On six Saturdays throughout the school year, a cross section of the Athens legal community joins with University of Georgia faculty, staff and students to host pop-up legal clinics.

Organized by Athens paralegal Terri Mobley, State Court Judge Ryan Hope and UGA Law Clinical Associate Professor Elizabeth Grant, the pop-up clinics offer advice on a variety of legal matters to underserved community members.

“The pop-up clinics provide free legal consultations to either help people represent themselves, or to point them in the direction of other services,” Grant said. “Many people served cannot afford an attorney and have issues that fall outside those handled by law school clinics or legal services agencies, so a pop-up clinic may be their only legal help.”

The clinics are hosted in strategically accessible locations in Athens-Clarke County, including places like Goodwill, the Athens-Clarke County Library, and churches on the east side and west side of Athens. During the 2024-2025 academic year, clinics served 289 community members from 25 counties seeking advice on custody issues, landlord-tenant disputes, wills and probate and more.

“It’s about as all-volunteer as it gets,” Hope said. “And the community has bought in and sees the value in what we are doing.”

The volunteer effort spans a variety of backgrounds — including judges, private attorneys, legal services attorneys, paralegals, UGA School of Law clinical faculty and students, UGA undergraduate students and other volunteers. Although judges cannot provide legal advice, they help recruit the attorney volunteers, bring court forms and emphasize the importance of the clinics.

Since they began in 2017, the clinics have expanded considerably, growing from about 30 people seeking legal assistance to up to 90 people at each clinic. Hope and Grant have seen how the clinics help people resolve longstanding issues, including one person needing help responding to a lawsuit to resolve an old credit card debt.

“I recall that one man tried to finalize his divorce in a nearby county with child support forms he had purchased on the internet, but his petition had been rejected twice,” Grant said. “An attorney at the pop-up clinic was able to help him complete the correct child support forms for free, and as a result his petition was finalized.”

In addition to supporting community needs, the pop-up clinics also enhance the UGA Law students’ understanding of the legal profession and community needs.

“It’s useful for students to see community collaboration in action, shadow attorneys and see different lawyering styles,” Grant said. “In the clinics, students are exposed to the everyday legal problems that people have and see how one person can have overlapping problems, like a family law issue that also implicates disability law.”

UGA Law students are joined at the clinics by a variety of other UGA students who are interested in serving the community. Some students serve as translators for Spanish speaking residents, and members of the Kappa Alpha Pi pre-law and government fraternity lead a crafts table to keep children occupied while their parents receive legal guidance.

Jamie Parrott, a job coach at the East Athens Goodwill Career Center, has seen the benefits of hosting a pop-up clinic.

“At Goodwill we are constantly looking at ways we can eliminate barriers for individuals and help them go to work. All too often, a lack of access to quality legal advice and counsel can prevent people from achieving their goals,” Parrott said. “The partnership with Athens Access to Justice and UGA’s law school is special, allowing us to offer the community a service they otherwise would not be able to access.”

Ultimately, School of Law Dean Usha R. Rodrigues said, the legal profession is truly a service profession.

“Helping and serving others is the heart of what lawyers do. Regular participation by our students and faculty in Athens-Clarke County pop-up clinics complements the tremendous work also done through the law school’s 18 clinics and externship programs. These valuable opportunities not only provide a great opportunity to improve the lives of others but also allow our students to develop real-world lawyering skills,” Rodrigues said. “I am pleased to share that our students have averaged upwards of 87,000 service-learning hours annually over the past few years.”