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19 March 2012 – Saint George Day 1: Utah Legal Services at the Southern Utah Community Legal Center
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19 March 2012 – Saint George Day 1: Utah Legal Services at the Southern Utah Community Legal Center
Posted By Theodore Ko, Mar 21, 2012
We arrived at the offices of the Southern Utah Community Legal Center at 8:00 a.m. Leah Jensen, the staff attorney met us there and gave us a cheerful and warm welcome. The office is small, located in a building with various other services, including insurance and financial services. Ms. Jensen is the sole attorney at the office and is assisted by a sole paralegal named Sherry. We The office has four rooms, including the lobby, Leah’s Office, a back office with two cubicles, and a conference room. Leah gave us assignments ranging from cite checking, filing for domestic violence (DV) related divorce, and court observations. We also worked on legal researching involving appeals of Medicaid revocations and the ability of the trial courts (known as district courts in Utah) to award attorney fees to legal services corporations. Some of us were able to observe court proceedings. Saint George has a very new court house located in the historic heart of the city. Rising nearly five stories, the Fifth Judicial District Court House is adorned in red brick, features large rectangular windows, and has white tower atop of a peaked dark gray shingle roof. The interior is dark rock flooring with a deep cherry wood paneling on the stairs and the walls of the hallways. The court rooms are large and open areas with arched ceilings, more wood paneling, and large windows for natural light. They were comparable to the court rooms in the federal courthouse in downtown Sacramento. We witnessed the pre-trial morning calendar proceedings of the criminal court and preliminary proceedings of a family law matter. We were sent to view an opposing party who had been on the criminal calendar for a recent arrest. The proceedings were brisk, the judges were fair and seemed collegial with the attorneys. Generally, the attorneys seem to want to work together and the adversarial system does not seem too present in these preliminary matters. For fun, some of us explored Pioneer Park, running up to the park which is on top of a plateau on the north side of the city. Pioneer Park, which has a fair amount of construction around it to make it more accessible, features a prominent and large rock with the word “Dixie” spray-painted in white in about 20-30 foot tall letters. We sampled local food, in separate groups, including Jimmy John’s sandwiches, Thai food, and the Pizza Factory. The city is certainly pedestrian friendly and we walked to many places, but we often seem to be the only ones on the sidewalks, with the streets populated with many cars during the day.