Leo Vasmanis retires from LASP after 38 years in legal aid

(Sept. 25, 2020)

WEST CHESTER - Congratulations to Leo Vasmanis on your retirement, after 38 years of service as a legal aid attorney!

Leo started his career in public interest law in 1982 as an attorney for Keystone (which later became part of MidPenn Legal Services). He also worked as an attorney for Bucks County Legal Aid Society. After LASP formed in 2001 when Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery county legal aid programs joined forces, Leo has been based in LASP's Chester County office in West Chester.

Current staff and LASP alumni gathered for a "Virtual Cake Break" Sept. 25, 2020 to wish Leo well on his retirement projects!

In reflecting on his career, Leo recalled starting out in Central Pennsylvania with Keystone Legal Aid as a Reginald Heber Smith Fellow. "It was when the PFA (Protection from Abuse) law was new, and the bankruptcy law changed. Things were developing in legal services." Cases were selected at the end of the week. "One week we had four or five horse cases and were wondering, is there a trend in equine cases? People were getting thrown off horses, or horses were dying from being hit by a car."

Attorneys "rode the circuit," driving from county to county and seeing clients at offices in each courthouse, where there would be one judge.

But his first role was as mediator in housing court, through Temple Law School. "The more things change, the more they stay the same," he observed, noting that mediation has circled back into popularity again. "Nothing is new under the sun, just issues coming at you in a different way," referring to the rising awareness of collateral consequences of contact with the criminal justice system, and LASP's innovative approaches to helping clients with the expungement process.

At Bucks County Legal Aid Society, attorneys asked, "How can we get people more involved in the legal process?" One result: divorce clinics developed in Bucks County. When LASP formed in 2001, Leo transferred to the Chester County office to facilitate his daughter's transportation to school. Between his and others' moves, including Managing Attorney Rachel Houseman and Staff Attorney Deborah Steeves, many ideas migrated from Bucks County to the Chester County Office. The divorce clinics were and remain based on the premise, "It’s good to get divorces for people who need PFAs or are in bad situations." They originated, Leo said, by asking, "''What can we do to help, where people can get involved to use the judicial system?' Now we’re kind of going in that direction again with expungements. We recognize a need. We used to do a lot of driver license suspensions because people couldn’t get to work. With the pandemic, it’s landlord-tenant."

As for retirement plans, he will be working on projects at his family's cabin in the Poconos, and according to his family, he's going to start cooking. "They don't know what they're in for," he said.