Articles of Interest

A Lone Legal Eagle for Asian-Americans (The Inquirer, 1990)

The small Korean church had little money and a bus that needed repairs. A shop offered a liberal payment schedule and a repair bill of $1,000. But when the bill came, it was for more than $2,000 plus a storage fee of $50 a day.

The Korean church in Southwest Philadelphia needed a lawyer.

The Laotian parents' teenage daughter was taking drugs. She was not going to school and was spending too much time with a Vietnamese youth gang that was encouraging her to become a prostitute. The parents were heartsick and worried that they might be criminally liable because of her school absences.

The Laotian parents needed a lawyer.

The Chinese woman had worked hard in a factory and had saved a little money. She invested in property in Florida, but she had never received a deed and the management company kept sending her expenses that she did not understand.

The Chinese woman needed a lawyer.

Last month, these three dilemmas came to the door of the Asian Law Center, a free, nonprofit legal-services center in Southwest Philadelphia.

The man who answered that door was lawyer David Oh.

He also answered the phone, typed the letters and did the investigation on these cases, and every other case that comes to the law center's office at 58th and Thomas Streets.

Oh, 29, a former Philadelphia assistant district attorney and a former Green Beret, is the Asian Law Center. And, quite frankly, he says he could use some help: volunteer lawyers, paralegals, law students, money.

He is disappointed that organizations in the Asian community have not stepped forward to help the law center. It should be noted that he has never formally asked for help. Nor has he ever asked the Asian American Bar Association for assistance, but he is still stung that his colleagues have not offered any.

"They know we're here," he says.

Oh has been there since 1985.

It was then that Oh, a student at the Rutgers University Law School, and about 20 other Asian and non-Asian students at area law schools decided to form the law center on a part-time volunteer basis.

Saturdays, Wednesday nights and a telephone answering machine. No fees.

Common Pleas Court Judge Abram Frank Reynolds, who met Oh in Family Court when the young assistant district attorney was assigned there, is on the law center's advisory board.

"I think David is decency incarnate. He is fairness. I believe he fears being discriminated against so much that he needs fairness to function."

Law professor Jan Ting met him while he was a student at Rutgers. "He talked about starting an Asian law center," says Ting, on leave from the Temple University Law School and now teaching at the Widener University School of Law."

In all honesty, a lot of people were talking about it back then," Ting says. "But David is unusual because he did something about it."

But why an Asian law center?

The center's purpose is to do more than provide legal service, says Oh. It is to make all Asians - Koreans, Japanese, Cambodians - aware that the American legal system can provide service and protection.

Oh knew that lawyers in Asian countries usually work for the government or a corporation, not individuals. The economy may be vibrant and strong in South Korea, for instance, but personal litigation is not. People just do not consider going to a lawyer in the same way that Americans do.

"Traditionally, Asians are not given to complaining to authorities. They are somewhat stoic," says William M. Marutani, a lawyer and former Common Pleas Court judge.

"But that's doesn't mean that they are not hurting. The perception in the greater community is that if you're not squawking, you're OK. There is a great need in the Asian community for legal services, but it is just not obvious.

"Clients did not crowd outside the law center when it opened in 1985, but the law students were kept busy, providing information, doing legwork and referring some cases to lawyers.

In September 1985, Oh went to work for the District Attorney's Office, the first Korean-American to be hired, and had to sever his ties with the law center.

It stayed open, but as time passed, more and more of those original volunteers graduated from law school and went to work full time, leaving little or no time for the center. In summer 1988, Oh resigned from the District Attorney's Office to join the military. He became a Green Beret. "I feel national public service is important," he says.

"We were all surprised that he left," says William G. Chadwick, first assistant in the District Attorney's Office. "He was an outstanding assistant D.A. His level of commitment to victims was apparent by the unusually high number of letters we got praising him. . . . We'd love to have him back."

Messages were taken at the Asian Law Center while he was away, but very little else was done.

When he returned to Philadelphia is mid-1989, he decided that he would devote all his efforts to the center. "I'm going to keep this going," he vowed. Full time. He had some unspent military pay and a part-time obligation to attend further military training.

The volunteer students who started the center in 1985 have not been replaced by students today. Oh has tried to recruit area Asian law students with no success.

"There are no big rewards here, no big warm, fuzzy feeling with lots of clients saying, 'Thank you, thank you,' "Oh says. "It's work. Sometimes it's boring. Some Asian law students don't want to be Asian; they want to be in the mainstream. They volunteer in larger organizations."

Oh says he will run out of his personal money in May or June. At that time, if he has to, he will get a job as a lawyer and keep the law center open part time.

His expenses are not high. The center pays no rent because its offices are in the In Ho Oh Memorial Korean Center, run by Oh's father, the Rev. Ki Hang Oh, who was the city's first Korean clergyman with a church. Today, his Philadelphia Korean Presbyterian Church is at Cobbs Creek Parkway and Hoffman Street, just a block from the center.

The Korean center is named for David Oh's cousin, In Ho Oh, a former University of Pennsylvania graduate student who was beaten to death in 1958 by 11 teenagers in Powelton Village. His death - and the fact that his parents in Korea asked for mercy for the attackers - led to nationwide publicity.

Marutani says that David Oh "has to beat the drums in the Korean" and other Asian communities to raise money. "Were people made aware of his need, I think they would contribute," he says.

Oh agrees, and says he will begin asking for help. "There is more of a responsibility for Asian groups to fund this," he says. But he adds that ''the overall society" benefits if legal rights are expanded.

"Yes, I think the law center needs to exist," says Judge Reynolds. "The NAACP needs to exist. There can never be enough protection from discrimination. The law center has to exist, just in case."

The Korean church has its bus back, thanks to David Oh, and the cost of the repairs is being negotiated. The Chinese woman has the deed to her Florida property and a $1,000 refund check from the management company.David Oh was able to find a foster program for the Laotian teenager, but she ran away. After a month, the girl was found. This week, she is back at home.

Author: Murray Dubin, Inquirer Staff Writer
Copyright (c) 1990 The Philadelphia Inquirer
Record Number: 9001180525

1700 Race Street,1st Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103
215.561.2000
David@DavidOh.com