NOT IF I CAN HELP IT

Groff’s memoir revisits the formative family law cases she took on at the beginning of her career as an attorney.

In 1984, Groff was a young attorney freshly arrived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to work for legal aid. While observing a custody hearing, she found the first person in desperate need of her help—a young mother with no attorney struggling to maintain custody of her 16-year-old daughter. Showing her profound dedication from the start, Groff didn’t hesitate to jump in from the court room’s audience and help. As the first of many stories from the early years of her legal career, this first exchange shows the passion and urgency with which Groff acts for every client she accepted and every unjust policy she fought. The author notes that becoming a lawyer wasn’t part of her original career plan. As a mother living in the Pennsylvania countryside, she’d tried numerous odd jobs, like taxi driving and working at a sock factory, before slowly completing her college degree. Shortly before graduating, she had her first real encounter with domestic abuse and the legal challenges victims face. The police completely dismissed her terrified neighbor who was fleeing her abuser. (“Sorry, lady. It’s policy. We don’t do domestics,” 911 told her curtly while a man was breaking down her door with a hatchet.) Hoping to make some small, positive change within the system, Groff began law school at 37, focusing in particular on family law. After graduating, she worked for legal aid in Lewistown, Pennsylvania. There, she continually sought to get women out of abusive situations and navigate the laws that neglected to protect them from their own spouses (“Only homicide seemed to qualify as an actual crime in domestic violence”). Groff soon transferred to Bucks County, where she settled into a small office and continued to work against unfair policies wherever possible.

The memoir follows the lawyer’s trajectory through her departure from legal aid and the founding of her own firm in 1996. The cases she recounts range from harrowing to infuriating: The police shrugged away potential murders as suicides, children were left unsupervised with dangerous fathers with devastating results, doctors assumed that struggling young mothers must be alcoholics. Each episode carries a tremendous punch, as well as a searing lesson about the failings of society to help those in need. Groff deftly narrates her personal experiences to set engrossing scenes, like a last-minute courtroom speech to keep a baby out of protective services or the immense relief from a colleague’s simple affirmation, while never losing sight of the bigger picture. “Abusers do not think of themselves as criminals,” she writes in one of the many examples of the smart, big-picture analysis she offers. Despite such heavy details and subject matter, Groff balances her book with warmth and humor. (Her descriptions of failing as a taxi cab driver are laugh out loud funny.) While she remains relatable until the end, never shying away from describing her own self-doubt, she’s also careful to keep the law and her clients in the spotlight. “This was the work I was meant to do,” Groff writes, and readers will certainly feel that inspiring dedication coming through on every page.

An inspiring, intelligent memoir focused on the challenges of advocacy.