Volunteer Spotlight: Debra L. Raskin

Debra L. Raskin, Partner Emerita at Vladeck, Raskin & Clark, volunteers with the Federal Pro Se Legal Assistance Project for the Eastern District of New York and with the Immigrant Justice Project at the CBJC. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, she has taught at law programs at Columbia University and Fordham. Raskin has also written on employment law matters for groups such as the New York State Bar Association and the Practicing Law Institute. Her passion for increasing access to justice underscores all of her work. Read on to learn more about her journey in legal services and commitment to pro bono work.

How did you get started volunteering with us? I’ve been an employee side employment lawyer for 8,000,000 years – or it feels that way anyway. I have a long relationship with the City Bar and the Justice Center, having been the president of the City Bar for a two-year stretch. I supported the Justice Center through work in the City Bar, but I didn’t volunteer until I began retiring and had more time. Now, I work with the Eastern District Pro Se project and am working with IJP on an immigration issue. So, if I had a color, I’d say that I bleed City Bar blue.

What inspires you or motivates you about doing Pro Bono work? Two things, I guess. One generally and one specifically. I started out practicing in civil legal services in Chicago, and we’re all on the plaintiff side at my firm. I worked in legal services in Chicago in a Mexican American immigrant community. That work history motivated me. More specifically, I volunteer on two separate projects at the Justice Center. One is the Eastern District Pro Se project, which has a lot of employment-related work. That helps me revive and keep up some of my employment law knowledge. As to my work with the Immigrant Justice Project, I thought it would be interesting to do something in another area of law, to go learn something completely new and be at sea. So, I decided to start working on that project as well.

What has been your favorite or proudest moment as a volunteer, or a moment that has particularly stood out to you? It’s really hard to say. Some of it is just a different world. Again, some of the cases in the Eastern District feel very familiar to me. But, the matter I’m handling on an immigration basis involves family court in the Bronx. I wouldn’t know family court if it fell on me. So, in terms of rewarding, I think it’s seeing the old stuff I knew still being useful, while being able to learn something completely new in completely different venues.

Why do you find this work to be important in our current world? People in poverty do not have access to courts. The legal system is extraordinarily complicated and difficult – we spend three years in law school learning, and then you realize you don’t know anything. Then, you spend 40 years practicing and slowly gaining more knowledge. For a Pro Se litigant, or an immigrant who doesn’t speak English, how can they come close to that? This work helps them find justice.

How has doing this work affected you and/or your legal practice? Some of it is raising my consciousness of how class issues affect legal issues. Even in my firm, many of the folks we work with are not in good economic straits. In pro bono work, there’s often even more of a class gap. I’ve become acutely aware of those differences, and how they affect legal practice. One of the most striking reminders for me is how chaotic people’s lives can be when they have limited resources and income. What do you do when you don’t have an extra dime for childcare? When you don’t have a lot of choice about when clinic doctors’ appointments will be scheduled? There are levels of disorganization that can be avoided at times if you’re in a different economic bracket and those differences can have a significant impact on legal services. That awareness has affected me.

What would you tell someone who hasn’t volunteered with CBJC but is thinking about starting? I would tell them that they will learn a ton. Legally, they will learn things to bring to their bread-and-butter practice, but they will also learn about the country and city we live in and how things work. That knowledge will feed into their bigger understanding of the world. It’s an up close and personal look at our society that is enlightening – again, about class and political issues that may be unfamiliar. In particular, I’d recommend this work to older retired or semi-retired lawyers. It’s a shame to let all that experience go to waste, and you can still learn so much.

What song do you currently have on repeat? How about the Triumphal March from Aida? (a) Because I love opera, and (b) because we’re trying to be triumphant for our clients. It’s my ringtone.

Interested in volunteering? Visit our “Do Pro Bono” page for more information.