Advocating for people living in poverty is a demanding job. Doing so requires a level of caring and devotion that is difficult for the average attorney to sustain. But longtime Legal Aid Chicago attorney Tim Hufman is far from average. Below is a message from Larry Wood, Legal Aid Chicago’s Housing Practice Group Director and Tim’s colleague of many years, in honor of Tim’s retirement.

After more than thirty-eight years at Legal Aid Chicago, Tim Hufman retired on September 7, 2018.  At the end of such a long career, there’s a temptation to honor the person who’s leaving by using superlatives that aren’t really appropriate. After all, can anyone really say who at Legal Aid Chicago is the most persuasive advocate, the best litigator, the top lawyer? No. But I can say, with complete confidence, that during the course of its more than fifty-year history, Legal Aid Chicago has never employed an attorney who is more dedicated or energetic than Tim.

Throughout his career he regularly worked 70 hours a week, and when he recently took a part-time position to run the Eviction Help Desk at the Markham courthouse, he only ended up reducing his schedule to 40 hours a week and therefore working full-time for significantly less money. So he wasn’t financially shrewd, but no one cared more about Legal Aid Chicago’s clients.

Who else would jump into an alley dumpster to collect evidence against an opposing party, or draft sixty affidavits in support of a dispositive motion, or crawl under mobile homes to measure the distance between the ground and the bottoms of the these homes…