Legal Aid Staff Attorney
By Bruce Myint

For many poor immigrants in New York City, the American Dream is not about striking it rich but simply getting a fair shake. After welfare-reform and 9/11 in particular, attaining fair treatment from the system has been a tough job for those immigrants who can ill afford an attorney. For many, the only solution is turning to the city’s Legal Aid Society, the nation’s oldest and largest provider of legal services to the poor.

As a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s Civil Appeals and Law Reform Unit, Jennifer Baum bears witness to the hardships poor immigrants face each day.

Her clients, indigent as are all of the society’s, often lack immigration status, language skills, and legal sophistication.

“Lack of immigration status is not always a bar to benefits,” Baum explains, “but if you are poor and don’t speak English very well, you may never learn this important fact.”

“And lack of English proficiency doesn’t mean the person doesn’t like America or they would have learned English.” she adds. “Many of my clients have fled oppression, war, or natural disasters in countries such as El Salvador, Somalia, Russia, and China.”

As government agencies fall short of meeting the needs of poor people, there is a crucial need for public interest lawyers. But with its notoriously low salaries and heavy caseloads, the field of public interest is often overshadowed by the more profitable private sector.

Undaunted, Baum, who graduated from Brooklyn Law School, is driven by the emotional rewards garnered from helping people.

“There is tremendous job satisfaction in actually helping a real person, and enormous personal reward when your assistance makes such a dramatic difference to the lives of poor people, who labor under such difficult—and often humiliating—conditions to begin with,” she explains.

Baum’s concern for social justice drew her to the fields of social welfare and law. After graduating from Hunter College, she worked as a radio reporter, often covering legal news and trials. Although she had not thought about a law career during college, watching and reporting on legal affairs inspired her to become a lawyer.

Today, Baum spends most days supporting caseworkers by supplying research and lending her expertise in the area of public benefit-access for immigrants. In addition, she provides training and advice to community based organizations seeking help on behalf of their constituents.

Describing one of the most pressing issues in her work, Baum cites the legions of poor immigrants whose welfare benefits have been mistakenly denied due to convoluted welfare guidelines that bewilder both case workers and lawyers alike. Among her many other projects, she is also working to help a client collect benefits from a 9/11 fund. Such gritty accounts of everyday legal action have come to replace earlier dreams about ‘changing the world’. Baum describes, “If I can change one client’s case at a time, I am satisfied; though impact litigation and class action lawsuits are an opportunity to change laws and practices affecting large numbers of clients at once. These lawsuits are particularly rewarding for the far-reaching effects they can have on persons I’ve never met.”#

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