
Q&A: New executive director for Fort Worth legal nonprofit addresses intersections in family law
Methodist Justice Ministry’s new executive director, Aaryn Landers Lamb, discusses her vision for the legal nonprofit with the Fort Worth Report. (Courtesy photo | Yajaera Chatterson)
” data-medium-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1000007702.png?fit=300%2C300&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1000007702.png?fit=780%2C778&ssl=1″>
Aaryn Landers Lamb, attorney at law, leads Methodist Justice Ministry as its new executive director. She comes to the ministry from Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas and previously worked at the legal department within Texas’ Department of Family and Protective Services. She holds a Juris Doctor from Texas Wesleyan School of Law and is an active Tarrant County Bar Association member.
Methodist Justice Ministry was established in 2006 by Brooks Harrington, a lawyer and ordained Methodist minister. The ministry’s attorneys file lawsuits in Tarrant and Johnson county family courts, including protective orders and custody and divorce cases. Its client households are generally within 125% of the federal poverty guidelines and cannot afford legal counsel.
Landers Lamb discusses how her nearly 20-year career in family law brought her to Methodist Justice Ministry and how she plans to keep the legal nonprofit’s legacy going.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity, grammar and length.
Marissa Greene: Aaryn, tell me about how your experience in family law and nonprofit work has brought you to Methodist Justice Ministry.
Aaryn Landers Lamb: My heart has always just been pulled toward nonprofits. And so, for a while, I worked at the state, representing the Department of Family and Protective Services, more commonly known as CPS. Then in 2021, I had the same kind of thought that a lot of other people did: “What else can I do?” I turned 40 during the pandemic. I wanted to learn more and do more.
I started looking at nonprofits, and Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas was looking for a supervising family law attorney. I thought it was a long shot, and they took a chance on me, and I gained a lot of experience in my three years there. It set me up perfectly to take over in this role at Methodist Justice Ministry. This is doing the kind of work that I love. … I’ve learned and seen a lot about kids who are in foster care, kids who are raised by relatives and I feel really strongly about helping those kids and those families.
Greene: Who would be in need of legal services from the ministry?
Landers Lamb: There are people who need a lawyer because they recognize there’s a legal issue that they need a lawyer to resolve, and there’s always that gap (group) of people who struggle to pay for a lawyer. But then there are people who are struggling to even put food on the table, struggling to make rent every month, struggling to find safe and affordable child care so that they can work — and they also need legal help. It’s not good enough to say you can represent yourself, because that’s a tremendous burden. Especially the family members who are stepping in to care for a child that’s not their own. … That shouldn’t mean that the child isn’t protected, and Methodist Justice Ministry can step into that gap and provide the legal resources and assistance.
Methodist Justice Ministry will screen potential clients based on the following eligibility criteria:
Callers must live within Tarrant County or Johnson County.
The situation must be within family law, which covers conservatorship, guardianship, divorce, custody, temporary orders, termination of parental rights, adoption and more, according to the Texas State Law Library.
Greene: What does the need for accessible family law services in Fort Worth and Tarrant County look like? How do you plan on leading the team to address this need here?
Landers Lamb: The need is always there. (We hope to) expand, so that we can help more people, finding other resources to help people outside of family law. If your house isn’t safe because you may be evicted next week, how can you make sure that you’re going to be stable through a family law case? Or making sure that our counseling services can continue to be provided to help people through crisis. Tarrant County is growing, and we’ve seen that the inequality gap is not getting smaller.
Family, domestic violence in Tarrant County
Currently, 1 in 3 women in Tarrant County will be affected by intimate partner violence in her lifetime, according to the county’s criminal district attorney website. Methodist Justice Ministry has filed over 1,200 family lawsuits and represented more than 3,000 vulnerable community members impacted by family violence.
Greene: Tell me more about the resources the ministry has in addition to legal aid. Looking ahead, how do you plan to expand on these programs in response to the growing need?
Landers Lamb: I would love for us to be able to provide more counseling services. We are, first and foremost, a law firm, and this is just kind of a bonus that we are able to contract with these counselors to provide this service for our clients.
With my experience at Legal Aid, I have seen how there are a lot of other civil issues that face people who are experiencing financial struggles and have been impacted by domestic violence and child abuse. So, having lawyers or having expertise that may go beyond family law is something that I am interested in looking at in the future. I don’t want to race toward that, because I do want to make sure we maintain a path toward our mission.
But family life is intertwined with so many other things, like benefits and special education advocacy for kids in school who are struggling, and all the things like that that can all be related.
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org or @marissaygreene. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
Comments (0)