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Ben Smith
March 2008
By Stacy Rupprecht Butler
The Outstanding Pro Bono
Attorney for
March is Ben Smith.
Smith began
volunteering with the VLP
in early 2007.
Over the course of the
last year Smith
has participated in all
of the VLP’s
Domestic Relations
Clinics. Smith
has also recently joined
the ranks of
those volunteers who
participate in the
VLP’s Child Support Court
Project. In
this clinic Mr. Smith
supervises law
students as they review
the pleadings of
pro per litigants at
domestic default hearings to make sure that their child
support has been
calculated accurately. If the paperwork is deficient, the
student enters the
individual’s information into a computer and then prints out
new and accurate
documents. Although he has been with the program for a
relatively short period
of time, Smith has already provided legal assistance to
84 clients in need. The
VLP’s monthly award is a distinct honor: of the 1100
attorneys who volunteer
their time with VLP, only 12 receive the VLP’s
Outstanding Pro Bono
Attorney award each year.
Q&A
with Ben Smith:
How
long have you lived in Tucson ?
I moved to Tucson with my
parents from Boston in 1952, when Tucson was a
dusty small town and I
was five years old. I loved it and I spent most of my
spare time riding my bike
around in the desert, looking for scorpions, tarantulas,
and ever-elusive
rattlesnakes. Arizona and the Southwest got into my bones
when I was young, partly
because my father, an archaeologist, was so
interested in the history
and pre-history of this area.
Where
did you go to college?
I graduated from Antioch
College, where I majored in Philosophy. I did graduate
work in Philosophy at
Johns Hopkins, until I finally concluded that it wasn't the
right field for me.
I really liked the soft-shelled crab sandwiches in Baltimore,
but I always missed the
Southwest. I managed to get back to Tucson to live in
1980.
What is
the history of your practice of law?
I graduated from The
James Rogers College of Law at the U of A in 2001. I
decided to take the Bar
Exam so that I could practice in Arizona if I wanted
to later. My family
suggested last year that I volunteer at VLP. Alex, my son,
is a first-year law
student here, and I try to give him moral support based on
my experiences from not
so very long ago.
What
are your favorite Tucson restaurants?
I've got a couple of
favorite restaurants: Shiskebab House; El Minuto; Kingfisher;
and In 'n' Out Burger.
What
drives you to volunteer with VLP?
I have found volunteering
for VLP a very rewarding experience, and something I
would recommend to almost
any attorney. VLP has a wonderful staff that I have
enjoyed getting to know
in the last year or so. And at the end of the day, it's a
good feeling to have been
able to give people assistance with problems or
difficulties in their
lives that they might not be able to find help with elsewhere.
Are you
a dog or a cat person?
I don't have either a dog
or a cat, but I do have several desert tortoises. These
are ideal pets, requiring
nothing, but giving all they've got.
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Past Pima
County Monthly Award Winners
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