved like a contract or a lease to bring it.

Why is the bar association hosting this event? Why is it important?

There are two aspects to that. In terms of professional responsibility, there are rules that the state bar sets forth, that we should give back services to people who don’t have them, but in a broader scale, the system doesn’t work if only one side has access to legal services.

So it’s about giving everybody a fair shot and letting them understand their legal rights. It helps make the system work, and when the system works, it all flows more smoothly.

When people actually know what their rights are, their options are there to make the right decisions.

The imbalance is one of the major issues facing the legal system right now. Lawyers can be really expensive and not all situations lend themselves to a contingency-type agreement.

At these events, it’s a lot of times pointing people in the right direction. We may not have time to solve the problem that day, but hopefully we can put you in touch with someone who can help.