ORLANDO, Fla. – Paul Zeniewicz’s office is not your typical law office. But then, Zeniewicz isn’t really your typical lawyer.
At first, he sounds like one.
“I do first party property insurance. I sue insurance companies for various indiscretions,” said Zeniewicz.
But that’s before he starts talking about his real passion.
“I do a lot of volunteer work as a guardian ad litem attorney,” said Zeniewicz. “What a guardian ad litem attorney is, is an attorney who works in the best interests of different children. You’re talking about parental custody and termination of parental rights and different things like that.”
It’s an effort he sort of fell into 12 years ago.
“My friend worked at Legal Aid. And she said, ‘Please, please, there’s all these children out here that need your help, or need help from a lawyer, would you please take on the case?’ I did, it was a baby,” said Zeniewicz. “And I got to know the family and got to help them. The grandmother adopted the baby. And I found it super rewarding.:
Zeniewicz said that case was relatively easy, but he quickly learned those are few and far between.
“People want to adopt babies. The harder, more difficult cases, are the 12-year-old client who might have been sexually abused or had severe abuse from their parents. Because, you know, they’re probably not going to get adopted, right? If they’ve been in the foster system.”
So Zenewicz makes it his mission to go above and beyond for the roughly two dozen clients he’s already helped..
“In Orange County, all children who need an attorney get an attorney, right? But most of the time, those attorneys are just around to make sure these kids’ rights don’t get trampled on,” said Zeniewicz. “What I’ve done, the only difference I think, is I get to know these kids. I’m getting to know these kids on a personal level, and understanding who they are. So we can together figure out what’s going to be the best route for them.”
And most importantly, he’s going to stick around, even when they age out.
“I’m working in the legal system and their case managers are going to change, the attorneys who represent their parents are going to change, their parents are going to show up, they’re going to not show up, the judge who oversees the matter is going to change over these years. But I’m going to stay with them. Until they age out of foster care. And that consistency alone, it’s going to be the difference,” he said. “And that’s where I’ve really grown to love it. Because again, I represent them from the time they were 12. To the time they age out of foster. And then they’re the homies afterwards, you know, they’re my friends afterwards.”
It’s an important difference, because statistics show only about half of foster children will graduate high school. About 25 percent of former foster youth experience homelessness within four years of being emancipated from the system, and about 70 percent of youth who exit foster care as legal adults are arrested at least once by age 26.
“That should shock everyone’s conscious, we’re doing something wrong,” said Zeniewicz.
That’s why he said consistency is just the start of what can make the difference between a child becoming a productive adult or not.
“I’ve represented a lot of kids over the last 12 years, I haven’t found a single one yet that didn’t have redeeming qualities, that you couldn’t get behind not a single one,” said Zeniewicz. “They all have problems, so do we, you know, we all go through things. And in for these kids, they just need a little direction, a little love, little stability, a little continuity, and most of them figure it out.”
Zeniewicz makes the point that just by virtue of being in the system, sometimes the kids don’t always get the support they need, they don’t always hear about opportunities, and sometimes they’re just judged on how they do in school.
“‘I’m not going to judge them based on their grades. Seems to me that’s the way they judge most of these kids. And you’re talking about kids in group homes, where to me, if they prioritize things over school, that shouldn’t shock people when they do poorly in school,” said Zeniewicz. “But I think that’s what it is, the consistency that a parent might give is like, ‘Hey, I know you’re going to make mistakes, I was making terrible mistakes when I was 16, 17, 18, 19 years old. So I’m not going to judge them on that stuff. I might tell them, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t be doing this. Let’s work on this. There’s a different way to to handle these situations.’ But I’m not going to chastise them for doing poorly in school, I’m not going to chastise them for getting in a fight. I’m going to try to understand them and figure out how we could do things different going forward.”
Zeniewicz’s guidance isn’t just about behavior, though. He’s there when they need to learn a life skill, when they need something a little extra, and sometimes, just to make them smile.
“I’ve helped clients get cars, vehicles, we’ve helped the kids with getting insurance, I’m helping my two clients now get their driver’s licenses as they’re aging out,” said Zeniewicz. “We’ve done backpack drives because my kids lived in this big group home. I’m a big sneaker guy. And one of my favorite things I’ve ever done was there’s a group home with 15 kids, and last Christmas, we got them all Jordans and Dunks, and like, it was literally like, chicken soup for my soul. You know, typically, they’d be hand-me-downs, or they would be, you know, a size too big or size too small or whatever. But the reactions were all fired up because they get this thing that’s all their own. And these kids who live in these group homes we all know, when we look good, we feel better. Our confidence is greater.”
It’s not just a job to Zeniewicz.
“It’s just kind of humanizing these kids and showing them that there are adults out there who are not related to them who care about them and want them to succeed,” said Zeniewicz. “This is the reason I became a lawyer. This is the reason I wanted to practice law in the first place, right, was to help people. And, you know, I’ve watched you know, kids graduate high school, get into college, and it literally makes my heart sing.”