It’s a busy day in Room 203 at the Hillsborough Courthouse in downtown Tampa.  It is home to ‘The Legal Information Center’.

It’s part of Bay Area Legal Services, which opened in October of 2000.

Attorney Susan Whitaker offers legal guidance, free of charge, on issues of ‘family law’ which include…

“Divorce, paternity action, child support, parenting cases, visitation, which is now called ‘timesharing’, dependency.  Those sorts of issues,” Whitaker said.

Whitaker spends as much time as is necessary to help visitors.

“I look at their case in the docketing system. Sometimes I review their documents and I figure what they… what’s available to make the request to the court that they need,” Whitaker says.

65% of family law cases are now handled without an attorney.

Whitaker helps in “in-betweens”

“You have the people who can afford an attorney. You have the people who qualify for and are accepted with legal services and then you have everybody in between,” Whitaker said.

“Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.  Patient.  Explained everything very clearly. So it went very well with her,” Whitaker client Suzanne Hunter said.

Recently, the Legal Information Center assisted its 100,000th visitor.  And how many of them did Whitaker personally help?

“I have seen all but 2,012,” Whitaker said.  “I’m very happy when I can