After four years at the helm of the Community Law Center, Professor Cynthia Mertens yields the Director’s baton to Professor Angelo Ancheta. She leaves behind a string of accomplishments that have transformed the Center into a unique institution of community-based legal education.
Professor Mertens became the Director in 2001, while the Center was in East San José. At the time, the Center was divided into two separate buildings along Alum Rock Avenue. Clients, students and staff had to go from one building to the other simply to access a file or discuss a case with a client in one of several cubicles that left no room for privacy. After hearing the news that the building was about to be sold, Professor Mertens, in her own quiet but diligent manner, immediately started looking for more appropriate office space. Unfortunately, the search did not yield any affordable or sustainable rental space, but the circumstances revealed some traits in Professor Mertens that became characteristic of her during her tenure.
A true socialite in all milieus, she was able to gain the support of the University through SCU’s President, Father Locatelli, and the then-Law School Dean Mack Player as well as the Community Law Center staff, for a move that had its own controversy because it would take the Center closer to the University but away from East San José and the community it had served. A drop in client attendance was feared. To address these concerns, she designed a representative survey to poll the effects of the move on the clients, and in fact discovered that clients did not mind traveling a few extra miles on the same avenue to receive the Center’s services. Once everyone was on board, the Community Law Center opened its state-of-the-art facility on 1030 The Alameda, just two years into her tenure. A zero drop in client attendance later confirmed that she had been right all along.
In 2004, the Center gave legal counsel, ranging from brief consultations to full representation cases, to over 900 low-income clients. During the period of May 2004 to June 2005, the Center logged more than 11,000 volunteer hours from first, second and third-year law students, attorneys and undergraduate students acting as interpreters for a total estimated market value of $ 642,900.00. The high quality services provided for free by these individuals had a direct impact on the community that would not have been possible without the structures that Professor Mertens helped establish and strengthen at the Center.
It’s not easy to keep the Community Law Center’s constituencies satisfied, but Professor Mertens made the best out of every opportunity to do just that. For instance, in an effort to increase the Center’s community outreach, she instituted and expanded the number of Auto Fraud, Workers’ Rights, Immigration and Tenants’ Rights workshops given in various locations throughout the community. In these workshops, SCU Law students, supervised by attorneys who are experts in their fields, present the information in PowerPoint format and, sometimes, with the help of interpreters. Students gain the knowledge, confidence and skills that can better prepare them in their careers; the community benefits, and the staff and volunteer attorneys have an opportunity to teach what they love. In 2005 alone, the Center’s students and volunteer attorneys have offered 33 workshops that have benefited more than 950 people.
Her efforts have truly raised the profile of the Community Law Center within the University, the state, the country, and even internationally. For instance, in 2002, a contingent of four Brazilian law students and the President of the São Paolo BAR-equivalent traveled to the Center to compare notes on the benefits of a community-based legal education and to see how they could strengthen a similar program in their own country. When their trip was about to be cancelled due to insufficient lodging funds, Professor Mertens readily offered her home for two weeks to all of them and issued them keys for convenience (she once revealed that she had lost count of the keys she had issued over the years to family, friends, and foreign visitors). In 2003, the Dean and a professor from Murdoch University School of Law, Western Australia, also traveled to share notes with the Community Law Center’s immigration attorney and Professor Mertens to address similar issues back home. In spite of her demanding schedule split into teaching, grading exams, managing the Center, and being a mother and wife, she always seems to find time and graciousness to make people feel at home.
Professor Mertens took the reigns of the Community Law Center, an organization with a $1 million budget, during the technology bust of the Silicon Valley, which affected state, county and local budgets. The Center depended on these entities for about half of its budget, so when these sources of money dried up, a sudden drop in the Center’s coffers was not really surprising. What was truly surprising was Professor Mertens’ uncanny speed in creating and sustaining new sources of support. Relying on her vast number of connections in this and other communities, she was able to rally foundations, local firms, alumni and individual donors whose contributions now account for more than 60% of the Center’s budget.
It was due in large part to her previous association with Professor George Alexander, a former Dean of the Law School, and his wife, Katharine, that motivated the Alexanders to invest in the Community Law Center through an endowment. Their generous contribution now generates between $40,000 to $50,000 yearly to be used for the Center’s operating expenses. To acknowledge their gesture, the East San José Community Law Center was officially renamed the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center, or KGACLC, in May 2004. It is because of this and all of her other efforts that the Center has welcomed Professor Ancheta, its new director, with a modest surplus in its budget for this year. Not surprisingly, Professor Ancheta has asked her to co-chair the KGACLC Leadership Council, a newly-formed group of high visibility individuals who will assist in raising funds for the Center.
Professor Mertens has been working with Professor Ancheta since May of this year to ensure a smooth transition. To recognize her for her hard work, the new director and staff hosted a luncheon in her honor on August 18, during which she was presented with a plaque and a surprise: the “Cynthia Mertens Award” sponsored by Katharine and George Alexander which will generate a $1,000 gift to be given to a person “who best served the Center’s work in the manner of Cynthia Mertens" (detailed criteria to be determined). Although the entire staff at the Community Law Center is saddened by her departure, they are also excited about the new trails to be blazed by Professor Ancheta.
Professor Mertens, you will be missed, but your accomplishments, boundless energy and example will inspire us to reach new heights in the achievement of the Center’s mission: to educate law students in accordance with the highest professional and ethical standards by serving individuals and communities in need with competence, conscience and compassion, through pro bono legal representation and education.
Written by Sergio Lopez
KGACLC Staff
