Why Does Boston Bar Help Only Single Women?

Opinion
Why Does Boston Bar Help Only Single Women?

By Atty. J. Edward Pawlick
June 8, 2001

During emails with Joan Lukey, President of the Boston Bar Association, she asked why I am so critical of the poverty lawyers that she funds with our tax dollars. She asked the following:

“Did you consider yourself to be ‘tolerant’ of those in need of assistance, in your criticism of the BBA's plea for greater funding for the delivery of legal services for the poor?”

I’ve no doubt that Atty. Lukey would shed tears, as I have done every day this week, if she could hear the travails of Heidi Howard’s children as the embattled mother strives to keep her family together in the face of unethical, illegal attacks from DSS that are never-ending.

But Lukey will provide no lawyers or other help for Heidi Howard with the tax dollars which we have entrusted to her. Why? How can Lukey be so hard-hearted? Isn’t that what those lawyers are for -- to protect us when state bureaucrats are breaking the law in their torture of a citizen? (And my use of the word “torture” is not overstated in this case.)

Doesn’t she know what is going on in the courts or doesn’t she care?

The answer is that Atty. Lukey’s help in such disputes is extended only to single women. It never goes to women who are still with their husbands. And it never goes to any man.

How can this be? Why won’t she give help to the man, Ken Newell, whose family has been severely damaged by the Boston Bar lawyers . . .

. . . or to David Luisi, whose children have been hounded and destroyed (no exaggeration) by the poverty lawyers from Hale and Dorr (of which Lukey is a Senior Partner) . . .

. . . or to Harry Stewart, another man who finally triumphed over five lawyers from the prestigious firm of Foley, Hoag and Eliot by defending himself without a lawyer (but only after he had spent six months in jail on false charges).

We don’t have space to name all the good people that the Boston Bar refuses to help because they don’t fall into the status of “politically correct.”

It’s too bad that there is no lawyer anywhere in Massachusetts who has the time, the desire and the money to challenge this feminist, legal aid system which is so grossly unfair in its application.

Every citizen should criticize the Boston Bar system which selectively helps only a limited group of “the poor.”

We have advised Atty. Lukey that we will print in full any response she has to this article.