|
|
By Kathy R. Pharr
In the winter of 1976, fresh out of Yale with a creative writing degree in hand, Alex Scherr set  out on a hike across the United States, a journey that would change his life. “It seemed like a wise thing for a poet to do,” he reflects, and even though he only made it from Los Angeles to Santa Fe, he stumbled upon a path to future happiness.
“I lived in Santa Fe for about three years, working in bookstores, writing poetry and doing some accounting,” says Scherr. “It became clear that this was not going to sustain me or challenge me, so I developed a completely uninformed and ignorant view that I should go to law school. I got into the University of Michigan and went, without ever having stepped foot in a lawyer’s office or talked with a lawyer.”
Scherr practiced tax law in a small Vermont town for a while. He liked the work but, once again, felt unfulfilled. When a friend encouraged him to apply for a position in general poverty practice at Vermont Legal Aid, he jumped at the opportunity.
“This was a major change--it was a 60 percent cut in my salary, but I wasn’t married then and was living on a shoestring anyway, so it was easy to do,” says Scherr. “It seemed like an adventure.”
And it was. For 12 years, Scherr served as an advocate for people who couldn’t afford an attorney, working to provide shelter, food, public benefits and safety from domestic violence. He also represented mentally ill people who were being committed to the state hospital and developed parallel careers as a teacher and mediator.
“I began to get a feel for what it meant to give someone service that really meant something to them,” says Scherr, “and I discovered a very selfish pleasure in being needed.”
In 1996, he transferred his collective skills to the University of Georgia, where he was hired as an assistant professor and founding director of the School of Law’s new Civil Clinic Program. The law school’s criminal clinics--the Legal Aid and Defender Clinic and the Prosecutorial Clinic--are well established.
“All the programs that we offer are either at or over the maximum,” says Scherr. “I think it’s safe to say the desire for experiential learning among the student body is outstripping the programs we have available.”
Scherr oversees the Civil Externship Program, the Family Violence Clinic and the Public Interest Practicum, all of which offer law students practical training, classroom study and hands-on service to the community. For example, externs work in a variety of assignments--with judges, government agencies like the SEC and EPA, and non-profits such as the ACLU and Boggs Rural Life. Students in the Family Violence Clinic help obtain protective orders for victims of abuse. Through the Public Interest Practicum, a seminar course established in 1992, students give legal information and social agency referrals to clients at local homeless shelters, soup kitchens and housing projects; educate school children about constitutional rights and the court system; and collaborate with UGA’s School of Social Work to provide outreach to grandparents who are rearing their grandchildren.
Scherr’s clinical teaching methodology--one of the focuses of his scholarship--guides students on their own soul-searching journeys, challenging them to explore their personal motivation to become attorneys and their response to the societal needs around them.
“The message is: learn from experience, learn how to learn from experience no matter where you are or what you’re doing; be thoughtful in your experience as an attorney, no matter what path you choose to take.”
|
