16 - JACKSON HOLE WOMAN, Jackson Hole News&Guide, Wednesday, October 19, 2011
From the library to the
annals of law Bernfeld translates lifelong passion for information to helping people get legal aid. By Brielle Schaeffer
B
etsy Bernfeld just can’t seem to stay away from the library. The former director of Teton County Library was taking classes to get a doctorate in library science but ended up going to the University of Wyoming Law School. When she graduated in 2007 and began working at the Teton County District Court as a law clerk and staff attorney, she immediately took to the little law library, located on the bottom floor of the county administration building and managed by the Teton County Bar Association. “It was too small, and it wasn’t cared for well enough,” she said. “My vision for it was to turn it into a self-help center.” Fast forward a few years: Now Bernfeld is hoping to find a bigger area for the law library to hold workshops and to provide free, one-on-one legal help for people. Calling it the Teton County Access to Justice Center, she hopes to eventually provide a whole range of services for people, from family law to collections help. For criminal cases, a person has a right to a public
BRADLY J. BONER / NEWS&GUIDE
Betsy Bernfeld, former director of Teton County Library, discovered a room in the county courthouse with a small collection of law books. Under her care, it has become the Teton County Access to Justice Center.
defender, but for civil cases there is very little aid. “If someone sues you, you can’t help it if you don’t have enough money,” Bernfeld said. “I’ve learned through the court there are a lot of people that don’t have representation, and they’re in over their heads.” Especially in Teton County, with the high cost of living, some people cannot afford legal help. “There’s just a great need,” she said.
Loving the library Bernfeld’s passion for libraries started when she was a young girl in Tucson, Ariz. “My sister wouldn’t let me borrow books,” Bernfeld said. “She made me check them out.” She also loved stamping things, she said. Bernfeld would go around her house marking everything with a stamp of her father’s. “I always wanted to be a librarian,” she said.
But when she went to the University of Arizona as a reluctant student, administrators said she couldn’t get a bachelor’s degree in library science at that time, only a master’s. “I had to get a bachelor’s degree in something else,” she said, So Bernfeld majored in creative writing and sociology. After she graduated, she did social research in Tucson and then began graduate coursework in statistics to help with her social work. “I’m a lifelong-learner type,” she said. But in 1975, she moved to Jackson with her husband, after he had worked seasonally at the Teton Valley Ranch in Kelly. Her husband loved it, she said. He came back to the desert obsessed and unable to stop talking about the mountains. See ANNALS OF LAW on 17
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