Our “Employee Spotlight Series” will share with you who the people working behind the scenes to provide access to justice and more for our clients and their environments. This series will include interviews from both our Akron and Pittsburgh offices to give you an idea of who are and what we do.
The employee spotlight this week is Tim Fitchett who is newest PA Staff Attorney at Fair Shake. He is originally from South Eastern Pennsylvania. Tim comes to us after more than a decade out west in places like a Portland, Oregon and Alaska. Tim went to law school at Lewis & Clark focusing on environmental law. He has had the privilege to work on environmental issues in the Pacific Northwest and on environmental justice issues within the city of Portland.
Q: What did you do before you got involved at Fair Shake?
I ran my own law firm in Portland called Staterra Law. We worked on small business issues, civil litigation, and estate planning as a means to fund my pro-bono/low-bono environmental work.
Q: Favorite memory from your previous work?
I always loved helping small business owners get off the ground. Their excitement for their new endeavor was contagious.
Q: Tell me how you first got involved with Fair Shake?
A few months back my wife started considering a job with UPMC in Pittsburgh so I started looking for new opportunities. I found Fair Shake and was excited that the organization existed! I made a point to stop by their offices while my wife and I were visiting the city this spring and met some of the staff members including the executive director, Emily Collins. Well my wife took the job with UPMC and just around the time we moved to Pittsburgh Fair Shake just happened to have an open Staff Attorney position, so I applied!
I then had to pester Emily until she gave me a job. And here I am!
Q: What do you like most about working with Fair Shake?
Great people doing cool things.
Q: What will be your legacy at Fair Shake?
I intend to help build Fair Shake into a formidable force in our region that is able to work on big environmental and environmental justice projects, while also increasing access to standard legal services for the impoverished. I think that it is possible to create a law firm unlike any other, or rather grow this firm (which is already one of a kind). I believe the firm should become known widely throughout PA, OH, and WV for its commitment to pro-bono/low-bono work, for helping non-profits succeed in their goals, and for providing top-quality legal services to all clients.
Q: What do you wish other people knew about our work?
I think right now it is just a matter of getting other people to know about our work period.
Q: Why do you think the work that you do is important?
On the environmental side, the work that we do is important because we only have this one planet. Corporate greed and capitalism have severely harmed that planet and continue to do so. It is important that there are attorneys working to curtail the harm further and redress the harms already done.
Similarly, on the environmental justice side, minority and POC communities have spent decades if not centuries being systemically harmed in the interest of the majority. Those communities deserve representation and the same access to legal services as everyone else, but simply do not have the resources due to the systemic issues in our society that keep them repressed. Fair Shake can be that resource to help them get to a sustainable place themselves.
Q: What do you like to do when you are not working?
Hanging out with my daughter and wife, gardening, hiking, trail running, home improvement, cooking.
Pretty cute, right?
Q: What might someone be surprised to know about you?
I was the under 18 National Champion for Brazilian Jiujitsu when I was 17.
Q: What is your favorite skill that you have unrelated to what you do at Fair Shake?
I am pretty handy around the house and have spent the last two months rehabbing our home in Regent Square. This has involved replacing all the fixtures, plastering, caulking, wallpaper removal, painting, carpentry, plumbing, building built in bookshelves, designing and building an office, tearing up and replacing our lawn, transplanting dozens of bushes, building a French drain that leads to a rain garden, and a thousand other little projects along the way. Nothing is easy in an old house.
