SAN FRANCISCO — Melton Cartes wavered between desperation and resignation. He had been trying to catch up with mounting credit cards bills but fell behind when his employer, an ad agency, folded.
He received an ominous notice to appear in court over the unpaid bills.
Living with his girlfriend and trying to get into filmmaking, Cartes hardly could afford hiring a lawyer to advise him about legal options for his upcoming court proceeding.
So on a recent sunny afternoon in San Francisco, he found himself sitting at a table in a bustling Mission District café near Dolores Park, getting legal advice from veteran attorney Annie Thorkelson for $1 per minute.
Thorkelson, who has become disillusioned after 25 years of practice, mostly in family law, came up with the idea to offer legal advice along the lines of the psychiatrist’s booth set up by Lucy in the “Peanuts” comic strip.
“It’s what I always enjoyed most about the law — helping people,” explained Thorkelson, an earnest 51-year-old who becomes more animated as she rails against a legal system she sees as unfair and largely inaccessible.
“Litigation, especially in the 1970s and ’80s, was in fact a way of helping people, through class actions or legislatively, to change the law,” Thorkelson said. “But it has become almost antithetical to that now because of its cost, limitations, the political atmosphere and the complications of modern life that all combine to make litigation counterproductive.”
After getting permission from the owner of the Dolores Park Café, she started her aptly titled Legal Grounds service in late January, with a sign-up sheet and stopwatch.
She said most of her customers seek advice on family law: divorce and custody issues. Others come with landlord or roommate problems, copyright or business issues.
Thorkelson is quick to point out to customers that she is not their legal representative, thereby avoiding some of the legal and ethical obligations that come with an attorney-client relationship.
“I tell them, ‘I’m not your lawyer,’” she noted. “That was one of my big anxieties about doing this.”
After researching the ethical issues of such a service, Thorkelson determined it did not violate the State Bar’s rule against attorney solicitation.
Los Angeles attorney and ethics expert Diane Karpman distinguished between simple advertising, such as Thorkelson does, and solicitation.
The latter, Karpman said, is “much more in your face, where it’s harder for people to say they’re not interested.”
Thorkelson’s service is not unique in California.
Los Angeles attorney Jeff Hughes offers a similar service in businesses that he owns. He provides low-cost legal services at his Legal Grind coffeehouses in Santa Monica and Inglewood and has been honored by the Los Angeles County Bar Association for his work.
Thorkelson, after graduating from Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C., in 1980, decided to practice what she calls “progressive” law and worked for Legal Aid, specializing in civil rights, women’s rights and poverty issues.
Since coming to California in the 1980s, she has worked as a research attorney and has practiced business, entertainment and tax law.
Thorkelson also did a stint at Oakland’s Kazan, McClain, Abrams, Lyons, Farrise & Greenwood, representing workers who had been exposed to asbestos, and she does contract work from her Guerrero Street home office.
For a time, she worked for law firms in San Francisco’s Financial District but found it unsatisfying.
“Working downtown didn’t allow me to represent enough of the people whose lives I really cared about helping,” Thorkelson recalled. “I had wonderful clients, but it was still having to deal with the culture of lawyering, which I find painful.”
Between customers at the café, Thorkelson explained what motivated her ad hoc service.
“People get afraid,” she said. “There’s so much conventional wisdom that the law is going to absolutely screw you to the wall, and if anybody threatens a lawsuit or waves a summons in their face, it’s terrifying for most people. They have no idea what’s going to happen or what they need to do. I’ve seen people get completely financially wiped out by going to lawyers and still lose. Even if you’re on the correct side of the legal issue, there’s still no guarantee you’ll win.”
A lot of people come to her seeking simply to double-check their private attorney’s advice, and she often suggests that they find a new one.
Others are pro pers who want to appeal their cases.
“Almost no appellate attorneys will take those cases because the record is a mess,” Thorkelson said.
As a lawyer, she said, “you’re going to spend five times more time on them than you can possibly get paid for, but [the pro pers] have no place to go, so I take on these cases, but I regularly don’t get paid.”
Most of the time, she suggests that customers draft a letter to the person they’re in a dispute with, and she tells them to bring it back so she can review it.
“This is not a feeder for my private law practice,” Thorkelson said. “I just want to give advice. It’s altruistic, but it’s also just not wanting to litigate.”
She said one of her shortest sessions cost the customer only $2.50, when she looked over and OK’d a letter in a landlord-tenant dispute.
Cartes, the man battling the credit card collectors, spent $70 getting advice from Thorkelson.
“Call to see if there’s any room for settlement negotiations,” Thorkelson advised him.
She also advised him to file a response immediately to avoid a default judgment.
Most of her customers are working-class people who have questions about simple legal issues, Thorkelson said.
“I help the ‘falling between the cracks’ crowd,” she explained - those who don’t qualify for low-income legal aid but who also can’t afford to hire a private lawyer. “The alternative is to go downtown and give somebody a $25,000 retainer. If you only have a question, who can you ask?”
Thorkelson also volunteers for a monthly free legal clinic at the public library offered by the Bar Association of San Francisco.
Tiela Chalmers, who oversees the Legal Advice and Referral Clinic, said Thorkelson is a real asset to the program.
“She’s really very good with clients; she’s very clear and very helpful,” Chalmers said. “She’s very sympathetic but also very direct and to the point.”
Karpman called Thorkelson’s service “a brilliant idea.”
“She’s serving an absolutely necessary need in society in making legal services accessible to the middle class,” Karpman said. “I like bringing the practice of the law to the people. The middle class can’t get representation, and their questions are just as important.”
For Cartes, the most valuable aspect of Thorkelson’s service was “peace of mind.”
“Just being able to have a place to get answers, it’s a small but enormous help,” he said. “I know how to deal with this thing — that’s the coolest thing about her service.”