The VPC's Humble Beginnings
The VPC was first established in 2013 by the late Ric Morgan, an attorney and goat farmer in Elbert County who recognized a gap in legal services in his own rural community and across the vast rural areas of Colorado. Mr. Morgan became a lawyer as a retirement career after serving 20 years as an intelligence officer in the US Navy.
At first, Mr. Morgan made himself available to his local community in 2010, meeting regularly with people at the library for free on a regularly scheduled night to help them sort through their legal issues. This came to be called “Lawyers at the Library” — the precursor to the statewide VPC. In 2013 he expanded to three rural libraries, adding more libraries each year for the next decade. He would eventually maintain a full-time volunteer schedule, serving 87 libraries statewide and assisting an astounding 2,000 patrons per year.
Following Mr. Morgan’s untimely passing in 2024, the Colorado Access to Justice Commission and the Colorado Lawyers Committee partnered to relaunch the VPC, opening clinics in six libraries starting in August 2024, and adding rural libraries each month. This team is committed to continuing the important legal service that Ric Morgan provided Colorado residents for the last decade of his remarkable life, while maintaining his mission and honoring his legacy.
