Thomas Harvey has reached a point of paradox with ArchCity Defenders, the civil rights legal group he co-founded (in 2009) and directs. “If I had not co-founded ArchCity Defenders, coming out of law school right now, I couldn’t get a job or even an internship here,” he said.
ArchCity’s valiant defense of the constitutional rights of the poor has made national news many times, attracted co-counsel offers from major East Coast firms, and started to reform the municipal courts in St. Louis County – whose abuses were documented in an ArchCity white paper (August 2014), the Department of Justice report on Ferguson (March 2015) and in much investigative journalism, not to mention in ArchCity’s series of federal suits against some of the worst municipal abusers.
One of the firm’s most recent hires, former tennis star Blake Strode, came fresh from Harvard Law School on a fellowship. This past summer, ArchCity’s humble offices in Christ Church Cathedral were crowded with interns from law schools at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Washington University and the University of Missouri.
Harvey, who earned his J.D. from Saint Louis University School of Law, recently had a visiting post at Harvard Law, where some of the nation’s most desirable future lawyers asked him what they should do with their law degrees.
“It’s crazy to have them asking me,” Harvey said. “I wanted to tell them, ‘You can do anything you want.’ Most of them could have done anything they wanted before they even walked into Harvard Law.”
Harvey was surprised to discover that a sizable number of our nation’s brightest law students would like to do what he is doing, fighting for the poor, rather than banking hours at a large corporate firm. At Harvard Law, he was shocked to find, there is even a support group for students who start to doubt themselves as they fend off corporate recruiters and search for jobs with a more pure social mission, but far less pay.
In fact, those more noble but lesser-paying jobs are harder to find. As Harvey and his co-founders Michael-John Voss and John McAnnar know well, there is not much money in fighting for the poor. ArchCity keeps the lights on through grants (because of their advocacy for the homeless, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is a major funder), legal fees from federal settlements (in a September 2015 settlement with the City of Jennings, ArchCity split $1.1 million with two co-counsel firms) and client fees.
The need, however, far outweighs the small firm’s capacity, especially since the Missouri Supreme Court continues to flinch from thoroughgoing reform of St. Louis County municipal courts. That’s even after Chief Justice Patricia Breckenridge was nearly driven to drink, by her own admission, after visiting a few municipal courts in the county; in an address to a joint meeting of the Missouri Bar and Judicial Conference on September 22, she joked it’s a good thing she turns to chocolate, not alcohol, in moments of despair.
But how do you pay lawyers to do all of the difficult work that needs to be done to protect and defend the poor in the St. Louis metropolitan area? Some of the world’s most brilliant interns can come to St. Louis to work, more or less pro bono, over the summer. But what if they want to come back, like Blake Strode did from Harvard Law, and work for ArchCity Defenders? How will they be paid?
Harvey has decided to find the money to pay them, with an eye toward diversifying the firm as well. He also hopes to groom the next generation of leadership, one that does not look like the three co-founders, who are all white men (Voss remains at ArchCity in a leadership position, but McAnnar has since moved on). Harvey was inspired by his brilliant, diverse corps of summer interns, several of whom would come back to work for the firm – if there was budget to pay them.
So now Harvey has added to his duties a fundraising component: approaching law firms and foundations for money to help him grow and diversify his staff, to help ArchCity Defenders protect and defend the poor in the St. Louis metropolitan area.
For more information or to help fund fellowships at ArchCity Defenders, call 314-361-8834 or email rgorley@archcitydefenders.org.
