Legal Services Corporation President Ron Flagg introduces Grisham’s speech, which was recorded at a recent LSC forum on access to justice.
Grisham serves on LSC’s Leaders Council, which works to raise public awareness of the current crisis in civil justice. He is also a prominent advocate for criminal justice reform, frequently speaking publicly about wrongful conviction and serving on the board of directors for both the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries.
“I have a long affinity with legal aid,” Grisham said. “It goes back to when I finished law school at Ole Miss some 42 years ago. I inadvertently became a legal aid lawyer.”
Grisham was struggling to build up clientele in his own law firm after law school when a woman in tears found his office and asked for his help in court that day. She was going to be evicted from her mobile home, and she told Grisham about the years of effort she put in to keeping up on, only to have it all be taken away. He went with her to court and ended up representing several of her neighbors in the trailer park. He got all of their evictions dismissed and became the community’s go-to pro bono attorney.
“That case proved to me the power of a license to practice law when it’s used to help people,” said Grisham. “It’s astonishing what happens when you’re a lawyer and you take the case of a person who cannot afford to pay you, or somebody who’s not supposed to have a lawyer, and you pick up the phone or you show up in court with them and everything changes – the whole game changes – suddenly they have respect [and] they get a fair hearing.”
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Crystal Graham
