Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Volunteering to see legal aid clients in the evening while trying to start a law practice seemed like a good idea when Marilynn C. Goss finished law school and passed the bar exam in 1982.

Money soon became available to hire a night staff attorney, and Goss applied for the job and got it.

In a sense, the job was “the best of two worlds,” she said. It provided some of the flexibility of private practice without the struggle of hanging up a shingle and trying to make ends meet, she said.

She took the job with the idea that it would be an opportunity to develop basic legal skills and move on as she assumed other legal aid lawyers did.

But she found some of her legal aid colleagues to be committed career lawyers. Jay Speer went on to head the Virginia Poverty Law Center. Henry W. McLaughlin III remained with the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society throughout Goss’s 26 years as a legal aid attorney. Audrey Franks went from legal aid work to become a Richmond Juvenile and Domestic Relations District judge, just a Goss did last year.

Goss worked as a staff attorney for CVLAS, served as managing attorney for the Legal Aid Justice Center and then returned to CVLAS as senior managing attorney.

The work included bankruptcy, landlord-tenant, divorce, custody and visitation and consumer issues.

Richmond General District Judges Joi Jeter Taylor and Barbara J. Gaden said Goss “practiced what might be called ‘poverty law,’ but which is in fact a diverse general practice serving the poor in many of the same issues as other, more fortunate, clients face.”

Taylor and Gaden made that observation in nominating Goss for the Tradition of Excellence Award presented annually by the Virginia State Bar’s General Practice Section. Goss received the 2009 award June 19 during the VSB Annual Meeting in Virginia Beach.

The award recognizes a lawyer who embodies the highest tradition of personal and professional excellence and who has benefitted a community and enhanced the esteem of general practice attorneys in Virginia.

A native of Richmond, Goss graduated from Marshall University and the University of Richmond law school.

Goss is a former president of the Old Dominion Bar Association and its Richmond chapter. She received the VSB Legal Aid Award in 2000 and in 1992 was named an Outstanding Woman of Greater Richmond by the YWCA. She also is a former member of the Virginia Bar Association Board of Governors.

She was named a substitute judge in Richmond in 2002, and Taylor and Gaden noted that she sat frequently “because we trusted her wonderful demeanor, excellent knowledge of the law, and good judgment. As a CVLAS attorney, she also appeared frequently in our court representing clients in diverse matters, and she was a wonderful advocate and demonstrated the highest professionalism at all times.”

Goss said the legal aid lawyers were like family. “Legal aid is really a general practice … There was nothing else I would have wanted to do other than being on the bench.”

She said being a substitute judge was a lot harder than she thought it would be because training for the position is limited and juggling her schedule to make time to sit was sometimes difficult.

“But it was great experience for being a full-time judge,” she said. As a full-timer, “I’m blessed to be in a court with more than one judge.”

Help with a problem is available by walking down the hall or sending an e-mail to one of her four colleagues, she said.

She said she also appreciates the variety created by rotating the docket among adult criminal, delinquency, child support and custody and foster care cases.

The biggest down side, she said, is that she doesn’t get to see other judges on the bench as she did when she was a legal aid attorney.

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