Volunteer
With the eviction crisis looming, we are in critical need of volunteer attorneys. CPLP will provide training and support throughout the volunteer process. Will you help us keep vulnerable neighbors in their homes?
Volunteer Spotlight
Volunteer attorneys are the lifeblood of CPLP. Juggling the demands of career and family, each one carves out time to provide legal support to neighbors facing eviction and homelessness. Here are some of their stories.
Ed Barad
Ed Barad is one of Colorado’s most respected real estate attorneys and serves as chair of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s pro bono eviction law team. His skillful negotiations in eviction and habitability cases have enabled his clients retain their homes or find alternative housing. “If you don’t have a home, you don’t have anything,” he says.
Clients remark on Mr. Barad’s genuine concern for their well-being and his uncommon kindness and generosity. Mr. Barad also invests a great deal of energy in the recruitment and mentoring of new CPLP attorney volunteers. “You have a skill that you can use to repair the world. That’s why you became a lawyer…to seize this sacred opportunity to help the unfortunate, to help those who would have no home without you.”
Blake Hansen
Blake Hansen, an Associate at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, believes that participation in public service is the hallmark of a strong democracy. He performed disaster relief work with Americorps after Hurricane Katrina and later served combat tours in Afghanistan and Yemen as a Marine Corps infantry officer. Mr. Hansen credits both experiences with exposing him to people of different backgrounds and preparing him to lead with empathy in his professional pursuits.
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“I think one of the most important lessons I’ve learned through my public service is that you have to meet everyone where they are in life,” he says. As a volunteer attorney, Mr. Hansen uses his legal expertise to keep vulnerable Coloradans in their homes. “If I was a carpenter, I would build cabinets on the side as a form of community service. As an attorney, this is my skillset, so it’s a way that I can provide benefits to others in a unique way that others can’t.”