Michael Marsiglia speaking at a campaign event

From the campaign

Beyond the Courtroom

Pro bono work at the Harry Tompson Center, Project H.E.L.P., mock trial coaching and board service. Where Michael Marsiglia has put his time when nobody was paying.

Michael Marsiglia has volunteered as a pro bono attorney and notary at the Harry Tompson Center, serves on the board of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, coaches high school mock trial, and teaches at Tulane University School of Law. None of it pays.

Legal help for people who cannot pay

As soon as he was admitted, Michael began volunteering as a pro bono attorney and notary at the Harry Tompson Center, working with our underserved population, who would otherwise face legal problems alone.

He also volunteers with Project H.E.L.P., Homeless Experience Legal Protection, which brings legal assistance to people experiencing homelessness.

Most of that work is unremarkable and essential. Certified copies of identification. A form that has to be right. A problem that is small if you have a lawyer for ten minutes and enormous if you do not.

Teaching

Michael coaches the mock trial team at Haynes Academy for Advanced Studies, a Jefferson Parish public school, and has done so for years. He also teaches negotiation and advocacy to law students as adjunct faculty at Tulane University School of Law.

Two very different audiences. Law students want the doctrine. Teenagers want to know why any of it is arranged this way, and will not accept an answer that hides behind vocabulary.

The second group is better practice for a parish courtroom. Someone appearing there may have no legal training either, and an explanation that only works for lawyers does not work at all.

He coaches youth sports at our local playgrounds as well.

Board service

Michael serves as a board member of the Metropolitan Crime Commission. The Commission is a watchdog organization whose stated mission is exposing public corruption and improving the administration of justice for the citizens of Louisiana.

He is a board member of the Nancy M Marsiglia Institute of Justice, and a former board member of the Louisiana Children’s Museum, where the work was advocacy for children across the area.

Why the pro bono work matters to the day job

There is a version of pro bono service that is essentially decorative. This is not that, and the reason is the kind of problem it involves.

Someone without stable housing who cannot produce identification cannot open an account, cannot take a job that requires it, and frequently cannot access services designed for exactly their situation. The legal problem is small. The consequences of leaving it unsolved are not.

That is the same shape as most of what a parish court sees. A citation is a small legal matter that is attached to a license, which is attached to a job. A civil dispute at the top of the parish court’s range is small next to commercial litigation and is not small to the person whose savings it is.

Spending years on the small problems that are not small teaches a particular thing: never assume the size of a file tells you the size of its consequences.

The through-line

Pro bono work, mock trial coaching, a corruption watchdog, a children’s museum, a homeless legal outreach program. Listed together they look scattered.

They are not. The common element in all of it is the administration of justice and who actually gets access to it. The person who cannot afford a lawyer. The teenager who has never seen a courtroom. The public institution that is supposed to be accountable and sometimes is not.

That is the same question a parish court judge faces every morning, in a smaller and more immediate form. Someone walking into First Parish Court may have no lawyer, no experience of courtrooms, and no reason to expect the system will make sense to them.

Where to see it

The campaign keeps pages on Facebook and Instagram, both at @marsigliaforjudge. Anyone who would rather judge this for themselves than take a page like this one at its word can look there.

What it is worth

Volunteering is not a qualification for judicial office. Qualifications are education, admission, and time actually spent in a courtroom, and those sit on the Experience page.

This is context. It says something about where a person puts their evenings when there is no fee attached and no record of it anywhere.

It is also, admittedly, the sort of thing every candidate lists. What is checkable here is the specificity: named organizations, named schools, work that people at those organizations could confirm or contradict. A list that could not survive a phone call is worth nothing, and this one is meant to survive several.

Voters can weigh it alongside the record itself, which is the part that actually qualifies someone for the bench.

Questions people ask

What pro bono work has Michael Marsiglia done?

He has volunteered as a pro bono attorney and notary at the Harry Tompson Center and volunteers with Project H.E.L.P., Homeless Experience Legal Protection.

What boards does he serve on?

The Metropolitan Crime Commission and the Nancy M Marsiglia Institute of Justice. He is a former board member of the Louisiana Children’s Museum.