by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
Sarah Fowler, paralegal
It took 25 years of hard work as a paralegal for Sarah Fowler to get her recent 15 minutes of national fame.
Fowler, a paralegal for Jacksonville Area Legal Aid was recently featured in an issue of Legal Assistant Today, an national trade publication.
Fowler said she had forgotten her 25-year anniversary at JALA until she was presented with a commemorative plaque at an awards ceremony in November 2004. She was equally shocked when the magazine called to request an interview about her career.
“I was totally shocked,” Sarah said. “Things happen so quickly here you really don’t have time to reminisce. So when they called about it I was just amazed.”
The feature on Fowler was written after Legal Assistant Today’s managing editor Rod Hughes read another article about JALA’s recent acknowledgement of Fowler’s 25 years at the legal aid organization.
“Her 25 years of service and the fact that she was a paralegal fit all of the criteria we look for,” Hughes said.
Besides her paralegal duties, Fowler trains JALA’s paralegal interns and is the director of JALA’s Public Service Project. As director, she reviews cases that come in and refers them to lawyers in the area who do pro bono work.
Fowler is also trying to rejuvenate an evening intake program that she used to coordinate several years ago. The program will be set up so clients can come in after they get off work to have their case reviewed by an attorney. She said the program is important because a lot of people are in situation where they could lose their job if they had to take off in the middle of the day.
“We used to have over 200 attorneys who would interview in the evening to help people that couldn’t come in during the day,” Fowler said.
The evening intake program was stopped due to budget cuts but Fowler said she thinks she will have the means to start it again.
With her twenty-sixth year of service approaching in April, Fowler said she has no regrets about spending a quarter of a century working in legal aid.
“I had always set my sights on being in the legal profession and one way or another it happened,” she said. “If you are working here it is because you really really want to be here and you want to make a difference. It is not about the big salary, the big income or the prestige. It is about doing something for the community. And they really appreciate it.
“It’s very rewarding and I get to help a lot of people. I get to help put people’s minds to ease and help them to sleep better at night. That makes it all worthwhile.”