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Metro Volunteer Lawyers
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is a department of the Denver Bar Association. MVL recruits and coordinates volunteer lawyers to perform free and low-cost legal services for poor and near-poor persons who live and work in Adams, Broomfield, Arapahoe, Denver, Elbert, Douglas, Jefferson, and Denver Counties.
There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has."
- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, 1964
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For the good of the public
Need Free Legal Assistance?
"We hope to galvanize as a profession to show this community we intend to discharge to the best of our responsibility an obligation we feel we owe." The legal profession is "a branch of the administration of justice and not a mere money-getting trade."
~Donald Giacomini
Founding Member |
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Metro Volunteer Lawyers (formerly Thursday Night Bar) was established in 1966 by a group of young Denver Bar Association lawyers: Jerry Conover, Bill DeMoulin, Garth Grissom, and Howard Rosenberg, Donald L. Giacomini, Richard Young, Bill Miller, Peter Holme, and Hardin Holmes.
They called it the "Thursday Night Bar Program," because the founding volunteer attorneys met with clients each Thursday evening at Legal Aid offices in northwest Denver or in the Five Points neighborhood. The attorneys provided what help and advice they could in person on Thursday nights, then met the next morning to discuss the clients' matters and assign themselves or other lawyers they recruited to carry on with the numerous matters that could not be completed during the Thursday night sessions.
Approximately twenty attorneys volunteered in the first year. The efforts of these original lawyer participants continued and strengthened a long tradition of volunteerism and public service by lawyers all across Colorado. TNB was renamed Metro Volunteer Lawyers in 1998, to reflect the program's growth and expansion.
MVL is now a staffed department of the Denver Bar Association. It serves poor and near-poor citizens of seven Metro Denver Counties via 1) funding and volunteer lawyers, paralegals, and other professionals supplied through the efforts of five Metro Denver local bar associations, and 2) a staff of one full-time Executive Director (attorney), a full-time Legal Services Coordinator, a full-time Family Law Court Program Coordinator (attorney), one part-time Program Assistant, and volunteers interns. MVL is the oldest continuing program of its kind in the United States.
- MVL's Governing Board
- The Metro Volunteer Lawyers Governing Board oversees MVL's operations. The Governing Board has 18 volunteer lawyer members- six from the Denver Bar Association (which employs MVL's staff and funds a majority of its operating costs) and three from each of the other four metro Denver bar associations in the counties MVL serves.
These bar associations also help fund the program and provide attorney volunteers to assist clients. The participating bar associations and their designees to our Board are as follows:
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Arapahoe County Bar Association-Andrew Goertzel, Fran Fontana, John Eckleberry
Denver Bar Association - Rich Harris (Chair), Jerremy Ramp (Vice Chair), Elsa Martinez Tenreiro, Steve Hahn, Rocco Dodson, Jon Nicholls
Douglas/Elbert County Bar Association-Ric Morgan, John Becker, Theresa "Traci" Slade
First Judicial District Bar Association- Peggy Hoyt-Hoch, Honorable Randall Arp, Chris Radeff
E-mail us to volunteer: information@denbar.org
Do NOT e-mail to this address if you need legal assistance. Call: (303)837-1313.
 
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