Together with The Office of the Family Law Facilitator, AmericCorp attorneys, and law school students, SHARP recently helped the rural public in Willows and Oroville understand and fill out their legal paperwork.
"There is a lot information that I was unaware of, and I didn't know how to go about understanding it," said one customer, Steve Fox. "This is really important to be me because I have been caring for my grandchild for years and the SHARP program is helping me be able to speak up on my grandchild's behalf."
"We would have never known what to do," continued Fox. "We have always had the responsibility of raising our grandchild. It has fallen on us as grandparents. So, we used this service to help us make it all legally binding. We thought it would entail a huge legal battle, but we were pleased to find out that there is someplace for us to go to get help. This workshop has definitely helped us simplify the process. Without this we would be all stressed out. We're grateful for SHARP."
Yet while much of the public benefits from SHARP, people working for SHARP benefit, as well, by gaining much needed experience.
"I realize that this is not only a great law learning opportunity, but you also get the chance to work with people who really need and appreciate the help. I appreciate the reciprocity," said Mazarin Vakharia, one of the students who assisted the SHARP team. "The thing that I want to emphasize most is that we're not just helping the people, they're also helping us to learn the law."
Frank-Meltzer and Friscia believe that urban law school students need to be exposed to rural legal services and wanted to "inspire them to provide pro bono work once they became lawyers," says the same article. "We're happy to bring the students together to help out because it not only helps the people seeking the help, it also helps the students," said Friscia. "In this way, they realize there is a great need outside of the cities."