Passion For Justice Fuels Nonprofit Law Firm Former Public Defenders Take Alternate Approach

The new law offices of Sheehan, Porter and Lindholdt would not be mistaken for the offices of Stuffy, Filthy and Rich.

Aromatherapy candles flicker down the hall from a room arranged for Zen meditation. Sierra Clubbers are as likely to sit at the conference table as senior partners. And the staff members talking about changing the world are three veteran public defenders who have seen more lives fall apart than they can lie awake at night and grieve about.

If the Center for Justice, opening next week, doesn’t seem like any other private law firm in Spokane, neither will the caseload or clientele. The staff envisions a place where attorneys, law students and clients will tackle issues from the environment, to family law to homelessness.

“A nonprofit law firm committed to the experience of Justice, with those of limited or no resources or influence, through compassion and an awareness of the sacredness of the Earth,” reads the mission statement written by executive director James L. Sheehan.

“That’s Jim,” says Dick Cease, the former Spokane County public defender who hired Sheehan more than 15 years ago.

Even among the ranks of impassioned and embattled public defenders in Spokane, Sheehan always stood out.

As the attorney representing poor people accused of murder, child molestation, and other crimes, Sheehan would pull clothing out of his closet for clients who had none. He’d move courtroom observers with his compassion for accused murderers like Thomas Maupin or Jason Wickenhagen. He is so acutely opposed to the death penalty that when client Dwayne Woods asked for - and received - the death penalty, it was Woods who comforted Sheehan afterward.

Now, a year after taking early retirement, the former Spokane County assistant public defender is back. He’s recruited former assistant public defenders Gloria Finn Porter and Karen S. Lindholdt to work as “attorneys and advocates” alongside him.

“I was a true child of the 1960s,” Sheehan says. “I wanted to change the world. Now, I just want to change Spokane.”

“Jim is not motivated by making money, by making a name for himself or enhancing his prestige in the community. He is fundamentally motivated by his interest in doing justice. I would like to think most lawyers are, but Jim is almost exclusively motivated by that,” says George Critchlow, executive director of University Legal Assistance at Gonzaga Law School.

The University law clinic Critchlow oversees represents hundreds of low-income clients in Spokane but turns away hundreds of others. The Spokane Bar Association’s Volunteer Lawyer Program last year served more than 357 people directly, consulted with 582 others, and sent 100 people to divorce seminars, but cannot provide every person with a volunteer attorney. Columbia Legal Services and the Northwest Justice Project both serve clients in Spokane and surrounding counties in civil matters, but say demand greatly outstrips the staffing available.

“The need is monumental for people who don’t have resources,” Sheehan says.

Seattle attorney Leonard Schroeter, one of the state’s foremost social justice attorneys of the past 50 years, says the gap between people with access to legal services and those with none is at a crisis proportion.

“A majority of people who have reasonable and appropriate legal problems don’t have access to legal help. It’s that severe. It’s very, very high, at least in civil area,” Schroeter says.

Sheehan has been thinking of the imbalance for years.

Sheehan, 54, grew up near the University of Washington campus, the son of a housepainter and housewife. After graduating from college in California, he served two years in the Army. As an officer at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 1966, he witnessed frank racism and ways the system works against poor people.

After his discharge, he enrolled in Gonzaga University Law School. He was working as a bailiff at the courthouse when he met Cease, whose compassion and decorum deeply affected him. After graduation, Sheehan spent five years as a public defender on the West Side and another five years coaching and teaching religion, history and English at Seattle Prep.

Sheehan was visiting Cease in Spokane when the public defender asked him to join the staff. Colleagues say Sheehan out-worried and out-cared for his clients in his 15 years. He left the public defender’s office last year.

When Sheehan walked into Porter’s downtown law office several months later to ask his former colleague to join him in a new, unorthodox law firm, it took “two seconds” for her to say “Yes.”

“In a city the size of Spokane, a place like this can make a difference,” Porter, 39, says.

They decided to knock down a wall in Porter’s office in the Minnesota Building, 423 W. First, and ask assistant public defender Lindholdt to join them.

In their years defending the poor in criminal cases in Spokane, the three attorneys repeatedly saw how poverty, homelessness and chemical dependency were inevitably part of their clients’ problems. But the crushing caseload of the public defender’s office and the limits of the role frustrated their efforts to help.

“It isn’t like one day you’re a victim and the next you’re a perpetrator, there is a lot of overlap,” Sheehan says.

Although they are criminal lawyers, the three say they don’t want to become “Public Defender South” but hope to handle civil cases, as well.

Porter, a graduate of Gonzaga University Law School, hopes to enroll a myriad of attorneys, students and community experts in their work. Lindholdt is a 31-year-old graduate of the University of Idaho Law School whose interests include the environment and animal rights. Her husband, Paul, is the chairman of the Upper Columbia River Group of the Sierra Club.

The center’s board of directors include Rusty Nelson of the Peace and Justice Action League; Rosanna Peterson, president of Washington Women Lawyers, and Richard Fasy, the top trial attorney for the Spokane County Public Defender. The office is upstairs from Steve Eugster.

Sheehan used private financing to open the center and is counting on foundations and grants to provide continued support.

He says he is driven and motivated by a combination of spirituality and humor. He calls himself a “Zen Catholic” who began meditating after taking a class at Gonzaga, a practice he continues daily. His dream is to stem the tide of rampant consumerism and environmental destruction. He wants to change the world.

“If you run into a lawyer who has been around 25 years and has this kind of passion, you’ll end up with a lawyer who has the skill and wherewithal to make a difference,” Critchlow says.

Veteran advocate Schroeter says the payoff of public interest work is never financial as much as spiritual.

“You’re never happier than when you’re doing what you believe.”