The Clinic is thankful for our partnership with both attorney volunteers and general volunteers. Today we interview Amy Koons, a volunteer at the Clinic.

A Valentine’s Day greeting from Community Engagement Manager Lydia Bronner

In 2009, Richard VanRheenen felt a moral tugging within himself. “I decided that I needed to be more intentional about pro bono legal work,” he says, “which I had not really given much attention to before.” Richard spent his days representing business and industry on environmental aspects of real estate transactions, litigation, and regulatory matters. This type of litigation includes lawsuits over who will pay how much of an environmental cleanup. He always knew this was the kind of legal work he wanted to practice. “I was drawn to the combination of law and science,” he tells me.

“It has been my experience that the Internal Revenue Code is extremely complex and not everyone can afford counsel when they have an issue,” he says. He began looking at alternatives for those who could not afford their own counsel and learned about the history of Low Income Taxpayer Clinics (LITC) through the IRS website. Dave was intrigued. He immediately searched for the nearest LITC, which just happened to be part of Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic.

Long before he volunteered with Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic, Jerry Kelly had a relationship with Exodus Refugee, even serving on their Board for a period of seven years. After stepping down from the Board, he continued to serve as a regular volunteer in their offices. “In doing that, I got exposed to some of the immigration services that Exodus provides, like green card applications.” Soon, through this work, Jerry was introduced to the Legal Clinic.