By: Elaine McCardle
Among the countless memories that Roger Bertling carries with him from his nearly 32 years as an attorney and clinical instructor at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center—where he helped thousands of people facing serious legal problems and mentored three decades of HLS students—one stands out.
Some years ago, Bertling represented a family in Greater Boston who were in imminent danger of losing their home to foreclosure. With the mortgage company playing hardball, “it was really nip and tuck,” recalls Bertling, who retired from LSC in June. After a series of tough negotiations, the family’s home was saved. That night, as Bertling was driving home, he happened to pass their house.
“The kids were out in the driveway shooting hoops, and I thought, ‘This is why I do this,’” Bertling says. “It was a very poignant moment.”
Thousands of clients, thousands of students: Bertling has touched many lives since joining LSC in 1993, eager for the opportunity to work with clinical legal education pioneers and LSC founders Gary Bellow and Jeanne Charn. Born and raised in Iowa, Bertling arrived at the Center with an extensive background in public service law. At the University of Iowa Law School, he was named outstanding clinical student his 3L year. After clerking for a bankruptcy judge in Minneapolis, he became a staff attorney at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, in St. Louis.
A summer clerkship at a large law firm had convinced him of his career path. “I wanted to help people,” he says. “I realized I could do a lot more good for people who couldn’t afford a lawyer than for those who could.”
At the St. Louis legal services office, he met another staff attorney, Alexa Shabecoff, and together they tried and won a class action lawsuit against a rural county for severe overcrowding and substandard conditions at the county jail. In 1989, Bertling and Shabecoff married, then moved to Boston. After a year as a legal services lawyer in Brockton, Mass., Bertling made the move to LSC. “I’ve been there ever since,” he says.
During his tenure at LSC, the Center has evolved and expanded, adding new clinics and programs including the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic, the Veterans Law Clinic, the Tax Litigation Clinic, the Housing Justice for Survivors Project in the Housing Law Clinic, and much more. “It’s an incredibly dedicated group of people always reinventing what we do here,” Bertling says. “We have lots of different things going on that weren’t here when I started, and all of them were started by students or staff who wanted to think outside the box and use their skills to expand the benefits we can get people.”
At LSC, Bertling first worked in the Housing Law Clinic, where he fought to keep low-income tenants from being evicted. In 2008, he was named director of the Consumer Protection Clinic, which represents people facing unfair debt collection practices and consumer scams, helps clients get a fresh start through bankruptcy, and defends homeowners against foreclosure.
“There are a lot of cases where we were able to save families from foreclosure, where if we had not intervened, people would have been out of their homes,” says Bertling.
And he worked with three decades of clinical students, guiding them to become skilled, client-centered advocates. “I loved it from the first minute,” says Bertling, who in addition to supervising student attorneys taught courses and seminars on housing law, consumer protection, and consumer bankruptcy. “I loved the fact there were incredibly bright, eager young people who wanted to learn things I knew, so that they could apply those things to helping people.”
“Students have always raved about him,” says Alexa Rosenbloom, a clinical instructor at the Consumer Law Clinic, who is succeeding Bertling as head of the Clinic.
“During my first few weeks working with Roger, I was trying to send a demand letter to a major multinational bank over a predatory car loan,” says Izak Epstein ’26, who did the Clinic for two semesters. “Roger told me to find the name of the CEO, look up her address, and send it directly. So I did. And that’s how I—a 2L law student— ended up negotiating a favorable car loan repayment plan with the legal counsel for a Fortune Global 500 company.
“That approach—giving students the basic tools and then trusting us to figure things out—is incredibly empowering,” adds Epstein, who plans to become a civil rights litigator.
“Roger makes it clear to law students that they can do this work—that he has full confidence in them—and that he will have their back for any possible bumps along the way,” agrees Sarah B. Mancini ‘07, managing director of advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center, who did two semesters in the Consumer Protection Clinic. “He also taught us to put the client first, to be led by the client, and to deeply respect their wisdom and lived experience.” Working with Bertling “convinced me that this was the work I wanted to do after law school and also gave me the skills—and resume—to get my first job and be able to do it well.”
Bertling’s contributions are also singular because he mentored not just law students, but LSC colleagues too. “Roger’s skill as lawyer and teacher is legend,” says Daniel Nagin, LSC’s Faculty Director. “Less recognized is that Roger has been a beyond generous colleague to the generations of new attorneys and so-called ‘baby clinicians’ who have made their careers at LSC. Time and time again, he took new colleagues under his wing, gently offered guidance on the nuances of lawyering and teaching, and ensured that everyone felt included, nurtured, and valued. These are truly rare qualities and underscore how much Roger has been an indispensable part of the LSC family over many decades.”
Every Monday for decades, Bertling appeared in the West Roxbury courthouse, a division of Boston Municipal Court, to represent LSC clients. Since his retirement, “everyone in court—judges, opposing counsel, clerks—have expressed how much of a loss not having Roger is,” Rosenbloom says. “He’s smart, hard-working, empathetic—all the qualities that make you a good teacher, a good lawyer, and a good colleague.”
“Even outside LSC, this is a relationship business, and that was his strength,” adds Maureen E. McDonagh, LSC managing attorney and director of the Housing Law Clinic, who began working with Bertling when she joined LSC in 1998. “Each new room he went into, he was able to build relationships, and that helped his clients and his students.”
It helps that Bertling has a quick and dry sense of humor. “He is savvy in the way he uses his humor to get you pulled onto his side,” says McDonagh. “It worked in the classroom, it worked in courtroom, it worked everywhere that he could lighten the tension in a room with one quick swipe.”
“My sense of humor tends to be bit sarcastic,” Bertling concedes. “Not so much gallows humor, but the idea we are all human beings trying to help people who need us. It’s great to be serious, but not serious all the time. It’s good for students to see you can be real human being and do good work.”
A number of students, upon hearing Bertling planned to retire, asked how he could possibly clean out his famously messy office. “He also recognized that it was going to be a huge challenge,” says Rosenbloom, “so he started cleaning out his office a year in advance—I kid you not.”
Bertling and Shabecoff—who retired in 2019 as assistant dean for public service at HLS, where for 25 years she guided thousands of students and alumni into careers in public service—have two children, who have followed in their parents’ public service shoes: their daughter is a public defender in Philadelphia, and their son works with children who are on the autism spectrum. Bertling and Shabecoff plan to do a lot of traveling, but when they’re back home, Bertling will volunteer at Greater Boston Legal Services. “I can’t get away,” he says, with a laugh.
Looking back on his career, “I consider myself incredibly lucky,” he says. “I had a job for three decades that I love, working with people I have great deal of respect for and students I’m frankly in awe of, who are so smart and dedicated. I’m in a rare group of lawyers who really love their jobs. It’s been a great ride.”
In his absence, says Epstein, “Roger’s legacy lives on in the hundreds of students like me that he’s mentored and who have gone on to use the law as a tool for justice and change.”
For more on the Consumer Protection Clinic: HERE