When Foundation board member Bill Dowling was a young attorney at Squire, Sanders, and Dempsey in Cleveland, he signed up for a program that had a profound effect on his career. Dowling worked for the westside office of The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland for a month under then-director Tom Weeks, an experience that would cement his devotion to legal aid and access to justice, a commitment he has maintained in the decades since.
“I loved the work I did for Cleveland Legal Aid,” he said. “I was very much impressed by the relevance and the goodness of that work, and it inspired me to remain involved as a lawyer.”
From then on, Dowling accepted pro bono cases from legal aid whenever his schedule allowed. As his experience in the law grew, so did his commitment to service. Throughout his career, he has served on and chaired the board of Community Legal Aid Services (formerly Western Reserve Legal Services), chaired the Ohio State Bar Association’s Access to Justice Committee, and has been an Ohio Access to Justice Foundation board member since 2011.
In 2004, Dowling joined the Akron Bar Association’s Board of Trustees, eventually becoming president in 2006. While chair of the Akron Bar’s pro bono committee, he met with judges on the Akron Municipal Court, anxious to learn how the Akron Bar could help with the administration of their courts.
“With one voice, the [judges] said, help us with driver’s licenses,” Dowling said. “They described what a critical issue it was, especially to poor people with suspended licenses, to get a reinstated driver’s license and driving privileges.”
Reliable transportation is crucial for Ohioans who need to get to work to support their families, particularly in areas where public transportation is limited. Dowling and the committee took the judges’ feedback and developed the Volunteers Assisting Licensed Individual Drivers (VALID) program. VALID is a free monthly clinic that helps Akron-area residents navigate the driver’s license reinstatement process.
Dowling and his fellow committee members recruited and trained volunteer lawyers to staff the clinic, building a model that legal aids across the state have replicated, and for which he was awarded the Ohio State Bar Association’s John and Ginny Elam Pro Bono Award in 2018.
On the first day of VALID in 2013, Dowling woke up to a foot of snow. With roads blocked and the conditions dismal, he expected a low turnout. Instead, he arrived to more than 100 people in line, eager to talk to a volunteer lawyer about reinstating their driver’s license. Since that day, there has been a VALID clinic every month.
“I estimate that we’ve counseled 4,000 to 5,000 people on how to get their licenses back,” he said. “The process is very cumbersome. It can be very expensive. It’s almost incomprehensible to people who aren’t used to navigating bureaucracies. It remains difficult. But we’ve helped a lot of people. And so, I’m really proud.”
The Ohio Access to Justice Foundation is the largest funder of civil legal services in Ohio. A gift to the Foundation supports Ohio’s legal aids.