By Maximiliana May Murdoch
Service though pro bono can be a core element of every attorney’s practice, but for some, it’s a calling – Tommer Yoked can testify to this fact more than most. A Partner at Sidley Austin LLP and Sidley’s Houston office Pro Bono Chair, Tommer’s 15 years of experience in the legal field here in Houston have seen him work with dozens of pro bono clients though Houston Volunteer Lawyers (HVL), largely Guardianship cases for families with adult children living with disabilities. Guardianship cases require families be represented by an attorney – there are no pro se litigants in Guardianship matters, and as a result, low-income families are particularly hard-pressed to find the representation necessary to make medical and life decisions for their children. For the children living with disabilities in these families, it’s a huge difference in the quality of life when the people who are most familiar with their needs are empowered to take action on their behalf, and for the parents, it’s an enormous psychological weight off them to be able to do so. Tommer has represented parents on 16 such Guardianship cases through HVL.
A former teacher with Teach for America, even as life circumstances have demanded changes to his approach, one thing that has never wavered for Tommer is his commitment to a service mindset. In recognition of Tommer’s long service, HVL’s Pro Bono Coordinator May Murdoch sat down with Tommer and discussed the impact of working guardianship cases, how pro bono practice can augment an attorney’s primary practice, and more.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
MM: What drew you to work in the legal profession when you first started your career?
TY: It was a long time ago! I think for me it was problem solving: the ability to have a profession where you get to work on very complex issues and problems and solve them, and to help people in the process. The problem-solving aspect of a legal career leads to helping people in different realms, whether it’s for your billable clients or for pro bono: you’re ultimately doing the same thing.
MM: And what got you involved in pro bono work in the first place?
TY: A few things – I started very early in my career doing pro bono work, with the aim of continuing my service mindset. I was a teacher before law school, and there’s this service mindset inherent to that work. And two, pro bono offered really interesting cases that were outside of what I do day-to-day, so I had a broader practice. Those were the main drivers. I’m fortunate to be at a firm like Sidley that is known for its commitment to pro bono work, so I’ve had a lot of encouragement to do this work along the way, including during the very early stages of my career. So thinking about what got me into pro bono 15 years ago, I think at the time it was just a good way to continue service, and also develop my skills as a more junior lawyer, while working on a broader set of legal issues than my core practice.
MM: With your work with HVL specifically, since 2012 you’ve been a volunteer on more than 20 cases with us, and the vast majority of those have been guardianship cases. What is it about working on guardianship specifically that speaks to you?
TY: I think for me, it’s that, at a human level, it’s a very sensitive matter for the folks you’re working with. My pro bono clients, as you know, are parents seeking legal guardianship over their child in order to be able to make day-to-day decisions on the child’s behalf once the child has turned 18. I’ve also done a case where it was an adult child seeking guardianship over her elderly mother, but in all cases, it’s a very sensitive and significant family matter. I remember for my first case, I was working through the pleadings and the motions and doing it kind of mechanically. But when I got in front of the judge at the end to prove up all of the facts that support a guardianship and saw the emotion in the parents as they’re answering questions about their child, that’s when it really hit me that I was helping them navigate a very significant family milestone. There have been a lot of cases where there are tears and very strong emotions, and my clients often tell me that it took them several months or sometimes more than a year to get representation. So just seeing them through that process, and seeing how important this is, and knowing the need and the lack of representation and how long they’re waiting for such an important thing – to have the authority to make the best decisions for their adult children – you can see that it’s so critical. That’s the emotional side of it; I also think it fits well with my regular practice. The cadence of guardianships, following the process, working with the attorney ad litem – a lot of these are uncontested – often feels more collaborative. Even though there’s an attorney on the other side representing the child’s interests, you’re working together to get to a solution that works for the family.
MM: You talk about how these are often very sensitive case matters for the families and for the proposed wards of these case, what do you do to keep your skills fresh for these cases or just pro bono in general?
TY: Guardianship is actually an area of law where you’re required by state law to stay fresh, because you have to get licensed initially as a lawyer that can handle guardianships in Texas, and every two years you have to renew that license by completing a six-hour CLE to refresh yourself on all the requirements for guardianships, including changes in guardianship law. There are a lot of formal requirements for training that have been imposed, so that certification process every two years, that’s really kept me fresh. And then just making sure I am taking these cases on regularly: I try to take on at least two cases per year, so that I’m working the cases and I’m staying in touch with HVL staff in case there have been any changes or if I’m hitting any roadblocks. That kind of training is training through doing.
MM: How do you feel that pro bono work complements your normal practice or fits into the entire world of what you do as an attorney?
TY: Going back to why we do this, it’s ultimately to help people. Helping people through complicated transactions on the corporate side is a similar skill set that I use in pro bono, but just dealing with different areas of law and dynamics. In both cases, it’s identifying the goal, identifying the roadmap to get there, and then doing everything in your power to help your clients get to that goal. It’s the same mindset with pro bono work, but the fact that pro bono cases are a lot more personal creates a different dynamic that diversifies my experience as a lawyer. I have the corporate practice, with its own experience and dynamics, and then I can turn to a pro bono case and get a different experience, using very similar skills, and then stretching myself on skills that I may not use in my corporate practice. One of the things that I do on the HVL side, is I’ve noticed that the cases with Spanish-speaking clients usually stay on the waitlist much longer than English-speaking cases, so one example of how I stretch is by taking on the Spanish-speaking cases, since I don’t practice in Spanish with my corporate clients. That creates another dynamic of working in a foreign language through these cases.
MM: You mentioned earlier how, working on Guardianship cases in particular, there’s often a lot of emotions, especially for the families of the children they are trying to establish guardianship over. How do you feel like the emotionality of this work affects you, and how do you balance pro bono work with the rest of your life?
TY: Ohhh, that’s a good question! *laughs* The balance part, it is tough, because – back to why I choose guardianships – having these types of cases helps me keep as much of a balance as possible in my overall practice. But there was a period of a few years when my wife and I were new parents where I had to dial it back a bit on the number of pro bono cases I took each year. As to the emotional impact of Guardianships, I do think that it’s changed a little bit since having kids. I started working these cases before I was a father, and now I’m working these cases as a father, and the experience is definitely different – having children of my own, and now working with parents of children with disabilities and having a better understanding of their emotions. I can’t understand what they’re going through, but I have a better sense of it, knowing what it’s like to be on the parenting rollercoaster.
MM: I think that’s really salient too – the emotionality of these cases is inherent to them, and it’s kind of disingenuous to pretend that there aren’t all these other aspects involved in being an attorney who are people with needs, just like the parents of these children have extenuating circumstances and needs of their own.
TY: Yeah and that’s the thing – the stories of the clients are so inspiring, you’ve got parents who often have multiple children, one of whom has special needs, and obviously the clients that HVL has are lower income or are in financial difficulty as well, and they will move heaven and earth for their children and do whatever they need to do to provide for their families. Working several jobs, driving long distances for medical appointments, finding the right schools where their children can thrive and doing it day in and day out with patience and grace. It’s inspiring to witness as a parent and as their lawyer. At the end of the day, that’s where the emotion comes in. I’ve had cases where they end, and the parents are coming out of the courthouse crying tears of joy and appreciation and that’s very different from the rest of my practice. And they stay in touch and remain very appreciative long after the case is over. You get a different feeling of service when that’s how your cases are culminating.
MM: Absolutely! In addition to your work on Guardianship cases with HVL, you have other pro bono practices as well with Sidley. Do you want to talk a little about those?
TY: Sidley is just an incredible platform for pro bono. I’m the Pro Bono Chair for our Houston office, we have chairs in each of our offices and a global chair, and we have seven Pro Bono Counsel who, full time across the firm, do pro bono work and support our pro bono practice. Last year, over 1,600 of Sidley’s lawyers dedicated almost 170,000 hours to pro bono work. So it’s just an incredible platform to serve our communities. The firm has signature pro bono initiatives including political asylum and immigrants’ rights, constitutional rights and civil liberties, capital litigation, veterans advocacy and pro bono for the arts. We also have an Emerging Enterprises Pro Bono Program, which is a global program run out of our Geneva office where Sidley provides free legal support to small and medium-size for-profit enterprises and market-focused NGOs and non-profits that have a clear social impact in developing countries across Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Most of the Emerging Enterprises matters involve transactional work, which is a nice way to get our corporate lawyers more involved in pro bono. I’ve personally worked on several Emerging Enterprises matters, including traveling to Africa twice to represent pro bono clients during in-person negotiations, which was a further testament to Sidley’s commitment to pro bono work. In addition to our firm-wide pro bono programs, in each office, we partner with organizations in that city, like HVL, Kids In Need of Defense (KIND), Catholic Charities, Houston Lawyers for the Arts and others.
MM: And with such a broad scope to your firms’ pro bono practice, is there a pro bono case out there that you haven’t had a chance to work on yet that you’d be really interested in trying?
TY: It’s harder to find transactional-focused pro bono work, so I’m always on the lookout for opportunities to assist pro bono clients with those types of matters – contract negotiation, tax issues, non-profit formation, etc. Another area we focus on at Sidley is veteran’s advocacy, and I personally have not been as involved in that area, but I’d be interested in helping on those cases as well to serve those who served for all of us.
MM: Tommer, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me!
TY: Thank you for your time and for all that you do at HVL!
