What do you do in your 'day job'?
I am a solo practitioner at Eckert Enyart Attorneys at Law in Belleville. I specialize in criminal defense, farmworkers’ rights, product liability, and personal injury. I am the only bilingual attorney between Springfield and Cairo. I also provide courtroom domestic violence, medical, and law enforcement interpretive services
What hasn't Alex done?! A Legal Self-Help Center navigator, Spanish translation volunteer, and Community Navigator for ILAO:
- 2009-2010 - I worked as Navigator in the St. Clair County Legal Self-Help Center [an Illinois Legal Aid Online partner], and courtroom and law enforcement interpreter. I also conducted outreach work with Stacie Colston Patterson, ILAO’s Outreach Coordinator, to keep the LSHC up and running and received a 'Dedicated Project Assistant Award'.
- 2010-2012 - I was the Student Coordinator in Southern Illinois University’s Legal Self-Help Center [another Illinois Legal Aid Online partner] and received SIU School of Law’s Public Interest Award. I helped convert the website to Spanish under a grant funded through ILAO. I also worked with local stakeholders to convince them to establish Legal Self-Help Centers in Perry and Randolph Counties, which opened in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
- 2013 - I volunteered with ILAO as a translation volunteer and Spanish website representative. That year, I was also the Legal Aid Worker of the Month in March (or April). I have also done translation work for ILAO off and on since then and am currently working on a translation assignment.
- 2014 - I was Attorney of Month for ILAO’s “Faces of Justice.”
- Currently, I am a Community Navigator for ILAO, serving communities affected by incarceration.
Why did you become a navigator?
I graduated in 2008 from Knox College and was looking for a job. The Law Library at the St. Clair County Courthouse was looking for a Spanish speaker to help with their new grant program to open a Legal Self-Help Center [in partnership with ILAO]. It was convenient because I could help folks in the morning and work at my family’s business in the afternoon.
Being a Navigator is a great learning experience and a great way to help people. Without that experience, I wouldn’t have gone to law school. It showed me that you can help people with a law degree, that as a lawyer you don’t have to work at a stuffy firm, and you can help people most at risk in our society.
What do you like most about being an ILAO volunteer?
It’s flexible; you make your own time. ILAO is great in terms of letting folks do their job remotely. Being able to be downstate while working for a Chicago organization is unusual. ILAO is the only legal aid organization that covers the entire state. They have a very good support structure and they have a very professional - but not stuffy - atmosphere.
What have you gained from your time with ILAO?
I would never have gone to SIU School of Law and become a lawyer otherwise if not for ILAO. ILAO showed me that you can help people and that there are great ways to help the community with a law degree. ILAO is a tremendous employer and they offer great mentorship opportunities while helping people across the state and in my home community.
Tell us a story about when you helped someone as a Navigator
I was working as Navigator at the St. Clair County LSHC when an elderly couple came in. They were the classic ILAO customer; they didn’t have a pension or real estate and they separated a decade prior but couldn’t afford a divorce. I helped them with their paperwork.
It turns out, my mom, the first female judge in the 20th Judicial Circuit, had married them. My dad had done their Social Security Disability. My uncle was an instructor for a youth-at-risk program and the couple’s daughter was in that program. ILAO offered them the ability to do a divorce for free.
Did you have a favorite technology at the moment?
Hiking boots or kayak because I'm a Luddite.
What would be your alternative or dream career?
Anything to do with plants or animals.
What law would you create and why?
We need air quality monitoring for the CERCLA-rated Veolia incinerator (a Superfund toxic waste site) located in Sauget, an impoverished area which is predominantly poor and populated by people of color. People have a right to know what goes into the air they breathe and the water they drink.
