Program gives seniors, disabled, working poor a legal leg up

Published: 2005-03-08

CHICAGO (CNS) -- A law office run by a Catholic bishop and a Jewish lawyer for the working poor, seniors and the disabled might have the makings of a great TV series, but to Caroline Schoenberger, the Chicago Legal Clinic is "more like a fairy tale." "I don't think there's another place like it," said Schoenberger, the former Chicago consumer affairs commissioner who became the Chicago Legal Clinic's supervisory attorney last fall. Schoenberger's primary project is a new program at the clinic called Legal Advocates for Seniors and People With Disabilities. It operates out of a new office on Chicago's North Side. The privately funded agency was founded in 1981 by DePaul University law school classmates Edward Grossman and then-Father Thomas J. Paprocki, now a Chicago auxiliary bishop, when the shutdown of the South Chicago steel mills left thousands of families financially stranded.

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