The New York County Lawyers' Association will begin the New Year with a pair of major pro bono initiatives intended to help those plagued by consumer debt and former prison inmates struggling to start a new life in the face of bureaucratic obstacles:

• Project Restore aims to address the latter problem, in which ex-inmates of state prisons are frequently unable to obtain state licensure for trades they learned while behind bars.

• To prevent hardship from becoming tragedy, NYCLA will team up with the Feerick Center for Social Justice and Dispute Resolution at Fordham University School of Law to administer the Civil Legal Advice and Resource Office (CLARO) of Manhattan, to help debtors under the gun from commercial debt collectors whose claims in New York City Civil Court now constitute more than half the dockets in all five boroughs.

Volunteer lawyers begin CLARO training with a three-hour session on Jan. 17 at NYCLA headquarters, 14 Vesey Street. Project Restore training is scheduled to begin on Feb. 26. Both programs offer CLE credits.

The two "innovative projects," said Catherine A. Christian, the bar group's president, confirm a pledge she made earlier this year.

"When I became president, I made a commitment to expand [NYCLA's] pro bono program." said Ms. Christian, counsel for special projects at the city Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor.

Project Restore

Collin D. Bull is of the opinion, as he puts it, that "perpetual punishment of people who have paid their debt to society is a civil rights issue."

Therefore, ex-offenders who used their time in New York state prisons to learn a socially acceptable trade with which to begin life anew in the free world but who are then denied a state license to perform such work need civil rights lawyers as their advocates.

Accordingly, Mr. Bull, as head of the Civil Rights Committee of the New York County Lawyers' Association, won quick favor with his bar group to institute Project Restore, by which pro bono attorneys will be recruited to represent ex-offenders at administrative law board hearings and in Article 78 proceedings.

The project is meant to serve men and women who have done their time and earned certificates of good conduct from the New York State Department of Correctional Services, but whose trade license applications have been denied by administrative law boards for one or more reasons elaborated by Mr. Bull: criminal background in the first place, "insufficient display of remorse," or character references from dubious friends and relatives.

Arguably the worst case scenario was that of Marc La Cloche, an ex-offender who excelled as a barber trainee while in prison.

Mr. La Cloche died in October 2005. In an Article 78 proceeding in June 2006, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Louis B. York blasted as "irrational" the state's decision to deny Mr. La Cloche a barber's license after giving him 14 months of training. Justice York had to dismiss Mr. La Cloche's petition as moot.

"It seems to fly in the face of common sense that one would be denied opportunity," said Mr. Bull. "But the statutes seem to create just enough room in evaluating an applicant to permit adverse decisions."

Mr. Bull, a former prosecutor in the Queens District Attorney's Office who was attorney-in-charge of the Legal Aid Society's Harlem office from 1990 to 2002 and who is now in solo civil practice, said the "deck is stacked" against ex-offenders.

He said, too, there is "a very, very, very real difference between the parties" in post-prison state proceedings where hope is dashed for would-be solid citizens trained for such pursuits as, typically, barbering, cosmetology and pet grooming.

By "real difference," Mr. Bull means that applicants are generally poor, non-English speakers and mostly black and Latino - as opposed to others on hand: the administrative law judge, a court reporter and a lawyer for the New York State Department of State. Mr. Bull noted that the latter are, by and large, salaried and white.

The typical applicant, said Mr. Bull, some 90 percent of whom appear pro se, has the near impossible burden of "being articulate about his past in a way that is couched in the language of a legal advocate, posturing well for himself [and] giving due deference to the hearing body by convincing them of the sincerity of his having been rehabilitated."

Formal educational deficits, Mr. Bull noted, "greatly impair their ability to meet that kind of test."

Although the situation often seems counter-intuitive, it is not intractable. Mr. Bull acknowledged that the Department of State "has been warmly receptive of our proposal" to "greatly increase the presence of [applicants'] lawyers in these proceedings in order to greatly enhance the outcomes."

In addition, he said, organizations prepared to refer clients to Project Restore include the Community Service Society of New York, the Fortune Society, Interfaith Coalition of Advocates for Re-entry and Employment, and the Women's Prison Association.

Sometimes it simply takes a bit of organized persuasion, said Mr. Bull, who arranged a July disquisition at NYCLA in the run-up to creating Project Restore.

The hearing was conducted by a pair of Democratic members of the state Assembly - Jeffrion L. Aubry of Queens and Keith L.T. Wright of Manhattan. They were joined by Assemblyman Michael Benjamin, D-Bronx, and Assemblywoman Annette M. Robinson, D-Brooklyn.

"Illuminating testimony," said Mr. Bull, was heard from 17 organizations representing the religious, governmental, legal advocacy and social service communities of the state.

Some former inmates also appeared.

Eventually, the Assembly members took what they learned to state officials, who were made to understand that "the experience of imprisonment is enormously humbling for some of these big, tough guys," as Mr. Bull puts it, and that sometimes big, tough guys choke up as they try to present themselves in the best light.

CLARO

The Civil Legal Action and Resource Office was begun two years ago in Brooklyn through the New York City Bar Association when April A. Newbauer recognized a perfectly disastrous storm: skyrocketing claims against credit card customers by commercial debt collectors in Civil Court, and virtually nowhere to turn for low- and moderate-income debtors in serious need of counsel to defend themselves against frequent procedural misconduct or claim errors on the part of plaintiffs.

"Debt buyers were getting accounts for as little as five cents on the dollar, so the Civil Court was inundated," said Ms. Newbauer, attorney-in-charge of the civil practice bureau of the Legal Aid Society of Queens. "And there was no place for [consumers] to get legal advice on how to proceed."

An October study by the Urban Justice Center documented the surge in collection cases brought by debt buyers.

In 2006, the center reported, 320,000 collection cases were filed, representing 51 percent of the 618,000 cases filed that year, excluding housing and small claims cases. In 2001, by contrast, the court citywide handled 248,000 cases other than housing and small claims matters. No estimate was available as to the number of consumer credit collections suits filed in 2001.

"In the [600 random] cases we reviewed," according to the center's report, "the materials submitted in support of applications for default judgments almost always constitute inadmissable hearsay and do not meet the standard set forth in §3215(f) of the Civil Practice Law and Rules."

In 2005, Ms. Newbauer persuaded the Brooklyn Bar Association to arrange for attorneys and students from Brooklyn Law School to advise debtors hauled into Civil Court - or worse, debtors whose bank accounts were frozen by court-imposed default judgments at hearings they did not attend. The vast majority of consumer debt defendants are either unrepresented at hearings, or do not make appearances.

The Brooklyn program was replicated in January of this year in Queens, with participation by students at St. John's University School of Law.

Lois Davis, NYCLA's director of pro bono programs, said Ms. Newbauer's vision now will expand to Manhattan - with CLARO programs soon to be added in the Bronx and Staten Island.

"It's been very successful in Brooklyn and Queens," said Ms. Davis, who noted that positive word of mouth for CLARO has already attracted some 35 pro bono lawyers to sign up for the NYCLA-Fordham Law effort.

"Creditors are suing in Civil Court left and right, and the number of unrepresented litigants is rising exponentially," said Lisa E. Cleary, a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler and chairwoman of the County Lawyers Pro Bono Committee.

She added, "This is a challenge not only for low-income people. Sometimes the working poor or middle class have just as much of a challenge as very poor people."

In any case, said Ms. Cleary and other lawyers involved in the Manhattan CLARO program, no income measures will be applied to clients seeking their pro bono advice.

"What the program in Brooklyn has shown is tremendous need," said Dora Galacatos, senior counsel at Fordham Law's Feerick Center. "It's important for consumers to understand their federal and state legal protections."

She added, "There's also a need for further research and fact finding and documentation to better understand the scope and nature of the debt collection industry."

Policy change is also needed, according to both the Urban Justice Center and Justice Fern A. Fisher, administrative judge of the New York City Civil Court.

For her part, Justice Fisher said the court should require licensing information about debt buyers and collectors, as well as affidavits detailing a consumer's debt, prior to default judgments. In addition, she has asked the Administrative Board of the Courts to require additional notification to consumers in order to avoid such defaults.

Plaintiffs are not always in the wrong, noted Ms. Galacatos.

"You have to pay if you legitimately owe," said Ms. Galacatos. "If you're articulate, there are ways you can structure that debt so you can pay it in manageable chunks."

This class of debtors may also be helped by CLARO, she said, because "all sorts of bad things happen to people" to affect timely payment of their obligations.

Thomas Adcock can be reached at tadcock@alm.com.