In 2008, Marcou and two other women founded the D.C. Volunteer Lawyers Project to provide free legal services to low-income people in family law cases. Why did you three start it? We were all mothers who had taken time off from the practice of law to raise our children. We started practicing pro bono, mainly taking adoption cases and working as guardian ad litems (which is taking the best interest of a child in a custody or neglect case). We all found it was really hard practicing pro bono law if you weren’t affiliated with a law firm, the main reason being because you don’t have malpractice insurance.
What happened? Four years later we have, I believe, over 450 lawyers on our listserv. We’ve taken hundreds of cases, I believe over 400 cases. Last year we did over 9,000 hours of pro bono volunteer hours.
Are many of the people who volunteer, similar to you and the other co-founders, people who took time off to raise kids? We started out thinking out that was going to be our main volunteer base. It was at first. But now we’ve really expanded out because of the economy. … A lot of lawyers just out of law school weren’t able to find jobs. … The third area which is growing is government lawyers because they don’t get malpractice insurance because you can’t sue the government.
How much time do people devote to this? I’d say 30 hours to 800 hours depending on their interest and time commitment.
In all the cases you’ve worked on, what’s been the most meaningful? I just got the verdict a week ago. It involved a woman who was a victim of domestic violence. … Our client got physical and legal custody of the child and he got no visitation. Thank God. I just really feel like we saved [the child’s] life. I almost never recommend no visitation, but this guy was really scary. – Kytja Weir
— Kytja Weir
