HOUSTON BAR FOUNDATION

Pitch in, Help Out

By WILLIAM K. KROGER

At best, you have one life and 40 years. You get your degree at 25, and go on senior status at 65. What are you going to make of your time?
I have been practicing 16 years. I love my paying clients. They enable me to provide for my family. I am very appreciative when I am asked to represent them. But the clients who have stuck strongest in my mind over the years, the ones I tell my kids about at night, are the ones who could not afford to pay a fee: the teenage mother who needed help completing high school and getting admitted into college; the mother whose husband threatened to blow up their home (with her family in it) if she divorced him; the 16-year-old girl who wanted to go to mortuary school because funeral homes were the only successful business in her neighborhood; the Harris County inmate who was beaten in jail by a deputy for mouthing off; the 17-year-old student abandoned by her parents who needed a place to live; the 19-year- old girl whose first ride in an elevator was on her first day at work; the mother of two in the Heights who was sued over custody of her kids because of a minor drug offense; the murderer in Huntsville who was sentenced to death based in part on perjured testimony; and the mother of three who could not divorce her violent husband without risking her legal right as a legal alien to remain in this country.
My experiences in representing these and other people have profoundly shaped my life, as well as my practice. I am a more understanding person. Having been exposed to a wide variety of legal and social problems, I have better judgment on how to advise clients on other types of disputes. I have greater confidence in handling new kinds of legal matters. I am more thoughtful and less judgmental. I have a greater understanding of the problems in our society.
I also am more connected to our community. I know where the major prisons in this region are located, and what they are like. I have prepped a client behind prison chicken wire. I have been in all of the civil and family courts. I know most of the various agencies that provide social services in the city. I know by name most of the “at risk” high schools in Houston and have been in about half of them. I have become friends with most of the executive directors of legal aid organizations in this region. In short, I have learned my way around this city.
You will receive so many comparable benefits from volunteering your services as a lawyer to those who need them. Please call the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program at (713) 228-0735 to take a case. If you do, your riches are many. If you don’t, you will never reach your full potential as a lawyer. And your kids and grandkids will not be interested in stories about your 12(b)(6) motions.

William K. Kroger is a partner in the law firm of Baker Botts L.L.P. He is the 2005 chair of the Houston Bar Foundation.

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