THE STARFISH STORY

Once upon a time, there was an old man who had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see.

The old man noticed a small boy approaching.  As the boy walked, he paused every so often and bent down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea.  The boy came closer still and the man called out, “Good morning!  May I ask what it is that you are doing?”

The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”

The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. Do really think that it matters if you throw a few back into the ocean?”

The boy smiled and bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned and said, “To this one it matters!”

While our firm is not able to remedy every injustice in our society, we believe it is our responsibility to try to address them and try.

While many of our pro bono activities help our individual clients, the abuses of similar people continue.  We are asked why it is important for us to devote so much unpaid time to these causes.  Our answer is the same one as the little boy saving starfish.  "To that person our help mattered."