4ALL Lives On In A “Big” Way, Just As Janet Ward Black Promised
Past President Janet Ward Black, center, commemorated the 10-year anniversary of 4ALL with founding Co-Chairs Caryn McNeill and Martin Brinkley, who both went on to serve as NCBA+NCBF presidents.
I remember being seated several rows up in the auditorium at the Bar Center when Janet Ward Black stepped up to the lectern. I was a young(ish) committee chair, my first leadership position with the Bar Association, and was seated among a number of other section and committee chairs for a meeting on the upcoming 2007-08 bar year. Janet Ward was just embarking on her year as president and had stepped up to tell us what her presidential initiative was going to be for the coming year.
I’m going to get this wrong, but based on my memory the words she used were to the effect of “if you’re going to go out and take something on, don’t just aim for making it a big deal, aim for making it a big, fat, hairy deal.” She then proceeded to announce her initiative: an entirely new program called 4ALL.
4ALL, so named for the concept that justice and legal access should be available “for all,” was intended to help in bringing that justice and access to the too-many North Carolina residents who either could not afford it or were shut out by any number of other obstacles. The concept was to have one dedicated service day, a call-in “ask a lawyer” day on a massive state-wide scale, promoted with television and advertising, with multiple call centers across the state. The inaugural event would be held on April 4 (“four/four”), 2008. The logo, which I believe Janet Ward had already developed, was in Bar Foundation colors with a hand extending four fingers skyward.
Jon Heyl takes a call at 4ALL Statewide Service Day in 2020.
Two of the Bar Association’s most promising young leaders, Martin Brinkley and Caryn McNeill, were tapped to carry out the execution and the legwork on the ground. Caryn and Martin were both former chairs of our Young Lawyers Division, the stalwart get-it-done service arm of our organization. That experience apparently served them well, as they took something that had not existed the year before, designed it up, built it out, and brought it to fruition in only a matter of months – all of which was done on top of their demanding practices as young partners. Martin and Caryn would go on, deservedly, to each serve as presidents of our organization, in 2011-12 and 2017-18, respectively.
That inaugural 2008 4ALL event was a resounding success. Thanks to Caryn and Martin’s work, we were set up in partnerships with community centers and television stations across the state, seated at phone banks and shown on live TV with crawlers and news anchors promoting us. There were actual billboards purchased (yes, the kind by the interstate). Despite the fact that no one in our organization had done such a program before, our staff and volunteers came together to pull it off. The phones rang off the hook. As soon as you put the receiver down, it was ringing again. When we totaled up at the end of the day, the legal questions of nearly 7,000 North Carolinians had been answered.
The event has been held every year since. I had the privilege of co-chairing the 4ALL program, with Kim Sieredski, during the 2009-10 bar year. That experience gave me and Kim the opportunity to get to know the volunteers – our members – across the state who not only showed up to answer the needs of the public on the actual day, but who labored in the trenches throughout the year leading up to it to make sure it all went off. As I continued to make my way back to the WBTV station in Charlotte for phone-bank shifts in the ensuing years, it was heartening (and something of a reunion) to see our dedicated volunteers come back, year after year, to serve what is obviously a glaringly unmet need for legal information by our fellow citizens.
The magnitude of the need for legal information is illustrated by the numbers. On any given year, we have 400-500 volunteers who show up and will generally handle between 8,000 and 10,000 calls on 4ALL Service Day. Each year I have wondered if we had relieved the pressure of some historical pent-up demand and whether the demand that year would thereby dwindle. The call volumes, however, always indicate otherwise – there remains a strong need, year after year. And our members meet it. Since 2008, we have assisted approximately 125,000 North Carolinians in providing legal information relating to their questions and needs.
Jon Heyl, left, fields a call in Charlotte during 4ALL 2019.
While our volunteers are the horses pulling the wagons on Service Day, our Bar Foundation staff has been instrumental in ensuring this event goes off every year, and I would be remiss not to recognize Kim Bart Mullikin and her team in this effort. After years of refining and improving the call-center model, the Foundation staff was forced by the pandemic in 2021 to reinvent the program once again and take it entirely virtual. The staff not only pulled that off – on top of all of the other programs and events they were having to re-engineer due to the pandemic – but managed to actually improve the process in doing so. Utilizing call technology and screeners, calls can be directed to particular lawyers based on volunteer-identified practice areas and can be answered from the comfort of the volunteer’s office or home.
If you are a “regular” who volunteers for 4ALL year after year – and I know there are many of you – I offer you my sincere thanks. You have done, and are doing, great work for our state. For those of you who have not had the opportunity to volunteer previously, I encourage you to join us this year on Friday, March 4. I cannot count, over the years, how many lawyers I have heard walking out of the television station at the end of their shifts saying, with perhaps some surprise, “that was fun.” You will get interesting questions, I promise you. Some will take you back to law school and make you realize certain things that you may have learned about in torts or property but never encountered in your practice really do exist in the real world (e.g., cartways, easeways, and adverse possession). I will also tell you that of the probably hundreds of calls I have taken since 2008, a surprising number end with the caller saying, “thank you all for doing this today.” In fact, as Caryn McNeill recently pointed out to me, some call seeking no legal answers at all, but just to say thanks.
This is the work we do. I am proud that our Bar Association and Bar Foundation, our volunteer members and our staff, come together each year in such impressive numbers to perform this service. So I will join the ranks of those who say, “thank you all for doing this today.”
If you would like to participate and have not yet registered, you can do so here.
Jon Heyl serves as president of the North Carolina Bar Association and the North Carolina Bar Foundation.