Test Case: Let's Get Physical — Can I Be Useful As A 'Non-Lawyer' Volunteer?

As busy lawyers, our time is valuable; is it worth it to volunteer in a non-legal capacity?

Allison Peryea and her fellow volunteers.

Allison Peryea and her fellow volunteers.

People rarely want lawyers for our bodies. (And when they do, there may be ethical considerations involved.) So when we do participate in volunteer activities, it is usually as a legal adviser or representative, or by serving on a committee with other lawyers talking about lawyer things.

My history as a volunteer outside the legal realm is spotty at best, shameful at worst. In high school, I volunteered for my hometown’s annual relay race. This involved a lot of sitting around while watching others not sit around. In college I tried to tutor middle-school kids, which ended after a student cried because my presence pulled her away from badminton during gym class. (It was tough to blame her, as badminton is the crown jewel of racket sports.) I also have helped out at a few soup kitchens that apparently were not forewarned about my aptitude for burning stuff. But, no matter the activity, I always felt like I was crowded out onto the sidelines by the more useful people, like Rudy but without the gold helmet.

This spring, I decided to sign up for a couple of non-lawyer volunteering activities and be the best volunteer that money, um, couldn’t buy. I wanted to do more than just show up and get a pat on the back for donating my time. I wanted to be useful.

First, I signed up to volunteer at a food bank. Our group’s job was to separate bulk donations into portions suitable for a family or individual soup kitchen. Specifically, we were tasked with taking freakishly giant grapefruits out of a big bin and putting them into banker-sized boxes, and then loading the boxes onto a conveyor belt. (I wondered what a family would do with 30 pounds of genetically modified grapefruit, but it seemed like the elephant-in-the room question that nobody was willing to ask.) Some people got the important assignments of labeling, weighing, and taping the boxes. They guarded these prized positions like dictators warding off a military coup.

Allison Peryea at the food bank.

Allison Peryea at the food bank.

A common laborer, I started loading up boxes of grapefruits. We were also supposed to cull each “bad” grapefruit, which, like pornography, you knew when you saw it.

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There were a lot of bottlenecks during the process, including a fair amount of waiting for labeled boxes. I didn’t feel very useful, but my lower back kind of hurt from leaning over, which was an indication to me that some effort had been put in.

When the grapefruit supply dwindled, my group was pulled away to another room to sort and bag pinto beans. I got to wear my first-ever hairnet, which generated an unnecessary amount of excitement. I muscled my way into a “special” job of weighing boxes.

After weighing a few boxes, I felt the need to diversify. I moved to bag-taping station and proceeded to accidentally break one of the tape machines. At the end of our shift, they notified us that we had packed about 2,500 pounds of delicious-sounding pinto-bean-and-grapefruit “meals.”

While I thought the food-bank experience was a great way to see a Henry Ford-inspired assembly line in action, I didn’t feel like I personally contributed that much. I was just an inept cog. So I signed up for another volunteering activity: Helping clean up and beautify a senior-housing community.

We were initially put to work pulling flower-bed weeds, which was boring until I was given a lethal-looking metal instrument I named the “Death Stick” to stab at crab grass and clover. Things escalated when we were sent to a steep hill to pull up ivy. While this task required me to confront my deepest fears—potential exposure to worms, which should be universally reviled for their lack of heads and faces—attacking the ivy was very cathartic in an “I’m glad I am only doing this for a day” sort of way.

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For lunch, the community’s cook made us box lunches, and we were given handmade thank-you cards made by the residents. Some residents also displayed “Thank You” posters on their balconies. It was enough to melt my cold attorney heart.

Later I was conscripted to pull more ivy—while, upon resident request, not disturbing the Oregon Grape, a holly-like plant made of spines and hate. Then we spread mulch around, which smelled like decomposing bodies, an odor than lingered like Subway restaurant scent. Things started looking up when I was put in charge of a malicious-looking pair of pruning shears, but my pride took a fall when I wasn’t able to cut a branch with them. The job was completed by a resident, who reassured me: “Maybe when you’re 70 like me you will be able to do it.”

After moving onto the task of shoveling—blissfully odorless—dirt around, I agreed to help a resident trim her plants. I baked in the hot sun while she held back tree branches for me with her cane. My “landscaping” experience is mostly limited to throwing away dead houseplants: I was terrified of maiming her precious flowering whatever-it-was. She talked to me about how, at 90, she still would rather be outside on a nice day, and I enjoyed the reminder that getting old doesn’t mean you have to be less awesome. She seemed pleased with my work, and I recovered from my heatstroke in the shade, while spreading around more corpse-mulch.

The Verdict: As busy lawyers, our time is valuable. And while we perhaps can be the most useful volunteering in a legal capacity, these non-law opportunities were a great reminder that, in the “real world,” we are only as valuable as what we can contribute with our two hands.

I felt like I was able to step up to the plate and contribute at the more physical, less regimented volunteering activity. And interacting directly with the people we were helping made the experience more meaningful. But both activities offered a great opportunity to do something that normally only seems to happen when alcohol is involved: Getting to know other people. Accomplishing a (somewhat miserable) physical task together provides a shared experience that creates an unexpected bond with the people working alongside you, who, like you, might smell like rotting flesh.

This most important thing I learned, however, is that while 80 percent of success might be just showing up, when it comes to volunteering, it is the other 20 percent that really counts. Make sure to contribute your time where you can accomplish that 20 percent.


Allison Peryea is a shareholder attorney at Leahy Fjelstad Peryea, a boutique law firm in downtown Seattle that primarily serves community association clients. Her practice focuses on covenant enforcement and dispute resolution. She is a longtime humor writer with a background in journalism and cat ownership. You can reach her by email at Allison.Peryea@leahyps.com.