who is my client? client-centered lawyering with … · clients—my individual corporate client,...

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WHO IS MY CLIENT? CLIENT-CENTEREDLAWYERING WITH MULTIPLE CLIENTS

JULIE D. LAWTON*

Many lawyers face the challenge of adhering to the idealisticprinciples of objective client-centered lawyering. This Article exam-ines the additional conflict of client-centered lawyering when the at-torney seeks to balance not only the attorney’s ethical obligations tothe attorney’s individual corporate client, but also the attorney’s com-peting personal obligations to a cause and a group (such as membersof a particular race). When an attorney’s sense of duty to a cause orthe attorney’s race rises to the level where the advocacy for thosegroups becomes, in essence, that attorney’s cause client and race cli-ent, how does the attorney balance these obligations? The attorney, atthat point, has an individual corporate client, a cause client, and arace client. This Article examines how a lawyer’s sense of duties tothese non-legal clients impacts the attorney’s implementation of theutopic ideals of client-centered lawyering. How does an attorney re-main objective in counseling the individual corporate client whiletorn by the duties to the cause client and race client? How does anattorney prevent the pursuit of these goals from influencing the choiceof entities to accept as clients? Is it possible to provide client-centeredobjective advice to clients when an attorney has these competing per-sonal duties that threaten to unduly influence the attorney’s actions?

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 R

I. CLIENT-CENTERED LAWYERING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 R

II. CHALLENGES OF CLIENT-CENTERED LAWYERING . . . . . . . 151 R

III. CLIENT-CENTERED LAWYERING WITH MULTIPLE

CLIENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 R

A. Individual Corporation as My Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 R

1. Lawyering to a Corporation with ManyVoices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 R

B. Affordable Homeownership as My Cause Client . . . . 162 R

1. What is Cause Lawyering? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 R

* Julie D. Lawton is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Hous-ing and Community Development Legal Clinic at DePaul University College of Law. Forcomments, thanks to attendees at the Work in Progress session at the 2014 Association ofAmerican Law Schools Conference on Clinical Legal Education. For outstanding researchassistance, including editing, debating, and much needed humor, thank you to J. AllenThomas. Many thanks to Amanda Roenius for her excellent research assistance and edit-ing in helping to finalize the article. As always, for introducing me to this amazing world inwhich I happily and humbly labor, thanks to my friend and mentor, Michael Diamond.

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146 CLINICAL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 22:145

2. Lawyering for a Cause Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 R

C. The African-American Community as My RaceClient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 R

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 R

INTRODUCTION

For many years, I was a community lawyer helping low- and mod-erate-income tenant groups purchase their apartment buildings whenthe landlords listed those buildings for sale.1 A rather unusual law inWashington, D.C. requires landlords of residential buildings to offerthe residents of those buildings the opportunity to purchase the apart-ment buildings in which the residents reside.2 I represented not theindividual tenants in these properties, but the corporate tenants as-sociations formed to acquire the properties on behalf of the individualtenants. My practice involved working to promote and preserve af-fordable homeownership for these primarily low- and moderate-in-come African-Americans residents. In my work, I sought to empowermy corporate tenants association clients and help the individual te-nants obtain financial stability and self-sufficiency by becoming home-owners. As a lawyer governed by a professional code of ethics, I havea professional obligation to my clients. However, because of my ar-dent belief in the opportunities provided by homeownership and mypersonal sense of obligation to my African-American community, Ialso have a deep sense of obligation and personal duty to these causesas well. I remain a fervent advocate for affordable homeownership—so much so that affordable homeownership became the legal policycause for which I advocate. Because I feel a personal duty to empowermembers of my race as individuals and as a group, the cause of sup-porting and protecting members of my racial community as individu-als and as a collective became my race client. I have, in essence, 3clients—my individual corporate client, my cause client & my race cli-ent. Often, my ethical obligation to my individual corporate client &my personal duty to my two non-legal clients cloud my objectivity asan attorney.

I honor my ethical obligations to my individual corporate clientsand I want them to accomplish their goals. I want to promote and

1 See generally Julie D. Lawton, Tenant Purchase as a Means of Creating and Preserv-ing Affordable Homeownership, 20 GEO. J. ON POVERTY L. & POL’Y 55, 55–57 (2012)(detailing the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act—a Washington D.C. statute).

2 D.C. CODE §§ 42-3404.02 (2012) (“Before an owner of a housing accommodationmay sell the accommodation, or issue a notice of intent to recover possession, or notice tovacate, for purposes of demolition or discontinuance of housing use, the owner shall givethe tenant an opportunity to purchase the accommodation at a price and terms which re-present a bona fide offer of sale.”).


Fall 2015] Client-Centered Lawyering with Multiple Clients 147

preserve affordable homeownership for low- and moderate-incomeAfrican-Americans. I want to support the financial stability and self-sufficiency of members of my fellow African-American community. Istruggle with how these different goals impact the counseling I pro-vide to my clients and whether the accomplishment of one goal under-mines the accomplishment of another. How do I accomplish thesegoals while being an objective attorney to my clients? How do I notallow the pursuit of these goals to influence how I counsel my clientsor impact the choice of entities I choose to accept as clients? Is itpossible to provide objective advice to my clients when I have thesecompeting personal duties that threaten to unduly influence mychoices as an attorney?

This Article examines this conflict for an attorney faced with obli-gations to an individual client, a cause, and a group (such as membersof a particular race). Part I discusses client-centered lawyering as amethod of providing objective counsel to the individual corporate cli-ent. Part II includes an analysis of the challenges of client-centeredlawyering. Part II also evaluates the struggle of being a client-centeredattorney while lawyering to these three clients simultaneously. Part IIIdetails the three “clients” (1) the individual corporate client, (2) thecause client, and (3) the race client and the varied pressures they placeon client-centered lawyering.

I. CLIENT-CENTERED LAWYERING

When considering how to best serve my clients, I am guided bythe concept of client-centered lawyering. Client-centered lawyering isbased on the idea that clients should be the primary decision-maker indetermining the direction of their legal case or transaction, whereasattorneys should maintain the appearance of neutrality and providelegal counsel as objectively as possible. These ideals, in abstract, havealways resonated with me; however, in practice, these ideals are muchharder to follow. This Article examines one aspect of this challenge:attempting to provide client-centered lawyering when the attorney hascompeting obligations to multiple clients. In my role as an African-American attorney advocating for affordable homeownership for Af-rican-Americans living in predominantly African-American communi-ties, I consequently serve multiple clients: the client that is theindividual corporation, the client that is my cause of affordable home-ownership, and the client that is my racial community. How do I servemy multiple clients without my obligation to one interfering with myobligation to the others? Is it possible to remain objective and neutralto all of my clients without unduly prejudicing at least one?

There remains a divide amongst lawyers about the role of the



lawyer in client counseling.3 When a decision needs to be made in aclient’s case or transaction, should the attorney direct the client’s deci-sions or should the attorney provide objective advice and remain neu-tral during the client’s deliberation? Some attorneys argue that clientsseek out attorneys for our expertise and look to our experience toprovide clients guidance to address their legal issues. Those attorneyswould argue that such neutrality in counseling our clients would be adisservice to the clients.4 If an attorney does not use his or her exper-tise to direct the client to a reasonable, well-informed decision, theattorney is not providing the necessary counsel to the client. Thoseattorneys would also argue that the attorney should freely share withthe client what the attorney, in her reasoned opinion, thinks the clientshould do. On the contrary, others argue that the client should makethe decision without the attorney’s interference, as it is the client whowill suffer the consequences and receive the benefits of that decision.5Client-centered lawyering generally advocates for the client’s right tomake a decision free from the attorney’s personal, or even profes-sional, preferences.6 While there is no single definition for what client-centered lawyering means, on the whole, client-centered lawyering re-fers to a “richly elaborated philosophy of lawyering that strives atonce to be client-directed, holistic, respectful of client narrative, cli-ent-empowering, and partisan.”7 Kate Kruse, Professor of Law atHamline University Law School, describes the client-centered ap-proach as relying on “techniques of lawyer neutrality to ensure auton-omous client decision-making . . . .”8 Robert Bush, Professor of Lawat Hofstra University, frames it as “the question of ‘who decides’ whatshould happen in the representation, and especially who determinesthe goals to be sought and outcome to be accepted – holding thatthese decisions belong to the client alone.”9

3 See generally Robert D. Dinerstein, Client-Centered Counseling: Reappraisal and Re-finement, 32 ARIZ. L. REV. 501 (1990) (explaining that the arguments for client-centeredcounseling may be divided into two broad categories: those directed toward analyzing therelationship between the lawyer-client dynamic and those delving into the lawyer-clientrelationship; further discussing the divide amongst the legal community with regard to thelawyer’s role in client counseling).

4 Id. at 506 (describing the traditional model of client counseling).5 Id. at 507–11 (describing the Binder and Price model of client counseling).6 Katherine R. Kruse, Fortress in the Sand: The Plural Values of Client-Centered Rep-

resentation, 12 CLINICAL L. REV. 369, 371 (2006) (“Client-centered representation hasbeen perhaps most commonly associated with an approach to legal counseling that seeks tominimize lawyer influence on client decision-making, relying on strategies of lawyerneutrality.”).

7 Id. at 372.8 Id. at 373.9 Robert A. Baruch Bush, Mediation Skills and Client-Centered Lawyering: A New

View of the Partnership, 19 CLINICAL L. REV. 429, 447 (2013). For a critical analysis of



Two of the foundational principles of client-centered lawyeringare: (i) respecting the importance of the client’s role in client decision-making; and (ii) respecting the importance of the attorney’s apprecia-tion for their clients’ “perspectives, emotions and values.”10 Client-centered lawyering requires attorneys to respect the “primacy of clientdecision-making”11 and “client empowerment.”12 The presumption isthat clients will have the better understanding of what is most impor-tant to the client and the client should be able to make the decisionabout their case based on the client’s own understanding of what isbest.13 Client-centered lawyering envisions attorneys maintaining the“appearance of neutrality” to avoid influencing a client’s decisions,even subtly, by allowing the client to determine what is important andhow the client’s priorities interplay with the client’s decisions.14 Cli-ent-centered lawyering does not prevent lawyers from offering legalcounsel to the client for consideration, obviously; but it encourageslawyers to respect’s the client’s input, perspective and decisions.15

Clients come to attorneys for a variety of reasons, but client-cen-tered lawyering is based on the idea that “clients come to lawyers, notto get answers to routine legal questions, but to get help solvingproblems that are deeply embedded within particular contexts.”16 Cli-ents come to us for help. While some of the more objective lawyeringskills involve discerning a client’s legal issues and analyzing the availa-ble courses of action, a more subjective lawyering skill is determiningthe how best to convey our legal counsel to the client. For attorneyswho are invested in the outcomes of their clients’ cases and transac-tions, the client-centered lawyering approach of respecting the “limi-

client-centered lawyering vs. lawyer-centered lawyering, see Rodney J. Uphoff, WhoShould Control the Decision to Call a Witness: Respecting A Criminal Defendant’s TacticalChoices,” 68 U. CIN. L. REV. 763 (2000).

10 Kruse, supra note 6, at 377. R11 Id. at 378.12 Bush, supra note 9 at 447. (“A third and arguably deeper meaning is given to the R

term by those who see a ‘client-centered’ approach as one of ‘client empowerment,’ i.e.,maximizing the degree of client participation in all aspects of the case, not only to preserveclient control over decisions and address non-legal problems, but to strengthen the client’sown capacity for self-determination and agency.”).

13 Kruse, supra note 6, at 378. R14 Id. at 379–80.15 David Binder, Paul Bergman, Susan Price, Lawyers as Counselors: A Client-Centered

Approach, 25 N. Y. L. SCH. L. REV. 29, 33 (1990). (“Inherent in the. . .definitions of coun-seling and advice giving is the idea that clients generally should have the opportunity tomake decisions. This is not to say that you should never venture your opinion about whichcourse of action a client should adopt, that you must never make a decision without con-sulting a client, or that you must always execute a client’s decision. Our point is, withrespect to the many decisions that typically must be made, you usually must give a clientthe opportunity to make the final choice.”).

16 Kruse, supra note 6, at 374. R



tations of legal expertise”17 can be quite challenging. This approachencourages attorneys to respect the expertise that clients bring to thelegal analysis. While attorneys have more knowledge about the law,clients have more knowledge about their lives and the potential im-pact legal decisions will have on their lives.18

Client-centered lawyering also involves the attorney’s ability toinclude a client’s non-legal considerations as part of the legal counsel-ing, such as a client’s “economic, social, psychological, moral, political,and religious” issues.19 One legal ethicist has argued, “a paramountaspect of client-centered lawyering is in appropriate cases, advisingthe client about the morality of particular courses of conduct.”20

When providing legal counsel to corporate clients, attorneys morecommonly consider the consequences to the corporate client’s non-legal issues—such as revenue, reputation, and political connections—as part of legal counseling. Attorneys counseling individual clients canoften be so consumed with the individual client’s stark legal chal-lenges that they may not have the luxury to consider the other non-legal issues corporate attorneys frequently take into consideration.

I have generally adhered to the client-centered model of clientcounseling. One of my goals as an attorney is to help my clients be-come self-sufficient. There is no uniform means of accomplishing thisgoal; however, to the extent that my successes in life are connected tomy ability to make good decisions, it is partly because I have beenallowed to make my own decisions and see the result of that risk. Cli-ents deserve the same opportunities. When attorneys make decisionsfor clients or ignore the clients’ preferences by inserting their ownjudgment in place of their clients’, attorneys deny clients the verylearning experiences from which attorneys themselves benefit. Clients,like attorneys, are more able to become self-sufficient when they gainthe skills to achieve it. Clients (as is the case with many of us) arebetter able to obtain those skills when they are given the opportunityto make their own decisions and receive the benefit, or suffer the con-sequences, of those decisions. To accomplish any of the goals of client-centered lawyering requires working through many of the challengesinherent in the practical implications of client-centered lawyering.

17 Id. at 377 (emphasis added).18 Id. (“Clients have greater knowledge and ability to identify and predict the non-legal

consequences of various alternative courses of action. Because the non-legal consequencesare as important, if not more important, to achieving a satisfactory solution to the client’sproblem, the client’s expertise is seen as ultimately more important that the lawyers.”).

19 Id.20 Monroe H. Freedman, Client-Centered Lawyering – What It Isn’t, 40 HOFSTRA L.

REV. 349, 351 (2011).



II. CHALLENGES OF CLIENT-CENTERED LAWYERING

As an attorney, the individual corporate client is the vehiclethrough which I work to serve my cause client and my race client. Asan affordable homeownership advocate, I facilitated the conversion ofmarket-rate apartment units into affordable homeownership by help-ing tenants associations acquire and convert their apartment buildings.To serve my race client, I worked primarily with tenants associationscomprised predominantly of African-Americans. Serving my individ-ual corporate client, my cause client, and my race client all requiredworking through the individual corporate client, and accomplishingany of these goals as a client-centered attorney required me to enablemy corporate client to make a well-informed decision. Client-centeredlawyering requires the attorney to provide objective counsel to theclient, which in turn, enables the client to make a well-informed deci-sion. As an attorney, a client’s decision making is not simply about theclient’s willingness to provide direction about their project or case. Itis fundamentally about the client’s ability to make a reasonable andwell-informed decision. One of the greatest challenges a client-cen-tered attorney faces is determining how to communicate informationto one’s client in a manner that enables them to make quality deci-sions. Another challenge is evaluating what a well-informed decisionlooks like. This can be especially difficult when the attorney and clienthave very different decision-making processes and very differentmethods of communication.

Mutual communication is not intuitive. Our socio-economic back-grounds and our training impact our means of communication. I amtrained as a practicing attorney and as a professor, which has requiredme to learn how to communicate with different audiences. My non-tenants association corporate clients, often led by a general counsel,required me to utilize a different communication skillset than my te-nants association clients, many of whom had not graduated from col-lege. A general counsel of a large corporation and I have been trainedto think similarly and to evaluate risks similarly. When I provide coun-sel to these corporate clients, I have a clearer idea of what informationthey need for them—and me—to believe a well-informed decision canbe, or has been, made.

I have no similar clarity in determining what my tenants associa-tion clients require in making a reasonable, well-informed decision.And, who makes the determination of whether the information andcounsel provided is sufficient to make a reasonable, well-informed de-cision? Should it be the tenants association client whose members mayassume that the information I provided is adequate because they aredeferring to my expertise? Should I make that decision, which then



usurps the ability of the tenants association client to tell me what theyneed, undermining the client autonomy that we as client-centered at-torneys hope to achieve? As the attorney for a tenants association, Ifrequently determine what information is provided and withheld. Imake the determination of what information is necessary for the cli-ent’s decisions. This very act of determining what is provided andwithheld reflects the attorney’s power over the client’s decision-mak-ing process. When attorneys are counseling vulnerable populations,21

the very success of client-centered lawyering depends on the attor-ney’s willingness to keep her power over the client constrained.

Client-centered lawyering rests, at least in part, on the assump-tion that attorneys are able to discern what information is sufficient toenable a client to make a well-informed decision. If that client and theattorney have similar experiences, training, and background, that as-sumption has some validity. Client-centered lawyering requires the at-torney to conclude how much, and what type of, information the clientneeds to make a decision. It requires the attorney, informed by theclient’s input, to make conclusions about the client’s priorities. Whenthe attorney’s life experiences are so divorced from the client’s, howcan the attorney make these conclusions in a manner that reflects thatclient’s actual needs, not the attorney’s interpretation of the client’sneeds?

I recall working with a tenants association who sought my assis-tance to help renovate a multi-family property so the tenants associa-tion could convert it to a condominium and sell some of the units tomembers of the tenants association at below-market prices and sellother units to non-members for market price. The commercial lenderfunding this project required all residents to complete a handful oftasks as a condition of closing the loan. First, the lender required theresident to contribute approximately $200 toward the purchase oftheir unit. In addition, the lender required the resident to obtain alender pre-qualification stipulating that the resident had sufficient in-come and credit to qualify for a mortgage loan to purchase the below-market condominium unit. Lastly, the lender required the resident toattend a free, one-day first-time homebuyer’s counseling workshop.One of the residents who previously participated in the process topurchase a condominium became disengaged. At this point, as the at-torney to the tenants association, I became concerned that one of the

21 See Martha Albertson Fineman, The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in theHuman Condition, 20 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 1, 8 (2008). (“In discussions of public respon-sibility, the concept of vulnerability is sometimes used to define groups of fledgling orstigmatized subjects, designated as ‘populations.’ . . . Groups of persons living in poverty. . . are often labeled as vulnerable populations.”).



members of the tenants association was now in danger of losing heropportunity to purchase her unit so I evaluated her progress. Whilethe resident had not contributed the $200, the tenants associationagreed to advance this cost out of the tenants association’s funds andhave the money returned to the tenants association’s account whenthe resident closed on the purchase of her condominium unit. Thus,the $200 contribution requirement was fulfilled. The resident had al-ready received her loan prequalification from an area lender. All thatremained at that point was for the resident to attend the homebuyer’scounseling workshop. Yet, the resident neither attended the work-shop, nor reengaged in the process.

I tried to understand the quandary. Based on my analysis of thetransaction and my understanding of the resident’s priorities, I ex-pected this to be an easy decision. Most of the residents who lived inthis particular property were low- and moderate-income residentswho never owned real property. This resident was no exception. Shewas a hard-working single mother who maintained two jobs to supporther family. The condominium units were being sold to the tenants at aprice tens of thousands of dollars below market price. The potentialfinancial windfall from purchasing this condominium would have beensignificant for her family. Because of gentrification in the condomin-ium’s neighborhood, other similar units in the building were selling foralmost double her purchase price. I expected the resident to be thril-led at the prospect of being able to purchase a home at such a dis-counted price. Even if she was uninterested in actually purchasing herhome, she had the contractual right to assign her purchase right to amarket-rate buyer for some negotiated financial consideration. Allthat remained was for the resident to attend the homebuyer’s courseand she could make her own choice.

I called. I emailed. I visited her home and left explanatory lettersat her door. I met with her adult son to explain to him the importanceof her participation in the process. Because the resident was not anative English speaker, my team and I left voicemail messages andsent letters in both English and her native language in the hopes ofprompting the resident to participate. The resident remainedunresponsive.

I assumed that if the client were fully informed, she would realizethe importance of participating in this opportunity. I believed that ifshe were not participating it was because, I, as the attorney, had notproperly informed her of the ease, importance, or financial potentialof the transaction. I believed that if I could only talk with her, I couldoffer her sufficient information to appreciate the importance of thischoice to enable her to make a well-informed decision. As lawyers, we



live in a world of narrative. We believe deeply in the power of persua-sion and the power of prose. We believe in the ability to persuadeothers with the logic of argument and well-crafted reasoning.

In retrospect, I understand that I sought to offer counsel based onthe items that I, as the lawyer for her tenants association, determinedwere necessary for my client to make a well-informed decision. Theprocess of determining what information to provide required me tomake conclusions about what was important to her and what shewould need to finalize a decision. I naturally filtered these conclusionsthrough my personal lens, which is tainted by my experiences, prefer-ences, and socioeconomic circumstances.22 All of these factors in-formed my assumptions about my client’s experiences, preferencesand socioeconomic circumstances. I provided information about thefinancial impact of purchasing a condominium because I assumed thatfinancial savings would be important to residents who are of low- andmoderate-income. I informed her about the financial stability thatcomes from being a homeowner because I assumed a preference forcontrolling one’s costs. I provided information about the small out-of-pocket costs required to purchase a financially valuable condominiumbecause I presumed her desire to conduct a cost-return analysis, evenon a rudimentary level. While none of this information was irrelevant,it was based on my analysis of what the resident would need to makethe decision despite my being so very different from the residents onmany levels. Client-centered lawyering can provide greater autonomyto the client, but the legal counsel provided is still based on the law-yer’s interpretation of what information is needed for the client tomake an informed decision, which in turn, is informed by the lawyer’sexperiences and personal preferences.23

22 The financial, educational, and experiential differences between my clients and meundeniably inform how we see each other—even when we are of the same race. There aremany articles written about cross-cultural lawyering between an attorney and clients ofdifferent races. See e.g., Susan Bryant, The Five Habits: Building Cross-Cultural Compe-tence in Lawyers, 8 CLINICAL L. REV. 33 (2001) (explaining the importance for lawyers tolearn cross-cultural skills, competence, and concepts). My next article will evaluate cross-cultural lawyering in a less explored context—the challenges of cross-cultural lawyeringwhen the lawyer and client are of the same race.

23 In retelling this story over the years, I am frequently asked whether the resident everreengaged, or if not, whether I ever determined the reasons for her disappearance. I neverlearned directly from her why she declined to pursue the opportunity nor learned whethershe eventually became a homeowner. Her son, with whom I later spoke about thepurchase opportunity, explained it simply as her need to work multiple jobs to care for heryoung children. I thought of the purchase opportunity as a means of addressing the finan-cial strains that prompted her need to work multiple jobs, but she may have viewed itdifferently. Alternatively, she may not have thought that the financial benefit was worththe risk of taking off from work, or she may have distrusted the certainty of the purchase.These are all extrapolations of my evaluation of her behavior. In trying to discern the



The question of the similarities and differences between my cli-ents and me, and their impact on my ability to be a client-centeredlawyer, also extend to the means I use to assist my clients. Manyproblems experienced by the poor appear to be solvable by judicialintervention. Many of the legal problems of the poor are acute, includ-ing protection from foreclosure, eviction, employment termination,and unscrupulous lenders. Lawyers attempt to address these legalchallenges by seeking protection in the courts to address these individ-ual wrongs. There is an argument, however, that this is a futile en-deavor. Some have argued that, “a program focused upon services toindividuals will fail to deal with the legal and institutional sources ofthe grievances of the poor.”24 Gary Bellow argued that seeking re-dress for these individual problems reflects a fundamental misunder-standing of the problem. He argued that the problems experienced bythe poor and disenfranchised are because of an imbalance in politicaland economic power, and addressing an individual wrong is simply anineffective and inefficient means of addressing the source of the prob-lem.25 I am an unintended beneficiary of this imbalance and my train-ing in, and experience with, the judicial system give me a certaintyabout its ability and willingness to address my specific needs. This isnot, as Bellow noted, the experience of the poor. There are many rea-sons why members of the same demographic have different outcomesin their lives. It is this difference in experience that contributes to adivergent sense of empowerment.

Client-centered lawyering can be particularly difficult for lawyersworking with low- and moderate-individual clients or working withcorporate clients comprised of low- and moderate-income clients whooften make decisions that are sometimes, to us lawyers, based on aconfounding logic seemingly understandable only to our clients.26 This

rationale, I am yet again faced with the prospect of deciphering my clients’ decisionsthrough my prism, which is so often starkly different from that of my clients.

24 Comment, The New Public Interest Lawyers, 79 YALE L.J. 1069, 1074 (1970) [herein-after Public Interest Lawyers].

25 “The problem of unjust laws is almost invariably a problem of distribution of politi-cal and economic power; the rules merely reflect a series of choices made in response tothese distributions.” Id. at 1077.

26 See Barbara Bezdek, Silence in the Court: Participation and Subordination of PoorTenants’ Voices in Legal Process, 20 HOFSTRA L. REV. 533, 539 (1992) (“Such a standard‘access to justice’ analysis of the defects of this particular legal institution is flawed andincomplete, because it proceeds from a view of law and society in which law is distinct fromthe social and political realms, and because of its correlative image of law as imparting‘legal protection.’ This conception promotes the illusory notion that law is a source ofpower and authority disconnected form other power structures in society.”); Bryant, supranote 22, at 56 (“Most importantly, non-judgmental thinking is required to develop connec- Rtion to and understanding of clients. A cross-cultural anthropologist has referred to this asthe capacity to enter the cultural imagination of another, or as ‘perceiving as normal things



confusion can be exacerbated by the fact that The Model Rules ofProfessional Conduct (“Model Rules”) instructs lawyers to respect aclient’s decision even when the lawyer views the decision as problem-atic.27 This is easier when the client is a large corporation whose onlyconsequences of a questionable decision are administrative or finan-cial challenges; however, restraining oneself from interfering with aclient’s decision is particularly challenging for community develop-ment lawyers whose client’s questionable decisions could have a sig-nificant financial or social impact on their lives.

The ideals of client-centered lawyering are utopic in theory, butthe practical application of these ideals, particularly for lawyers whowork with low- and moderate-income clients, are wrought with com-plexity. This complexity exists in my responsibility to my client andthe obligation I feel to my other constituencies. I struggle with theseideals when I have such a sense of responsibility to multiple constitu-encies, including the individual corporate entity, my cause client ofpromoting affordable homeownership, and my race client, the Afri-can-American community.

III. CLIENT-CENTERED LAWYERING WITH MULTIPLE CLIENTS

My ethical obligation and duty to my individual corporate clientis clear. The Model Rules dictate that I must zealously advocate formy client.28 My ethical responsibilities to my client are so great that Irisk suspension from the practice of law or disbarment for violatingthem.29 What then does it mean as a client-centered lawyer to havesuch a great sense of obligation to causes and other groups for whichor for whom the Model Rules impose no ethical obligations? As attor-neys, our corporate clients are not the only entities to whom we feel asense of obligation. We have personal obligations to our families,communities, and chosen causes. What distinguishes our personal ob-ligations from those other obligations that, in essence, become clients?

Each attorney must choose between those obligations that arepersonal preferences and those that rise to a sense of duty similar tothat of our duties to our clients. My sense of duty to affordable home-

that at first seem bizarre or strange.’”).27 MODEL RULES OF PROF’L CONDUCT R. 1.13 cmt. 3 (2013) (“When constituents of

the organization make decisions for it, the decisions ordinarily must be accepted by thelawyer even if their utility or prudence is doubtful.”).

28 Id. (“A lawyer must also act with commitment and dedication to the interests of theclient and with zeal in advocacy upon the client’s behalf.”).

29 See MODEL RULES FOR LAWYER DISCIPLINARY ENFORCEMENT 10(1) (2002) (outlin-ing the different sanctions a lawyer could be subjected to for misconduct (such as a failureto follow the Model Rules), including: “[d]isbarment by the court” and “[s]uspension bythe court for an appropriate fixed period of time”).



ownership and low- and moderate-income African-Americans reflectsa deep-rooted need to protect members of my race and to promotemethods I genuinely believe will help African-Americans becomemore financially self-sufficient. My sense of duty compels me to act.When I felt that not advocating for a means to help members of myrace achieve self-sufficiency was a violation of an almost sacred duty, Iaccepted that the African-American community became my race cli-ent and, as one of the means to achieving self-sufficiency, affordablehomeownership became my cause client.

It is important to note, however, that my corporate clients andcause clients are clients of choice. I choose to be an attorney and Ichoose affordable homeownership as a cause worthy of my time andenergy. My race client however, was not a conscious choice; as dis-cussed in Section III(C), it often feels as though the decision to havemy fellow African-American community as my race client was moreabout accepting my duty to us as a client, than choosing us as a client.The next sections of this Article explore my relationships with my in-dividual corporate client, my cause client—affordable homeowner-ship—and my race client—my African-American community.

A. Individual Corporation as My Client

In addition to the challenges of client-centered lawyering withmultiple constituencies, being a client-centered attorney whose indi-vidual client is not an individual, but a corporate entity adds anotherlayer of complexity. When a lawyer has an individual as a client, thelawyer offers counsel to, and takes direction from, the individual whois the client. Working with the individual client, the lawyer can appre-ciate the client’s “perspectives, emotions and values”30 and respect theclient’s knowledge about the client’s life and the potential impact legaldecisions will have on the client’s life. Working with the individualcorporate client, the corporation has no single perspective or value,nor a single opinion on the potential impact of legal decisions. Thecorporation, because it often has multiple officers and employees, willhave multiple perspectives and multiple values all reflecting each indi-vidual’s analysis and preferences. As a lawyer to a corporation, towhom does the lawyer listen? And, when making that decision towhom to listen, how does the lawyer exclude his or her own personalpredilections about whether the speaker is a legitimate voice for thecorporation? The decision to whom to listen requires subjectivity. Onwhat basis is the attorney making this decision?

30 Kruse, supra note 6, at 377. R



1. Lawyering To A Corporation With Many Voices

As an attorney working exclusively with corporations and organi-zations, my individual client to whom I owe my ethical obligation isthe corporate entity.31 Model Rule 1.13(a) states: “A lawyer employedor retained by an organization represents the organization actingthrough its duly authorized constituents.”32 However, there is alwaysthe challenge of determining who are the organization’s constituents.This is particularly perilous when working with community develop-ment clients. While my individual client is a corporation, working as acommunity development lawyer in low- and moderate-income com-munities, my sense of allegiance and responsibility often is to the indi-vidual members of the corporation. While my ethical obligation is tomy individual corporate client, there is the additional challenge of be-ing a client-centered lawyer to a corporation comprised of manyvoices. I must take direction from individuals who allege that theirposition represents that of the individual corporate client. As an Afri-can-American attorney, the challenge of being a client-centered law-yer increases when the individuals from whom I am taking directionare more than just fungible faces in the corporation.

I look to the Model Rules governing my profession and it pro-vides so little guidance on how to handle the ethical dilemma facing alawyer with a corporate client.33 This dilemma is even more challeng-ing when the corporate client’s constituents are individuals who lookto me, their lawyer, to help them navigate one of the most importantfinancial decisions in their lives. In doing so, I faced the challengesmany corporate lawyers face when working with an organization com-prised of individuals with diverse goals and motivations.34 As part ofmy practice, I counseled tenants associations who were buying theirapartment buildings and converting them to affordable homeowner-ship. My corporate clients were no longer simply faceless corporationsconducting another business transaction. My corporate client was avehicle for fellow African-Americans to accomplish their goals of

31 MODEL RULES OF PROF’L CONDUCT R. 1.13(a) (2013).32 Id.33 George D. Reycraft, Conflicts of Interest and Effective Representation: The Dilemma

of Corporate Counsel, 39 HASTINGS L.J. 605, 608 (1988) (“The Model Code of ProfessionalResponsibility (Model Code) speaks, for the most part, to trial lawyers, providing guide-lines for the ethical dilemmas faced in a litigation context. The Model Code fails to pro-vide detailed guidelines for lawyers engaging in the practice of corporate or securitieslaw.”).

34 Id. (“In representing the organizational client, the corporate lawyer must often grap-ple with conflicting duties of loyalty, confidentiality, and zeal owed to the various ‘constitu-ents’ or interest groups that make up the organizational client.”).



purchasing their apartment buildings and becoming first timehomeowners.

Client-centered lawyering not only requires me, as an attorney, toidentify who my client is, it also requires my clients to know who myclient is. When the members of a corporate client imbue the corporateclient with a racial identity,35 and work with an attorney of the samerace with a similarly defined racial identity, the goals of client-cen-tered lawyering are that much harder to accomplish. I should see thecorporate client as simply any other individual client in need of mycounsel. However, my sense of obligation to these clients is starklydifferent. My ability to remain objective in my counsel to them be-comes clouded.

The members of the corporate client also view me differently.They see me not just as any lawyer representing their corporation. Themembers see me as an African-American attorney coming to re-present their corporation to accomplish their goals. Almost always,those goals are infused with the history of our race. The corporateentities with which I worked were formed as a tenants association tohelp low- and moderate-income African-Americans become home-owners in a country with a long history of residential segregation.36

This was particularly prevalent in Washington, D.C. where I practiced,and many members of the tenants associations with which I workedgrew up in, and resided in, neighborhoods with long histories of racialsegregation. The members sought my assistance to combat the per-sonal challenges they encountered as a result of their race. The corpo-ration is, for them, not simply a vehicle through which they are able tobecome first-time homeowners. The corporation is a vehicle throughwhich they are combating oppression, economic stagnation, discrimi-

35 Alina Ball, a law professor at U.C. Hastings who introduced me to this topic and isalso writing about it, argues that corporations are not race neutral at all. She argues thatcorporations are racial representatives as determined by the racial composition of its own-ers and members. She also argues that a corporation’s race is particularly relevant whenthat corporate entity was formed by, and for, residents of underserved communities. AlinaBall, Chartered, Incorporated & E-raced?: Bridging the Divide Between Corporate andCommunity Lawyering, Presentation at the AALS Conference on Clinical Legal Educa-tion (May 29, 2014). See also Richard R.W. Brooks, Incorporating Race, 106 COLUM. L.REV. 2023, 2030 (2006) (“The attribution of race to a corporate entity is best understood asan act, or better yet a performance, which signifies the identity of the attributor and com-mits, or seeks to commit, the attributor or the corporation (or both) to certain ideas, as-sociations, person, or practices. This performance may be undertaken by corporate agentspromoting the entity or by third parties undermining it.”).

36 See generally Marc Seitles, The Perpetuation of Residential Racial Segregation inAmerica: Historical Discrimination, Modern Forms of Exclusion, and Inclusionary Reme-dies, 14 J. LAND USE & ENVTL. L. 89, 89–95 (1998) (outlining the development of housingsegregation in the United States and the government’s role in creating housingsegregation).



nation, and segregation they suffered as a result of their race.The responsibility that comes with such an undertaking is not lost

on me. Undoubtedly, my clients hired me, at least in part, becausethey expect that I, as an African-American attorney, will have a par-ticular sensitivity to their goals. When I am honest, I admit to astrange mix of pride and resentment from this expectation. I am hum-bled and honored to be able to serve my race client and to have adeeper understanding of my corporate client’s goals. I am pleased thatI am trusted with such an important undertaking. I feel that I am, in asmall way, repaying the debt I feel I owe to my ancestors. At the sametime, I resent the expectation that I should understand and the as-sumption that I do understand. When the corporation hires me astheir attorney, I often feel that the expectations of me as an African-American attorney are higher because we are of the same race. Theimmense responsibility that is placed upon me by my client’s expecta-tions can be overwhelming. I feel the weight of the additional expecta-tions of me by my African-American clients that I will not only be anexcellent lawyer because that is what is expected of all lawyers, butthat I will bring an additional level of excellence because I am ex-pected to know and understand their plight because of my race. But,of course, I have an enhanced level of understanding of their plight; ofcourse, I have a different sense of the history that brought them to thisplace of needing a lawyer with a heightened sense of responsibility.Yet I struggle with the assumptions that underlie this expectation. De-spite this struggle, or maybe at the end of it, I accept the responsibilityof the additional level of excellence that is required of me and I acceptthe need to bury any attendant resentment.

My client-centered lawyering principles suggest that the purposeof my corporate client should not impact the objectivity of my coun-sel. However, because the corporate client is imbued with a racialidentity, my obligations to my race client cloud my objectivity. Theresidents of the tenants associations I represented were overwhelm-ingly tenants of color and most often were African-American. Thecorporate tenants association was my client, but my representationwas undeniably fully informed by the racial composition of its mem-bers.37 As an attorney with a corporate client, it is clear I represent thecorporation.38 The Model Rules state that “[a]n organizational clientis a legal entity, but it cannot act except through its officers, directors,employees, shareholders and other constituents.”39

It is necessary to separate the voice of the client, the corporation,

37 Ball, supra note 35. R38 MODEL RULES OF PROF’L CONDUCT R.1.13 cmt. 1 (2013).39 Id.



from the voices of those corporate officers purporting to speak on itsbehalf. It is similarly important to separate the voice of the corporateclient from the voices of the members whose interests the corporationrepresents. Attorneys must recognize this distinction is, in many re-spects, a fiction. The corporation does not speak without the voicesand influence of the individuals running it. In the case of a tenantsassociation seeking to purchase an apartment building, the corpora-tion’s members pursue their collective goal of becoming first-timehomeowners through the corporation. When those members are pri-marily African-Americans, it has proven impossible for me to re-present the corporation without feeling this sense of racialresponsibility to this corporation that, ostensibly, is race neutral.

In this work, I also feel a sense of racial responsibility to thoseindividual members of the corporate client. When working as a com-munity lawyer, the corporate client is a distinct entity from the mem-bers only as a technicality. It is impossible to remain blind to theimpact I have as an attorney on the lives of the individual membersthrough my representation. In that regard, I connect to the corporateclient as a vehicle through which I can protect its members. The cor-poration has become a representative of my race to whom I felt thissense of racial solidarity and responsibility.

The members often spoke of how they trusted me more becauseof my race. The trust later was cemented through close relationshipswe established through the often multi-year representation. However,the initial palpable relief I sensed from them was because they feltthey found an ally in me because of my race. I felt that the membersexpected me to understand the importance to them not only of be-coming homeowners, but the importance of their ability to rise abovethe systemic discrimination that stymied their paths. I was, I felt, ex-pected to be part of a movement to empower the members throughthe corporate representation. I struggled with the goals of client-cen-tered lawyering: to be objective in my counsel and not be swayed bymy personal or professional preferences. In truth, when my clients arelarge corporations, I do not feel the same sense of responsibility andobligation as I do when my clients are corporations with low- andmoderate-income residents as members. As an attorney, my responsi-bility to my clients’ needs should not depend on their wealth and Iremain uncertain as to whether my responsibility should fluctuate de-pending on my client’s corporate race. However, as Charles Reichstated, “[T]he poor also need legal services because they are poor; thevery fact of poverty fiercely intensifies an individual’s need for legal



representation in almost all facets of his life.”40 This need pulls at meto help clients as well as help them make what I hope are well-in-formed decisions.

B. Affordable Homeownership as My Cause Client

To evaluate my cause client of affordable homeownership, I mustfirst understand from where this sense of duty arises. Ida JamiesonJunior, my paternal grandfather’s great grandmother, was enslaved ona plantation in a small town off the coast of South Carolina. My fam-ily’s ancestral church, Mt. Tabor Baptist Church, owned a number ofacres of land in this small town and sold lots for housing, including tothose men and women who had been enslaved in the area. My great-great-great grandmother, appreciating the value of owning a home,bought a house on Carroll Street from Mt. Tabor. This choice, themagnitude of which she may not have anticipated, provided my familypermanence and stability. In that home, generations survived andthrived. From that home grew a family community. Other familymembers moved nearby. Across the street, a young pastor bought ahouse where he raised a daughter who, many years later, would marryIda’s great-grandson, my grandfather. Her homeownership set a pre-cedent for her descendants. Every direct descendant from GrandmaIda, including me, has owned a home.

The residents in the properties I represented often talked, notabout the goal of homeownership, but about the dream of homeown-ership. One resident, Mr. Randall, lived in his apartment for fortyyears before I began working with the residents’ tenants association.The tenants association purchased their property and converted it intoan affordable condominium. After forty years of living in the apart-ment building, Mr. Randall became a first time homeowner at ninety-five. During the closing, Mr. Randall shared with me that he neverthought he would be able to own a home. He said that when he movedinto the one bedroom unit forty years prior with his now deceasedwife, he never knew that such an opportunity would arise for him.The child of sharecroppers, he thought homeownership was a hope ofothers not like him. Even at ninety-five, Mr. Randall valued home-ownership. While he lived in his unit as a homeowner for less thanfive years before passing, during that time, he was not subject to manyof the challenges of renting, including the fact his housing costs werenot subject to annual increases in rent, nor the landlord’s willingnessto renew the lease or fill vacant units with reputable neighbors.

My personal experiences and my work have shown me the impor-

40 Public Interest Lawyers, supra note 24, at 1072. R



tance of homeownership. This experience has demonstrated the manybenefits of homeownership, though the personal, positive homeown-ership experiences in my life, my family, and in my work undoubtedlyreinforce my strong belief in homeownership.41 Homeownership re-mains personal as I have experienced the tremendous value ofhomeownership.

Studies have shown the allure and many benefits of homeowner-ship. Sixty-five percent of Americans say they would buy if they weregoing to move, compared to only twenty-eight percent who said theywould rent.42 Part of the appeal of homeownership is that it is seen asa good investment.43 Homeownership also is seen as providing morestability and control over the residents’ living environment.44 Home-ownership is viewed as providing more mobility security than rent-ing.45 Homeowners also demonstrate greater residential satisfactioncompared to renters and there is also a connection to greater psycho-logical and physical health.46 In the United States, homeownership re-mains a symbol of social and economic success.47

This social and economic success is not as prevalent in the low-and moderate-income communities in which I have worked. Workingin these communities and seeing the challenges that exist there, I feela keen sense of responsibility to help stabilize these communities andhomeownership is a powerful means of accumulating wealth and sta-bilizing neighborhoods. But for some twist of birth placing me in afamily living in a safe neighborhood, this could have been I. This senseof responsibility is assuredly a sort of survivor’s guilt even though Idid not grow up in a poor neighborhood. Since I was not raised inpoverty, there was no poverty from which to escape. But, I did escape

41 See generally William M. Rohe & Mark Lindblad, Reexamining the Social Benefits ofHomeownership After the Housing Crisis, Presentation at the Harvard Business SchoolSymposium: Homeownership Built to Last: Lessons from the Housing Crisis on SustainingHomeownership for Low-Income and Minority Families 5 (Apr. 1-2, 2013), http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/hbtl-04.pdf (“We argue, however, that the per-ceived benefits of homeownership are also influenced by both direct and indirect experi-ence with homeownership.”).

42 Monthly National Housing Survey: July 2015 Data Release, FANNIE MAY (2015)http://www.fanniemae.com/resources/file/research/housingsurvey/pdf/nhs-monthly-data-080715.pdf.

43 Rohe & Lindblad, supra note 41, at 2 (“One of the attractions of homeownership is Rthat it has been seen as a good financial investment.”).

44 Id. 45 Id. (“Homeowners were thought to be more secure than renters since they were not

subject to landlords raising the rent or not renewing the lease.”).46 Id. at 3 (“[R]esearch . . . has tended to support a positive relationship between home-

ownership and residential satisfaction. . . . Other research has tended to support a positiverelationship between homeownership and both psychological and physical health.”).

47 Id. at 4–5 (“Homeownership is an important goal of a very large percentage ofAmericans and has become a cultural symbol of social and economic success.”).



circumstance. Yes, I am the grandchild of grandparents with masters’degrees. But, that same grandfather is also the grandchild of formerslaves. While that did not destine me to be poor, it certainly did notdestine me to be affluent. A small twist of circumstance birthed me toa family with the resources, will, and opportunities to succeed. I was,through no contribution of my own, born to a family that raised me instable, suburban neighborhoods far from the crime and pathologies ofpoverty that bedevil so many others seeking to find success. I did notescape poverty as a victim of it, but the circumstance of birth kept mefrom it.

While homeownership was not the sole reason for my ability tolive in stable, suburban neighborhoods, owning our house certainlywas a large reason for our ability to remain there. Homeownershipprovides owners with financial stability. On average, renters havemore variance in their housing costs than homeowners.48 With home-ownership, the mortgage expenses on the residence remain fixed in-stead of fluctuating over time like rental expenses. Homeownershipalso provides owners with more location stability. As a renter, a resi-dent’s ability to remain in the rental unit is dependent on the land-lord’s willingness to renew the lease.49 As an owner, a resident’sability to remain in the home is more reliant on the owner’s abilityand willingness to pay the costs of maintenance and related housingcosts. Homeownership also provides an immeasurable sense of be-longing.50 Authors have noted homeowners’ increased sense of com-munity and commitment to that community.51 Lastly, homeownershipprovides owners a sense of accomplishment.52

There are arguments against the promotion of affordable home-ownership. One argument is that one of the major contributors to theGreat Recession was the effort made to make homeownership afford-able to residents who otherwise would not have been able to afford topurchase a home.53 However, affordable homeownership as a govern-

48 See U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urban Dev., Paths to Homeownership for Low-Income &Minority Households, EVIDENCE MATTERS (2012), http://www.huduser.org/portal/periodi-cals/em/fall12/highlight1.html#title (“Renter households have seen their incomes fall andrents increase since the economic downturn . . . .”).

49 The ability to remain in the rental unit is also subject to local laws governing land-lord-tenant leases.

50 Lorna Fox O’Malley, Homeownership, Debt, and Default: The Affective Value ofHome and the Challenge of Affordability, in AFFORDABLE HOMEOWNERSHIP AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS 169, 169 (Nestor M. Davidson & Robin Paul Malloy eds., 2009).

51 Michael Diamond, Affordable Homeownership and the Conflict of CompetingGoods: A Policy Dilemma, in AFFORDABLE HOMEOWNERSHIP AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE

PARTNERSHIPS 1, 1–2 (Nestor M. Davidson & Robin Paul Malloy eds., 2009).52 Julie D. Lawton, Limited Equity Cooperatives: The Non-Economic Value of Home-

ownership, 43 WASH. U. J.L. & POL’Y 187, 214 (2013).53 E.g., Eamonn K. Moran, Wall Street Meets Main Street: Understanding the Financial



ment priority is less to blame than the irresponsible means used toencourage homeownership in the name of making homeownershipmore affordable.54 Regardless, the public and private pursuit of in-creasing homeownership has taken its toll. From 2007 until 2011, lend-ers initiated almost eight million foreclosure proceedings againsthomeowners.55 At the end of 2010, more than eleven million home-owners owed more on their home than their home was worth.56 Dur-ing 2012, almost two million homeowners were in some state offoreclosure.57 In the 1990s, approximately two percent of mortgageswere ninety days or more past due or in the foreclosure process.58 By2012, that percentage had risen to over seven percent.59 During thefive-year period ending 2011, real net-household wealth droppedmore than fourteen trillion dollars.60 Despite this, almost sixty-fivepercent of Americans own their own homes.61 After the burst of thehousing bubble, this homeownership rate is the lowest it has beensince 1993.62 The homeownership rate is much lower for owners ofcolor; homeowners of color have a homeownership rate twenty-fivepercent lower than that of whites.63

Renters, particularly poorer renters, are facing challenges as well.Finding affordable housing is most acute for the poorest Americans aseleven million extremely low-income households competed for the

Crisis, 13 N.C. BANKING INST. 5, 16–19, 25–29 (2009).54 “[W]e don’t have a pro-homeownership system, we have a pro-home debt system.

What we have largely done, again, I don’t want to force us to go back to Econ 101, in ahousing market like San Francisco, for instance, where supply is inelastic, demand subsi-dies simply run up prices. Great for realtors, great for mortgage bankers, great for build-ers, not so good for homeowners and taxpayers. And, I do think we try. . .to essentiallysubstitute for a lack of income growth and substitute for inelasticity in the supply in thehousing market.” Mark Calabria, Presentation at the 2015 AALS Annual Conference: TheFuture of the Federal Housing System (January 4, 2015) (podcast available at https://memberaccess.aals.org/eweb//DynamicPage.aspx?Site=AALS&WebKey=a03153be-2618-4261-9821-ed9aab6a26bb&RegPath=&REg_evt_key=df152893-135a-4786-a79e-16d736c02168).

55 The State of the Nation’s Housing 2011: Fact Sheet, JOINT CTR. FOR HOUS. STUDIES

OF HARV. UNIV. 1, 3 (2011), http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/son2011_fact_sheet.pdf.

56 See id. at 2–5 (outlining the ongoing homeownership affordability issues).57 The State of the Nation’s Housing 2012: Fact Sheet, JOINT CTR. FOR HOUS. STUDIES

OF HARV. UNIV. 1, 3 (2012), http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/son_2012_key_facts.pdf [hereinafter Fact Sheet 2012].

58 Id.59 Id.60 Id.61 The State of the Nation’s Housing 2015, Key Facts, JOINT CTR. FOR HOUS. STUDIES

OF HARV. UNIV. 1, 1 (2015), http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/son_2015_key_facts.pdf [hereinafter Key Facts 2015].

62 Id.63 Id.



seven million units that were affordable to them.64 With so few rentalunits available,65 the cost of renting continues to increase.66 As a re-sult, affordable housing, and in particular, affordable homeownership,is still needed to help the poor obtain more financial stability. Finan-cial stability often comes from wealth, which is primarily derived fromhomeownership. Home equity still remains a major source of house-hold wealth67—home equity represented eighty thousand dollars ofthe almost two hundred thousand dollars of median net wealth ofhomeowners compared to only $5,400 of median net wealth for rent-ers.68 For the three-year period ending in 2013, the median net worthof homeowners increased four percent, while the median net worth ofrenters remained stagnant.69

Homeownership helps individuals increase their wealth. Home-owners and renters agree that homeownership makes more financialsense than renting.70 While income is an important factor for financialstability, wealth allows a family financial stability during income insta-bility and to pass along that financial stability to subsequent genera-tions.71 From 2000 to 2011, the aggregate net worth of Americansincreased almost forty percent primarily as a result of the total

64 Id. at 3 (“In 2013, 11.2 million extremely low-income households (earning up to 30percent of area median) competed for just 7.3 million units they could afford, leaving a gapof 3.9 million units.”).

65 Id. at 2 (“The national rental vacancy rate dipped to 7.6% in 2014, its lowest point innearly 20 years.”).

66 Id. (“Rents rose at a 3.2 percent rate last year—twice the pace of overall inflation.”).67 Alfred Gottschalck, et al., Household Wealth in the U.S.: 2000 to 2011, 1, https://www

.census.gov/people/wealth/files/Wealth%20Highlights%202011.pdf. (“Net worth (wealth)is the sum of the market value of assets owned by every member of the household minusliabilities owed by household members. The major assets not covered in this measure areequities in pension plans, the cash value of life insurance policies, and the value of homefurnishings and jewelry.”). Assets include “[i]nterest-earning assets held at financial insti-tutions, stocks and mutual fund shares, rental property, home ownership, IRA and Keoghaccounts, 401k and Thrift Savings Plans, vehicles, and regular checking accounts.” Id. Lia-bilities include “[m]ortgages on own home, mortgages on rental property, vehicle loans,credit card debt, educational loans, and medical debt not covered by insurance.” Id.

68 Key Facts 2015, supra note 61, at 7.69 See Jesse Bricker, et al., Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2010 to 2013: Evi-

dence from the Survey of Consumer Finances, 100 FED. RESERVE BULLETIN OF THE BD. OF

GOVERNORS OF THE FED. RESERVE SYS. 1, 1 (2014) http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2014/pdf/scf14.pdf.

70 Key Facts 2015, supra note 61, at 8 (“According to Fannie Mae’s National HousingSurvey for the fourth quarter of 2014, 82 percent of respondents thought that owning mademore financial sense than renting. Even among renters, 67 percent agreed with thisstatement.”).

71 Thomas M. Shapiro, Race, Homeownership and Wealth, 20 WASH. U. J.L. & POL’Y53, 53–55 (2006) (“Wealth is a special kind of money because it represents ownership andcontrol of resources; income is essentially earnings or payments that replace earnings. . . .Unlike education, jobs, or even income, wealth allows families to secure advantages andoften is the vehicle for transferring inequality across generations.”).



amount of wealth from home ownership.72 Homeownership is partic-ularly important for African-American households who have a signifi-cant number of members with no or negative net worth.73 For thethree-year period ending in 2013, the median net worth of Whitehouseholds increased 2.4%, while the median wealth of Black house-holds fell almost 34%.74 This shift corresponds with a decrease in theWhite homeownership rate of only two percent, compared to a 6.5%decrease in the homeownership rate in households of people ofcolor.75 It is important to remember that for Americans, particularlyAfrican-Americans, homeownership is a large driver of wealth.76

My goal is not only to promote homeownership, but also to pro-mote and preserve affordable homeownership. Homeownership onlyhas value if it is affordable. Homeownership is only useful if thepurchase price and subsequent maintenance costs are affordable tothe owners. Maintenance costs are one of many reasons why low- andmoderate-income residents lose their homes and lose value in their

72 Gottschalck, supra note 67, at 2. (“Between 2000 and 2011, U.S. aggregate net worth Rincreased from $28.9 trillion to $40.2 trillion. A sizable part of this increase came from achange in the total amount of wealth that Americans held in their homes: in 2011, Ameri-cans held a total of $10.1 trillion in their homes, an increase of $1.5 trillion (17 percent)from 2000. The increase in housing wealth is largely explained by appreciation of homevalues, rather than by increases in home ownership rates, which have remained largelyunchanged over this period.”).

73 Rakesh Kochhar, et al., Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks,Hispanics, PEW RESEARCH CTR. (July 26, 2011), http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/07/26/wealth-gaps-rise-to-record-highs-between-whites-blacks-hispanics/ (“Moreover, about athird of black (35%) and Hispanic (31%) households had zero or negative net worth in2009, compared with 15% of white households.”).

74 Kakesh Kochhar & Richard Fry, Wealth Inequality has Widened Along Racial, EthnicLines Since End of Great Recession, PEW RESEARCH CTR. (Dec 12, 2014), http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/ (“From2010 to 2013, the median wealth of non-Hispanic white households increased from$138,600 to $141,900, or by 2.4%. Meanwhile, the median wealth of non-Hispanic blackhouseholds fell 33.7%, from $16,600 in 2010 to $11,000 in 2013. . . . For example, the home-ownership rate for non-Hispanic white households fell from 75.3% in 2010 to 73.9% in2013, a percentage drop of 2%. Meanwhile, the homeownership rate among minorityhouseholds decreased from 50.6% in 2010 to 47.4% in 2013, a slippage of 6.5%.”).

75 Id.76 Drew Desilver, Black Incomes Are up, but Wealth Isn’t, PEW RESEARCH CTR, (Aug.

30, 2013), http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/30/black-incomes-are-up-but-wealth-isnt/ (“Value of primary residence was the single biggest asset for both groups, butmuch more so for black households: On average, housing wealth accounted for 49% ofblack household assets, compared with 28% for the average white household. But, theaverage home value was far lower for black households: $75,040 versus $217,150.”); seealso Michelle Singletary, Equity in Your Home Doesn’t Translate to Net Worth, THE

WASH. POST (Aug. 25, 2010, 8:32 PM), http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar-ticle/2010/08/25/AR2010082506598.html (“Housing wealth represents a large component oftotal family wealth . . . . In 2007, the primary residence account for 31.8 percent of totalfamily assets.”).



homes.77 The inflexibility in the disposable incomes of low- and mod-erate-income residents often inhibits their ability to pay for the vari-ous costs involved in homeownership upkeep. Homeownership is avital part of helping individuals, particularly African-Americans, ob-tain financial stability and wealth.

Increasing access to affordable homeownership is the cause thatin many ways became my client. I have an individual corporate clientand a “cause client”—affordable homeownership.

1. What is Cause Lawyering?

Lawyers with cause clients are common with the causes of schooldesegregation,78 abortion advocacy,79 or same-sex marriage equality.80

Cause lawyers often choose a client that will advance the lawyer’s cho-sen cause. Martha Minow, Professor of Law at Harvard, calls it “Polit-ical Lawyering.”81 She argues, “political lawyering involves deliberateefforts to use law to change society or to alter allocations of power.”82

These lawyers often pursue their chosen causes through the courts.My chosen cause is the expansion of affordable homeownership. Ilawyer and advocate for increasing affordable homeownership tomore Americans, particularly African-Americans.

The challenges of client-centered lawyering increase when servingmy individual corporate client conflicts with serving my cause client ofaffordable homeownership. I faced this dilemma a number of yearsago. When one of my tenants association clients had the opportunityto purchase its apartment building, the low- and moderate-incomemember-residents needed to decide whether to resell the apartment

77 Josephine Louie et al., The Housing Needs of Lower-Income Homeowners 19(Harvard Univ. Joint Ctr. for Hous. Studies, Working Paper No. 98-8, 1998), http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/research/publications/housing-needs-lower-income-homeowners.

78 See generally Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and ClientInterests in School Desegregation Litigation, 85 YALE L.J. 470 (1976) (reviewing the devel-opment of school desegregation litigation and the attorney-client relationship that evolvedfrom such litigation).

79 See generally Reva B. Siegal, Roe’s Roots: The Women’s Rights Claims That Engen-dered Roe, 90 B.U. L. REV. 1875 (2010) (discussing “movement lawyers” with regard to thepro-choice movement).

80 See generally Arthur S. Leonard, Going for the Brass Ring: The Case for Same-SexMarriage, 82 CORNELL L. REV. 572 (1997) (book review) (detailing same-sex marriagelitigation).

81 See Martha Minow, Political Lawyering: An Introduction, 31 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L.REV. 287 (1996). Minow describes political lawyering as “a lawyer collaborating with dis-advantaged people, not serving them from a distance.” Id. at 288. Further, “[p]oliticallawyers use litigation, legislation, mass media, and social science research, assessing theconsequences of each particular approach by reference to long-term visions of freedom,equality, and solidarity. Political lawyers are partners, for the long haul, with clients andclient communities in struggles for social justice.” Id. at 289.

82 Id. at 289.



building and generate a large cash profit to share amongst the mem-bers, or whether to purchase the apartment building and convert thatbuilding into a condominium or cooperative form of homeownership.If they sold the apartment building, they could make a large sum ofmoney, which would have a major financial impact on their lives.While the residents would have an immediate cash surplus, theywould still be faced with the challenge of finding another place to live.In the real estate market at the time, moving would likely have in-creased their housing costs. If the property were converted to a con-dominium, the goal of homeownership would be accomplished, butthe benefits would only accrue to a few; the only residents who wouldhave been able to stay were those residents whose income and creditscores were high enough to qualify for a mortgage. If the propertywere converted into a cooperative,83 residents’ ability to stay in theproperty would not be limited by their credit score or income, thusallowing more residents to stay in their homes. However, cooperativehousing for low- and moderate-income individuals generally does notoffer the same potential for equity appreciation as is found in condo-minium ownership. The residents were torn between wanting a largepayout in cash, the ability to become an owner of real property at theexpense of some residents being forced to relocate, and the ability toallow all willing residents to remain in the home as joint cooperativeowners and forgo the potential for a financial windfall.

The residents looked to me for guidance. They, and I, recognizedthe opportunity to purchase their apartment building as a once in alifetime opportunity that could provide them with a financial stabilitymany of them had never known. I was torn by their dilemma. As along-time advocate of homeownership, a large part of me wanted toconvince the client to choose to purchase the apartment building andconvert it to a condominium. I struggled to remain objective and tohonor my responsibilities to my actual client without betraying myself-imposed responsibilities to my cause client. Ethically, my first ob-ligation is to represent my individual corporate client, as the rules ofprofessional responsibility do not recognize an ethical obligation to acause client. My obligation to my cause client tempted me to counselthe tenants association to purchase the apartment building and con-vert it to a condominium. My responsibilities to my individual corpo-

83 A housing cooperative is a form of homeownership where a corporate entity isformed to own and manage residential real estate for the residents who reside in the coop-erative property. A cooperative is generally a multi-family property, though it can be mul-tiple dwellings owned by the same cooperative corporation for multi-family use andownership. See Julie D. Lawton, Unraveling the Legal Hybrid of Housing Cooperatives, 83UMKC L. REV. 117, 118 (2015) (explaining what a housing cooperative is and the differ-ences between cooperatives and other types of housing).



rate client tempted me to counsel them to pursue cooperativehomeownership to enable the maximum number of residents to re-main. My client-centered lawyering required that I do neither; thatrather I support and enable the client to pursue its chosen goals. Mysense of responsibility to my individual client and my cause clientwere in conflict not only with each other, but also with my responsibil-ities as a client-centered lawyer.

If the client chose to convert the property to a condominium,those residents who were able to qualify for a mortgage loan wouldbenefit as well as those future residents who would need affordablehomeownership. If the client chose to convert the property to a coop-erative, all current residents would benefit from having affordablehousing as well as the future residents who sought affordable home-ownership. However, only the condominium model would provide thepotential for the direct home equity that has been shown as so impor-tant to the financial stability that I seek to help my clients obtain. Thecondominium model would require those who could not qualify for amortgage to relocate to another property, but be replaced with futurelow- and moderate-income residents who would also benefit from thepotential for home equity, and thus, financial stability. While therewere clear benefits to many of the current residents and the futureresidents, there would be an immediate negative consequence of relo-cation for those residents who were unable to qualify for a mortgage.In other words, to accomplish the goals of my cause client, some of thecurrent residents of my individual corporate client would need tosuffer.

While there was potential for the current and future residents toobtain the home equity, does entangling myself so deeply in my cli-ent’s decisions inadvertently cause me to disempower my clients?Lawyering on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised is wrought withchallenge because even well-intentioned lawyers can further disen-franchise clients by making them dependent upon lawyers and rein-forcing a feeling of helplessness. This is seen in what is called “regnantlawyering”—a version of client-centered lawyering that relies more onimmediate, short-term relief instead of on a longer-term goal of help-ing the client obtain self-sufficiency.84 The ideals of rebellious law-

84 Paul Tremblay, Rebellious Lawyering, Regnant Lawyering, and Street-Level Bureau-cracy, 43 HASTINGS L.J. 947, 953 (1992) (“Indeed, regnant lawyering may be perverselydangerous precisely because it is benign and well-intentioned. Its impact upon dependentclients is harder to resist because the subordination happens in a supportive and caringcontext, and the perpetrator of the subordination is one who the client views as a helper orchampion.”). Please note that my explanation offered here of regnant lawyering is anoversimplification of a very rich concept. For more in depth analysis, please see Angelo N.Ancheta, Essay, Community Lawyering, 81 CALIF. L. REV. 1363 (1993); John O. Calmore,



yering and regnant lawyering are helpful guides when analyzing such aconflict of client-centered lawyering for an individual client and acause client. Rebellious lawyering, a term most notably written aboutby Gerald Lopez, is the concept that lawyers should focus on solvingthe longer-term, greater group or societal needs, instead of, as manypoverty lawyers are often accused of doing, focusing on the immedi-ate, individual need of the individual client.85 Regnant lawyering, an-other term from Lopez, is the more common view of lawyering for thepoor: “lawyering for poor people in a fashion that relies upon conven-tional remedies and institutions, and upon lawyer expertise and domi-nance, even while seeking the client’s ‘best interests.’”86

Rebellious lawyering and client-centered lawyering have similarthemes of focusing on the long-term impact of a lawyer’s interactionwith a client instead of focusing on solving the client’s immediateshort-term legal need. Cause lawyers often must operate with thelong-term goal of greater societal change and forgo the client’s imme-diate need. Those cause lawyers who have a long-term goal of helpingthe client obtain some level of self-sufficiency must also recognize thatthis self-sufficiency also requires eventual independence from thelawyer.

When trying to counsel my client, I must recognize that I am eval-uating these issues based on factors outside of the client’s legal needs.The Model Rules permit an attorney to render legal advice based notonly on the law but also on “moral, economic, social and political fac-tors.”87 As a client-centered lawyer who is also a community develop-ment lawyer, much of the legal work that I do for my clients involvemoral, economic, social, and political factors that might be relevant tomy client’s situation. When my clients decide whether to convert theirapartment buildings to condominiums knowing that the conversionwill displace some of their neighbors, there is a moral consideration ofprotecting the many at the expense of the few. There is a moral con-

A Call to Context: The Professional Challenges of Cause Lawyering at the Intersection ofRace, Space, and Poverty, 67 FORDHAM L. REV. 1927 (1999); Nancy Cook, Looking forJustice on a Two-Way Street, 20 WASH. U. J.L. & POL’Y 169 (2006).

85 Tremblay, supra note 84, at 948 (“The rebellious view builds upon an obligation toempower clients that largely translates into concepts of mobilization, organization, anddeprofessionalization.”). For more in depth discussion of the concept of rebellious law-yering, please see GERALD P. LOPEZ, REBELLIOUS LAWYERING: ONCE CHICANO’S VISION

OF PROGRESSIVE LAW PRACTICE (1992); Gerald P. Lopez, Living and Lawyering Rebel-liously, 73 FORDHAM L. REV. 2041 (2005).

86 Tremblay, supra note 84, at 950 (“A generally overriding ‘ethic of care’ operates tohinder the efforts of individual, street-level providers to postpone offering immediate reliefin order to enhance a later, and perhaps more effective, benefit. By contrast . . . regnantlawyering is better seen as the tendency of care providers to favor the present and identifi-able over the future and unnamed.”).

87 MODEL RULES OF PROF’L CONDUCT R. 2.1 (2013).



sideration of protecting the financial interest of those with higher in-comes at the expense of those with lower incomes. When my clientsdecide whether to convert their apartment buildings from rental tohomeownership, the decision whether to convert to condominiumswith significant potential financial upside or to convert to limited eq-uity cooperatives with much less financial upside involves economicconsiderations. As an attorney working in affordable housing on be-half of low- and moderate-income residents, I had to face, and helpmy clients manage, these non-legal social factors that impacted theirattempts to become homeowners. But, how do I include these factorsin the analysis of protecting my individual corporate client and mycause client?

Some argue that lawyers should not look exclusively at the legalneeds of the client, but should have a broader view of the impact ofthe lawyer’s actions on opposing counsel, the public and the pursuit ofjustice.88 One author posits that a lawyer’s responsibilities to his clientshould be subjugated to the lawyer’s responsibilities to the pursuit ofjustice.89 These arguments decry a lawyer’s narrow view of exclusivelyexamining the client’s legal needs and not including other non-legal orpersonal factors in counseling a client.

2. Lawyering for a Cause Client

When one has a cause client, how do you define your client? Howdo you define a client when your cause is litigated or negotiated foryears or when your cause reflects the needs of dozens, hundreds, orthousands of individuals and may involve significant changes to a pub-lic interest?90 Is more required of me as a cause lawyer when I re-present a group whose work advances my cause client’s needs?91 Whatmore do I require of myself? How do I avoid working harder, negoti-ating more skillfully, being a better lawyer when the goals of my indi-vidual corporate client mesh with the goals of my cause client? Whatfactors influence my lawyering for my cause client?

As a cause lawyer, it is tempting to utilize the law to enactchange, even if using the law undermines the change we, as cause law-yers, seek to obtain. Consider an example given by Steve Bachman, a

88 See generally WILLIAM H. SIMON, THE PRACTICE OF JUSTICE: A THEORY OF LAW-

YER’S ETHICS (1998) (examining questions about the ethics of lawyering).89 Robin West, The Zealous Advocacy of Justice in a Less than Ideal Legal World, 51

STAN. L. REV. 973, 974 (1998) (“The lawyer should indeed zealously advocate, but heshould zealously advocate for justice, not for the satisfaction of the preferences of his par-ticular clientele.”).

90 See e.g., Bell, supra note 78, at 471 (discussing the difficulties faced by civil rights Rlawyers).

91 Id.



partner in the law firm that was general counsel to The Association ofCommunity Organizations for Reform NOW.92 Bachman poses thequestion of how to handle the need for a stop sign at an intersectionthat is causing traffic dangers, including endangering children.93 Alawyer would typically address this by going to court or to the appro-priate administrative agency to request a stop sign. This resolution,according to Bachman, addresses the short-term problem of traffichazards, but exacerbates the longer-term problem of the residents’perceptions of powerlessness by learning, from this process, that law-yers are the medium for effecting change. As cause lawyers, we can bedistracted by the pursuit of accomplishing the ultimate goal: schooldesegregation, the constitutional right to same-sex marriage, or theconstruction or renovation of affordable housing units. However, thatpursuit can undermine what often is the ancillary goal—to empowerthe clients, restructure the power dynamic, help clients obtain self-sufficiency and to effect social change.94

The professional conflict I felt is not new, nor is the difficulty infinding a standard for guidance. Similar to the challenges experiencedby other lawyers advocating for systemic change, I not only feel a roleconfusion for what I feel I owe to the client, I also feel a role confu-sion for what I feel I owe to the cause. In a groundbreaking article,Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and Client Interests in SchoolDesegregation Litigation, the late Professor Derrick Bell discussed hisexperiences working as a civil rights attorney for the school desegre-gation cases. “It is,” he states, “difficult to provide standards for theattorney and protection for the client where the source of the conflictis the attorney’s ideals.”95 The NAACP and the NAACP’s Legal De-fense Fund lawyers experienced this tension while representing fami-lies who sought improved educational opportunities for children insegregated schools while also representing the broader goal of endingschool segregation nationwide.96 The goals of the individual clientoften conflicted with the goals of the cause. In my case, the goals ofthe corporate tenants association often conflicted with the goal of thecause client, the preservation of affordable homeownership.

92 ACORN “is a non-profit corporation comprised of more than 50,000 low- and mod-erate-income families organized into neighborhood groups in over 40 cities across theUnited States.” Steve Bachmann, Lawyers, Law and Social Change, 13 N.Y.U. REV. L. &SOC. CHANGE 1, 5 (1984).

93 Id. at 6.94 Id. at 7. (“These concerns are less about what victories a lawyer might win than

about what sort of groups might be created through social struggle. What is ‘won’ is secon-dary, if not irrelevant. The group that is developed is of primary concern.”).

95 Bell, supra note 78 at 472. R96 Id. at 512–15.



Cause lawyers advocating for immigration reform or domestic vi-olence prevention or same-sex marriage likely experience this roleconfusion when trying to balance the needs of the individual clientagainst the needs of the advocacy. Clients will determine the directionof their cases based on their specific needs. Cause lawyers will makedecisions for the overall advocacy with the goal to promote the causeand obtain the widest relief. There is often an inherent conflict be-tween the goals of the client, who is seeking immediate relief for anarrow wrong or pursuit of an immediate transactional opportunity,and the goals of the cause lawyer, who is seeking the broadest relieffor a systemic wrong or the broadest relief from a single transaction.

Other factors make client-centered lawyering difficult when law-yering for a cause client. Trying to fund a lawyer’s cause client alsoimpacts a client-centered lawyer’s ability to provide objective adviceto the client. Professor Leroy Clark references this in his article indiscussing the impact of funders’ preferences on the types of casescause lawyers choose. Professor Clark describes two clients of a civilrights lawyer: the litigant in the lawyer’s case, and the funders of thelawyer’s cases. He acknowledges that the cases’ “appeal” and the law-yer’s ability to show a “winning” record will undoubtedly impact thelawyers’ choice of cases, and thus, his or her decisions in those cases.97

Transactional lawyers also face these pressures. In my experience,funding for affordable homeownership is largely derived from non-profit organizations and government funding. Generally, thesefunders are willing to provide funding in a manner that maximizes theavailability of affordable homeownership.

My clients, and more disturbingly, I, allow our decisions aboutthe transaction to be influenced, and at times dictated by, the require-ments of our funders. When one of my tenants association clients re-ceived notice of its right to purchase its apartment building, my clientsoften wanted to proceed with the transaction and acquire, renovate,and convert the property to homeownership. Such a transaction re-quired funding, most often from a non-profit or government lender.When these lenders, to promote their causes, limited funding to onlyfunding developments that remained rental buildings, how do I coun-sel my clients? My individual corporate client and my cause clientboth sought homeownership. The preferences of my clients conflictedwith the preferences of our funder. The client-centered lawyer in meshould provide the information about the funder’s requirements ob-jectively and dispassionately and allow the client to make the decision.However, without the funder’s low-interest loans, financing the pro-

97 Leroy D. Clark, The Lawyer in the Civil Rights Movement—Catalytic Agent orCounter-Revolutionary?, 19 U. KAN. L. REV. 459, 469 (1971).



ject would be very difficult. If I remain objective and my clients capit-ulate to the funder’s preferences, neither my individual client nor mycause client achieves their goals. As the objective client-centered law-yer, am I to be indifferent to the outcomes; comforted only by theknowledge of my adherence to client-centered lawyering? The need torespect the preferences of the funder is real. What role do I allow ourfunders requirements to play in my client-centered lawyering’sobjectivity?

The funder’s preferences interfere with my client-centered law-yering in other ways as well. If a funder for an affordable homeowner-ship development is a lender, ultimately, that lender’s goal is to earn areturn on their investment to enable them to fund other develop-ments. The lender will look to fund developments that provide a fi-nancial return. The goal of my individual client in an affordablehomeownership development is to complete the development in amanner that minimizes costs. The goal of my cause client is to maxi-mize the number of affordable homeownership units. As the attor-ney, I cannot ignore the need to please the funders as a means ofaccomplishing the goals of my individual client and my cause client.The ideals of client-centered lawyering and serving my individual cor-porate client and my cause client are yet again in conflict.

If my client rejects the funder’s loan proposal because it does notenable the client to accomplish the client’s goals, how long until thefunder no longer sees me as a viable partner? I am also a return playerwith the government and community lenders that enable me to assistmy clients.98 While it is clear that my ethical responsibility is to myindividual corporate client, I cannot, in honesty, completely ignore therequirements and demands of our funders. As Professor Clark stated:“No organization dependent on a large number of contributors canignore the fact that the ‘appeal’ of the program affects fund-raising.”99

As a cause lawyer, I have at least two clients: the cause of advanc-ing affordable homeownership, and the individual corporate clientthrough whom I work to advance the cause. My role as an attorneymakes clear that the only client of ethical importance is the person orentity with whom I have an established client-lawyer relationship.However, I feel a non-legal obligation to advance the cause of home-ownership as that can accomplish the broader and more impactfulgoal of reducing poverty, increasing self-sufficiency and empoweringmy third client discussed below, my fellow African-Americancommunity.

98 See generally Nancy D. Polikoff, Am I My Client?: The Role Confusion of a LawyerActivist, 31 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV 443 (1996).

99 Clark, supra note 97, at 469. R



C. The African-American Community as My Race Client

My third client, my race client that is my fellow African-Ameri-can community, is the client to whom my obligation most permeatesthroughout my work with my other clients. My race has always beenan indisputable part of my identity. When I think of how I identifymyself, there are many facets of my identity from which to choose—gender, marital status, family status, religion, or profession, to list afew. At the beginning of each semester with my students, I always askthem to list their communities in order of prominence in their identity.In asking myself this same question over the years, I always comeback to my race as the most prominent aspect of my identity. Since Ihave a sense of obligation to my racial community that rises to such alevel that it becomes a race client, I must first discern from where thissense of obligation arises and what is this responsibility I feel I owethem.

I, like many people of color, have always had a sense of my racialidentity—often because my family’s social experience forced it uponthem, but also because society, from when I was very young, requiredme to understand that my racial community was different from that ofothers. My parents, both of whom graduated from a historically blackcollege, experienced racism very early in life. Growing up, my fatherwas prohibited from trying on shoes and clothes that he bought be-cause the white storeowners did not want the clothes “tainted.” Mymother graduated from a segregated high school whose school mascotwas the Rebels, in honor of the South Carolina rebel soldiers. My par-ents were students at historically black South Carolina State College,site of the Orangeburg Massacre where four students were murderedand over two-dozen students were injured by police responding to stu-dent protests of segregation in the small town of Orangeburg. Myparents were insistent that I grew up with a strong sense of racial andself-identity. I was raised in affluent African-American neighbor-hoods. Our home’s bookshelves overflowed with books by, andabout, African-Americans. With this background, I was raised inGeorgia and spent my summers with my grandparents in South Caro-lina where the confederate flag was prominent and racial slurs werecommon. I attended a predominantly African-American high schooland college where I was taught my racial history. From all of this, I feltconnected to other members of my race—a shared history of compli-cated emotions. I understood that I could not have accomplished mygoals without the sacrifices of the men and women who struggledbefore me. I learned from my family that our individual accomplish-ments are a part of a broader struggle that requires each generation toprotect the next. I accepted this responsibility and it has become an



integral part of every day of my life.It would be easier, sometimes, to ignore the needs of my race

client. When I am brutally honest, sometimes I want to. However, Ifeel a debt to those before me. Some may argue that a generationowes nothing to the generation before it. I feel a sense of responsibil-ity to those whose sacrifices made my successes possible. It is easy tosee the responsibility to my parents or to my grandparents. But, thereis also this sense of responsibility I feel to those to whom I have nodirect connection; strangers whose sacrifices positively influenced myability to achieve my goals. I do think, were it not for those strangers,I would not have the same opportunities as I do. Their sacrifices ofsending their children to college, of protesting injustices, of working indeplorable conditions may not, individually, have made a difference.Collectively, however, those sacrifices moved the pendulum. The ag-gregate of their action spurred social change. The social change cre-ated the opportunities for those in the next generation to pursue theirgoals without the threat of violence; or, at least, decreased the threatof violence.

In my efforts to follow the ideals of client-centered lawyering, Iam torn by my sense of multiple responsibilities to my individual cli-ent, my cause client and my race client. My need to protect fellowmembers of my race interferes with my desires to remain neutral andobjective in advising my clients.

As part of my practice, I frequently met with tenants groups whowere looking for an attorney to help them navigate their ability topurchase, renovate, and convert their multi-family apartment build-ings. I, and at times other colleagues, would meet with tenant groupsin the hopes that the tenants association would hire us to representthem. On one such occasion, my colleague, a white female attorney,attended such a meeting with me. The tenants in this meeting werepredominately African-American and elderly; the precise demo-graphic to whom I have always felt a keen sense of responsibility andprotection. The meeting was early on a Saturday morning and wouldinvolve representatives from the development company seeking topurchase and renovate their apartment building. We walked into theroom bustling with tenants busy moving about and getting settled.Suddenly, an older female voice yells out, “I want the black lawyer!”My colleague and I both looked up to see an older African-Americanfemale face smiling at me; she was excited to see someone she felt shecould trust.

In that moment, I felt conflicted. I was humbled that my elderfelt she could trust me. I felt pleased that she would allow herself to



trust me enough to allow me to help her.100 I was, at once, bothpleased and disturbed by her willingness to trust me solely on the ba-sis of my race, without knowing or feeling the need to discover mytraining, experience or skill. I felt some concern about her ambiva-lence to how her statement affected my colleague, even though I havebeen denied opportunities on the basis of my race many times. I feltexposed because this unspoken conversation is usually not held inpublic, although, in truth, there is no real reason not to. I felt a senseof solidarity to the group because of this expression of trust. But,mostly, I felt their expectation that I would protect them because weare of the same race. And, I did feel a heightened sense of responsibil-ity to protect them because we are of the same race. Such feelings area reminder that my sense of responsibility to other members of myrace rises to creating a race client.

As an attorney, I am often asked to speak on behalf of my clients.When I am being honest, I often prefer to speak on behalf of my cli-ents. Yes, I want their voices to be heard, but it is hard to dispute thenarrative that as the repeat player attorney, our voices are receivedbetter.101 As a lawyer and as a real estate development consultant, Iinteracted with the same lenders, government officials and other de-velopers that my clients would need to purchase their apartmentbuildings. It remained imperative that the client’s story be told in amanner that the listener understood.102 It is in moments such as thesethat the ideals of client-centered lawyering are challenging. I wouldhave to trust that my client’s narrative could be communicated in amanner better than I could; I, who in that moment, am the bridgebetween my low- and moderate-income African-American clients andthe often affluent white-dominated profession in which I labor.103

To a certain extent, my challenge in representing my clients is notunique to race. For many of us, we enrolled in law school to be theprotector. We wanted to feel as though we could protect the vulnera-ble from wrong and to help the disempowered gain power. However,once we begin practicing, it becomes clearer how simple and ill-

100 As an attorney, one of our greatest challenges is learning how to enable our clients totrust us. See Michelle S. Jacobs, People from the Footnotes: The Missing Element in Client-Centered Counseling, 27 GOLDEN GATE U. L. REV. 345, 353–61 (1997) (explaining theclient-centered counseling model).

101 See Polikoff, supra note 98, at 456. R102 See generally, Herbert A. Eastman, Speaking Truth to Power: The Language of Civil

Rights Litigators, 104 YALE L.J. 763 (1995) (detailing the importance of telling the client’sstory).

103 But see David Dominguez, Getting Beyond Yes to Collaborative Justice: The Role ofNegotiation in Community Lawyering, 12 GEO. J. ON POVERTY L. & POL’Y 55 (2005)(stressing the importance of emphasizing the clients narative & ability to tell their ownstory).



informed this preference is. Many lawyers become confused trying todetermine how best to help their clients and many become disillu-sioned with the idea that our best help might still be insufficient. Theideas of public interest lawyering, progressive lawyering, and commu-nity lawyering all rest, at least in part, on the idea that we, as lawyers,have a skill set that can be used to assist a client in need. This beliefexists regardless of the race of the client or of the lawyer.

Attorneys of color who view fellow members of our race as ourrace client must learn to balance our sense of obligation to our raceclient with our obligations to our other clients. Our sense of obligationto our race client will continue to permeate our counsel to our individ-ual corporate clients and our cause clients.

Part of my goal as an African-American attorney working in low-and moderate-income African-American communities is to help em-power the residents by helping them become homeowners. But, I alsoam left to wonder whether I really am helping the residents to becomeempowered. To obtain this power, the tenants association must hirean attorney as well as convince lenders to fund their affordable home-ownership developments. The residents become empowered not onlybecause they chose to purchase their apartment building, but also be-cause others in positions of power choose to help them. As ProfessorBell argues in proposing the principle of “interest-convergence,” theinterest of a group without power in achieving equality will be accom-modated only when it converges with the interests of the group withpower.104

The interest-convergence theory proffered by Professor Bell sup-ports the theory of granting power—if one group grants power to theother group while retaining the ability to rescind that grant, has thegroup actually relinquished or granted power? The granting groupclearly has the power if it has the ability to bestow it upon others andit retains power with the ability to rescind it. So, when one group withpower enables low- and moderate-income individuals’ ability to ob-tain some level of power by purchasing their homes, have the re-sidents actually gained any power? The groups with power retain theability to tax and, with it, the ability to terminate the residents’ home-ownership for non-payment of that tax. The groups with power retainthe rights of eminent domain and with it, the ability to terminate theresidents’ ownership. If I, as an attorney, am a co-member of thegroup with power, when I help residents become homeowners, do Iever really relinquish my shared power particularly when I, as theircounsel, determine what information is sufficient for them to make a

104 Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Di-lemma, 93 HARV. L. REV. 518, 523–24 (1980).



well-informed decision? Or, am I, as a member of a group with influ-ence, willing to assist low- and moderate-income individuals to be-come homeowners because our interests now converge?

CONCLUSION

My interests are those of an attorney hoping to be a client-cen-tered lawyer equally true to my multiple clients. Ultimately, lawyersshould not forgo their responsibilities to their personal clients, butshould find a balance that respects the tenets of client-centered law-yering (if that is the guiding principal the lawyer chooses). Each law-yer will determine where that balance lies. But, the tenets of client-centered lawyering do not require us as lawyers to neglect those per-sonal obligations that drive us to be cause lawyers or that guide oursense of obligation to our race client. That overwhelming pull thatpushes us to dedicate more of our professional selves to an individualclient because that client serves the needs of our cause client must berecognized as an integral part of our lawyering, yet balanced withachieving the long term goals of client self-sufficiency.

I have my ethical obligations to my individual client, my choice ofobligations to my cause client, and my very personal sense of obliga-tion to my race client. I am left to straddle these tensions without aclear sense of boundaries or even a clear goal. I am best, it seems,when the interests of these clients converge allowing me to serve themall well at once. I am left to struggle with how to serve them when theinterests are no longer in alignment.

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who is my client? client-centered lawyering with … · clients—my individual corporate client,...

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