Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of profiles of the Wisconsin Idea in action. See past profiles we have published.

In the fall of 2003, four immigrants from Madison received phone calls from a California company offering them an amazing deal. For $800, the company told the newcomers, they could get all they needed to become licensed mechanics, including the tools, video training and licenses from Madison’s Centro Hispano.

The problem was that the tools were only a basic set valued at around $50, the “training videos” were a wobbly, amateur description of an oil change, and Centro Hispano had never heard of the deal. It was an $800 scam.

“[The victims] felt somewhat afraid to come forward because they felt victimized and spoke only Spanish. They had purchased the course because they wanted to learn a new profession and better their lives,” says Marissa Santiago, a law student and volunteer who represented the victims. “They really suffered by losing the money they paid for the course and losing their dream to become an automobile mechanic.”

Luckily, the four found the UW–Madison Consumer Law Clinic and its director, Steve Meili.

Through a lengthy court case, Meili — along with Santiago and another student volunteer — got the victims’ $800 back and restored some justice to an immigrant population long taken advantage of by scam and fraud.

Meili has directed the Consumer Law Clinic since 1991. It provides legal help to low-income victims and serves as a classroom, teaching law students through firsthand experience.

Steve Meili, director of the Consumer Law Clinic, consults with a fellow clinical supervising attorney during a conference call while working on a brief with second-year Law School students Holly Pomraning and Hugo Rojas. The group was preparing a Wisconsin State Supreme Court brief regarding the legality of a mandatory arbitration clause in a consumer credit card contract.

Photo: Jeff Miller

As Meili says, “through serendipity” the clinic position became available around the time he and his wife were moving to Madison. The clinic was a natural fit for the NYU Law School graduate who had worked throughout his college career with low-income victims, including workers exposed to asbestos and immigrants seeking asylum.

Fifteen years later, Meili is still helping those who can’t afford help and teaching his students to do the same.

“Only about 20 percent of people can afford to hire a lawyer,” says Holly Pomraning, a second-year law student and a student volunteer at the clinic. “For some businesses, low-income people are easy prey; when they have no legal representation, (people) think they can just get away with it.”

Pomraning, along with other co-student volunteers and with Meili’s support, represents low-income clients in disputes ranging from scams to unfair debt collection to payday-loan abuses. The clinic often helps clients from Dane County, but they have had cases that involved victims from around the state.

Kelly Anderson, another student volunteer at the clinic, says that more than legal advice, the clinic gives low-income victims hope.

“I think they [clients] are frustrated, and they feel a sense of hopelessness. They just feel like the legal system has nothing to offer them,” Anderson says. “When they call here, we give them a sense of satisfaction that we are just able to listen to their case. I think they are just grateful someone will take 15 minutes to listen to what happened to them.”

Beyond court battles, the clinic also works behind the scenes, to encourage the Legislature to pass laws to protect consumers.

Last year, the Legislature was going to pass consumer laws that would make Wisconsin rent-to-own laws look similar to the more lax rent-to-own laws in Illinois. The clinic did a survey of rent-to-own appliances in Illinois showing that the rent-to-own price was often more than double the price of the original appliance. Although the Legislature passed the new laws, Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed the bill, something Meili says was a huge victory for Wisconsin consumers.

“Wisconsin has a tradition of being a leader among states in protecting its consumers,” Meili says. “[But] collaboration has broken down over the last decade or so. What we see are more unilateral changes in consumer protection law whereas the protection has been weakened.”

In addition to stopping current consumer-rights violations, Meili says he hopes to stop future violations through community outreach. The clinic works closely with Centro Hispano, alerting them to possible scams targeting the Latino population in Madison.

“We provide low-income consumers with information about their consumer rights so they can avoid getting into the kinds of problems that result in lawsuits later on,” Meili says. “It is a kind of preventative feature. We try to give information to people so they can become advocates for themselves.”

Although the clinic’s main focus is helping the community, it is also an important teaching tool of the Law School.

“We train students to become effective, ethical legal advocates for lower-income consumers,” Meili says. “We pride ourselves on the quality of work we do and the quality of work students do.”

The student volunteers do the bulk of the clinic’s research and writing, working an average of 10–30 hours a week. Clinic student Neil Bjorkman says he likes “getting his hands dirty” with clinic grunt work.

“The ‘hands dirty’ part is the seemingly unending process of revision to which our written work is subjected. Professor Meili takes a blowtorch to our first drafts. As we revise, we get closer and closer to producing a quality work product,” Bjorkman says. “This is where the learning takes place.”

Second-year Law School student Holly Pomraning works on a laptop computer in the Consumer Law Clinic at the Law Building. Pomraning works with Steve Meili (off camera), director of the clinic.

Photo: Jeff Miller

Meili says students learn valuable skills they can’t learn in the classroom.

“[The clinic] is a way students and lawyers can feel they are really having an impact — not just on the individual client, but also on the broader society. It’s an ideal way for them to apply the law on the books to the actual cases that they work on in the clinic,” Meili says.

“Students gain an awareness of the life situation of the clients,” he adds. “What might seem like a fairly simple legal problem is really much more complicated. It is important for students and lawyer to realize you can’t compartmentalize peoples’ problems into neat little boxes.”

Students not only gain the experience of the clinic, they also gain a role model in Meili.

“I have learned a lot about lawyering from Professor Meili,” Bjorkman says. “More important, he has been an example of someone who enjoys the practice of law. He makes a difference in his clients and students’ lives, and that is no small feat.”