Fenwick and Justice Bus Help California Seniors with Estate Planning

By Talia Soglin*

After spending the day assisting low-income seniors in Napa with estate planning, helping to walk them through the morass of paperwork that involves end-of-life legal choices, Fenwick associate Ari Fink called his mother to check that she had her own papers in order. “Do you have a will?” he asked her. “Do you have an advanced healthcare directive?”

These were some of the questions that came up in Fenwick’s most recent Justice Bus pro bono effort on June 29. Fink, a second-year tech transactions associate, traveled to Napa as part of a group of 15 Fenwick associates and summer associates to provide legal aid to seniors at the City of Napa Senior Activity Center. The group traveled via the Justice Bus, which transports teams of lawyers and law students to isolated and rural California communities in a program run by the San Francisco legal nonprofit OneJustice.