Colleen Foley ’83 and Patrick Dunphy ’73

Colleen Foley and Patrick (Pat) Dunphy are, respectively, the executive director and board director of Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, a nonprofit with a mission to create a more just society by providing low-income clients with legal representation in proceedings involving everything from housing security and consumer protections to immigration and civil rights. 

Foley: There are so many vital rights at stake when someone goes before any kind of judicial official. Our goal is to provide really high-quality legal services regardless of someone's income so that when they get in front of the court, they have an advocate and they are treated the same as anyone else who comes in the door. 

Dunphy: As a lawyer, what better way to get involved in people’s lives than to help the law serve them? It was a really easy choice when the opportunity came up for me to work on the board at the Legal Aid Society. It was an opportunity to fulfill what a law degree should be about, and that is to serve a socially useful purpose. What I do goes beyond just being able to get a monetary recovery and pass that on to the individuals who I represent. 

Foley: When you encounter people in the system who aren’t being treated equitably, you have the opportunity to change that. At Legal Aid, we’ve had big wins on that front. Our eviction defense program has moved the dial on tenant representation from 3 percent to 20 percent on average in its three-year pilot. Evictions have huge ramifications for families and neighborhoods. By helping households, you allow kids to stay in school and parents to keep their jobs.  

Dunphy: There's a whole world in the United States that is living on the edge. If you can change one person's world with your law degree and your skill set as a lawyer, that is a valuable contribution. That is a win. It doesn't have to be changing legislation and making an earth-shattering impact on everything you touch. It's taking care of everyday people with everyday problems who couldn't make it to the other end of those problems if they didn't have a lawyer helping them through it. ◽