 Tanya
Neiman's resume lists an impressive array of legal services created over her 24 years as a
lawyer: help for the homeless, AIDS and cancer patients, a project to prevent home equity
fraud, job training for welfare recipients. "For Tanya," says San Francisco
attorney Jack Londen, "the law is an instrument for the improvement of the lives of
real people."In recognition of her career as a champion of the disadvantaged,
Neiman received the Loren Miller Legal Services Award, the State Bar's top honor at the
Annual Meeting this month.
Neiman's efforts have "made it possible for an enormous number of people to obtain
legal assistance and enabled many attorneys to funnel their desire to provide pro bono
care for needy clients," says Betsy Johnsen, an attorney with the AIDS Legal Referral
Panel, one of the agencies Neiman helped conceive.
When she joined the San Francisco bar association's Volunteer Legal Services Program in
1982, Neiman was the only fulltime employee. The program offered a monthly "advice
only" clinic and had a volunteer pool of 200 lawyers.
Today, with Neiman as director, VLSP has 25 employees and is the largest full-service
provider of legal aid in San Francisco. It sponsors a broad array of projects involving
more than 5,000 volunteers who serve nearly 30,000 clients. In one year alone, volunteers
racked up 131,439 hours of pro bono time, with an estimated value of $18 million.
In addition, the program offers monthly and special-subject clinics in areas covering,
among others, guardianship, battered women, immigrant children, consumer credit, and
bankruptcy.
Londen, who has known Nieman for more than 15 years, says before she took over VLSP,
pro bono programs were organized to fit clients' problems into "cubbyholes."
Neiman's philosophy, on the other hand, is to approach clients with a concern for
improving their lives with the help of lawyers.
She takes a holistic approach that combines social services with legal advocacy.
Cooperation and collaboration with other legal services providers also avoids duplication
of effort and more efficient delivery of services.
Among the projects Nieman conceived is the successful AIDS Legal Referral Panel, which
helps hundreds of people with issues such as wills, benefits, insurance and bankruptcy.
Motivated in part by her own battle against breast cancer more than 10 years ago, she
started the Cancer Legal Assistance Program to provide both direct legal service and
community outreach to patients.
Describing Neiman as a warm person without pretention, Londen says, "When Tanya
asks for something, people love to say yes." |
