By Erik Unger & Eric Kleiman

So many different things happen in the course of one day at local legal aid office that EJM decided to spend the better part of two with Elizabeth Moulton of Colorado Legal Services to capture the full scope of what legal services lawyers actually do.

Clients to help. Families to heal. Meetings to hold. Deadlines to keep. Volunteers to train. Partners to cultivate. Judges to persuade. And, time permitting, lunch to (quickly) eat. 

So many different things happen in the course of one day at a local legal aid office that Equal Justice Magazine decided to spend the better part of two with Managing Attorney Elizabeth Moulton of the Boulder County office of Colorado Legal Services to capture the full scope of what legal aid lawyers actually do.

Boulder, Colorado is breathtaking in the winter: well-tended farmland and clean suburban sprawl set against the backdrop of the mighty Rockies. Snowcapped mountains, granola, and progressive hearts abound. Boulder County—all 753 miles of it—became part of the United States during the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. At last count, this mostly upper-middle class enclave showed a median household income of $55,861, yet there is another side to Boulder that you have to look closer to see.

Moulton sees it every day: 26,818 of the almost 300,000 residents of Boulder live in poverty. For purposes of eligibility for the help she provides, the government defines “poor” as an individual making $11,225 or less. The beauty of this place hides the suffering, but only if you are so comfortable as not to look.

Each weekday morning, Moulton descends from her hilltop home in Nederland, Colo., (population: 1,294) perched 3,000 feet above the city of Boulder and begins her 35-minute drive to work, starting down steep Caribou Road. The stacks of paper are neatly piled from the day before when she strides briskly into her simple third-floor office in a four-story, brown-pebble building just off a busy commercial strip on the eastern perimeter of Boulder. 

When she arrives, Moulton is greeted by one of her colleagues in this three-person field office of Colorado Legal Services, the state’s lone federally funded legal aid program. It’s Mary Jaramillo (bottom left), the secretary and unshakable foot soldier. She has been the voice and face of legal services in Boulder for 26 years; her bilingual skills are simply essential.

It’s Thursday, January 9, 2003. Before the day is over, Moulton will hold a staff meeting, conduct in-service training for volunteers, prepare for a Friday hearing, drive around in her grungy Subaru Outback, visit the local Bar director, make a home visit to an 82-year-old client on Medicaid, host a pro se clinic and, oh yeah, squeeze in lunch at 3:28.

There’s more on Friday. An 8:30 a.m. family-court hearing precedes a meeting of the collective conscience of the local intelligensia—Colorado law school’s Legal Aid & Defender Program. Most everyone pitches in to provide access to justice in this town; the law students are no exception. The clinic works closely with the Boulder County office, and Moulton makes for a mighty fine liaison.

“Since I’ve been a little girl, it has always been my goal to work in a public-interest career,” Moulton says. “l would never do private practice. I would never bill people. This is where my heart is. Some of the best people l’ve met in my life have been my clients.”

Moulton’s right hand is named Sue Parenteau (Bottom middle). She is the tireless pro bono coordinator who “pretty much runs the office,” Moulton says. Parenteau has been at this for 21 years. She has assembled an impressive panel of 350 local attorneys to accept low-fee cases. Without them, you can forget about “civil justice for all” in Boulder. 

In 2002, Parenteau farmed out 542 cases to private lawyers. Meanwhile, lay volunteers like Chuck Grant and Jenny Slade (bottom far right) also pitch in to help moms in distress and senior citizens struggling to subsist. While it’s not an official statistic, Parenteau confides, “At least 50 percent of our volunteers are working on family law issues and restraining orders.” For women and kids living under the specter of violence, seeing the judge can bring another wave of dread. Every Friday morning, the local family court holds emergency hearings, so Parenteau says, “I call my attorneys Thursday, apologetically, and say, ‘But what are you doing tomorrow morning?’ Some tell me they just keep their Friday mornings open because they know I may call.” Of her boss, Parenteau says, “Liz has so much energy, but there’s only so much she can do as one lawyer.”