Contra Costa Lawyer - Contra Costa County Bar Association

Pro Bono Spotlight:
Frank Acuña
by Craig Nevin & CCCBA staff
This month, the Contra Costa
County Bar Association, The
Law Center and Contra Costa
Senior Legal Services would
like to acknowledge Frank Acuña. Frank
and his entire firm embody a deep commitment
to pro bono legal help, especially
as it relates to helping seniors and their
families.
For the past four years, Frank Acuña
and his staff have been supporters and
volunteers at the Durable Power of Attorney
Workshops. These clinics usually
begin by focusing on both the events and
the ways that elders can protect themselves
and their families in case of incapacity,
namely, Powers of Attorney and
Advance Health Care Directives. Participants
have the opportunity to have
their questions answered and, if appropriate,
set appointments to have simple
incapacity documents prepared for them.
Frank recalls how it all started, over
pizza:
“About 3 or 4 years ago, Virginia
George, who was a professor at JFK at
the time, and two of her students, Jackie
Klein and Kwi Yong Lee, came to me and
explained that they wanted to set something
up for seniors who couldn’t afford
legal services. They asked me, ‘Are you
interested?’ So we met over pizza and
started kicking around ideas on how to
make this work. After that initial meeting,
Virginia started recruiting the promotions
team while we, as a law firm, committed
to simply put together the nuts and bolts
– coming up with the forms and the data
files and so forth. Since then they’ve been
recruiting attorneys in the community to
where now the program has got legs and
they don’t really need us anymore – we’re
now just ordinary volunteers, which is
great. We’re simply the troops.”
Mr. Acuña, as many of you know, has
been practicing Estate Planning and Elder
law in Contra Costa County since 1991.
When asked why, over the last 4 years,
he and his firm have not just been supporters
of - but also volunteers - at these
clinics, Frank explains:
“I am an Estate Planning and Elder
Law attorney. I make a good living helping
people, doing their wills, their trusts,
their Powers of Attorney but there are so
many people who can’t afford my services,
especially seniors. And that’s what the
motivation is. I also have great staff.
Everybody here in the office has volunteered
- whether as a copy clerk or a
notary public or an attorney – everybody.
It’s just something everybody here is
passionate about, so all I had to do was
say ‘yes – sure, we’ll do it’"
Asked to elaborate on his deep commitment
to helping seniors in particular,
Frank continues:
“Doing something for somebody else
gives life meaning. Helping elders is
especially rewarding because when you’re
older, everything is about losing something:
‘I’ve lost my husband, I’ve lost my
wife, I’ve lost my ability to walk, I’ve lost
my ability to drive, I’ve lost my neighborhood
because I had to move to this new
place’ and so on. Everything is related to
loss, so there’s a lot of fear there. When
you can work with an elder and explain
things and take some of that fear away,
that’s work that has real meaning.”
By participating in these workshops,
28 September 2010