Voluntary Legal Services Program Lawyer of the Month
by Mary Cook

Jason Krestoff, an attorney in the Law Offices of Daniel J. Sullivan, knew that he wanted to be an attorney from the time he was 12 years old. "Everything I did in school-middle school, high school--was working toward that," he reflected, staring thoughtfully at his hands as they folded on the conference table in the firm's law library.

After he graduated from law school at the University of Arizona in 1991, he came back to Sacramento, his hometown, and started interviewing for jobs. While he waited for the phone to ring, he began volunteering with VLSP. "Sitting around the house watching soaps felt like a sin," he recalled, smiling gently. "I'll never forget a speech by the dean of my law school: 'Law isn't a business; it's a profession. Your role is to assist society in solving its problems.' So I looked up volunteer agencies and found VLSP. I set up a desk at the VLSP office and gave phone advice. I made it my full-time job."

Besides dispensing advice, Krestoff also took cases for VLSP. His first case was his most memorable for a lot of reasons-good and bad. "It was the first time I did a deposition, the first time I wrote a pleading, the first time I appeared in federal court, the first time I stood up and said I was someone's counsel," he elaborated. Krestoff represented a bookkeeper being sued by the government for half a million dollars. "Her signature was on the payroll her supervisors didn't pay taxes on, so the government sued the company and her, too. They were going to garnish her wages. The company had private attorneys for the supervisors, but the bookkeeper, by then unemployed, had no one to defend her," Krestoff explained. "I was working out a deal-the government was going to use her testimony to go after the supervisors. She wouldn't have had to pay. But then she fled the state. I had to withdraw from the case. I tried to contact her-I don't know how many addresses I followed up on, but I never found out if she signed the release the government was working on."

If this case left him troubled, others he has handled for VLSP have had happier endings. Clients no longer steamrolled by insurance companies or collection agencies, for instance. "We give them options, buy them some time to save up to pay what they owe-or we find out they in fact don't owe as much as the company is pressing them for," he reported.

Married and the father of four, Krestoff laughingly calls being a father the only "hobby" he has time for. A third-generation native Sacramentan, whose great-grandparents emigrated from Russia to San Francisco and then moved to West Sacramento, Krestoff has a large extended family in the Sacramento Valley. "I can't imagine living anywhere else--or doing anything but law," he added.

To recognize the contributions of local attorneys to the community, Sacramento Lawyer features an outstanding volunteer of the Voluntary Legal Services Program (VLSP) in each issue. VLSP is Sacramento's pro bono program and is co-sponsored by the Sacramento County Bar Association and Legal Services of Northern California. Attorneys, paralegals, notaries, private investigators, interpreters and others donate their services to help Sacramento's poor with civil legal matters. If you are interested in joining VLSP, please call (916) 551-2123.