Knowing When to Push

Some lawyers have an epiphany or “aha moment” that prompts them to go into law; some grow up as an argumentative child who adults say will make a great lawyer someday. 

“I didn’t have that,” says Saraphoena B. Koffron, founding partner of Austin+Koffron in Kalamazoo. “What I had was a series of challenges and injustices that I refused to get the best of me, that propelled me towards law school.”

Koffron was the youngest of six children in a low-income family, and her parents separated when she was young. A bright student, Koffron skipped her sophomore year of high school and started college at 17. She became pregnant and gave birth the summer after freshman year. A single parent and college sophomore, Koffron went to apply for state aid. When she was finally able to meet with a caseworker, Koffron was told she did not qualify for anything other than basic insurance coverage for her child unless she got a job.

“I was in a situation where I’d done so well academically that I had earned a presidential scholarship, which was a free ride for college. To keep that, I had to stay enrolled full time and maintain a relatively high GPA,” she says. Alternatively, to get state aid, she’d have to drop out or reduce her credits to accommodate a minimum wage job. “I unsuccessfully tried to talk the caseworker into giving me an exception by arguing with her about how the eligibility policies were turning women like me into statistics, and then I left. I wasn’t going to be boxed into a life of poverty. I refused, and still refuse, to be a statistic.”

She didn’t have much money, so Koffron and her child lived in a rough part of town. She couldn’t afford daycare, so she posted fliers seeking babysitters in exchange for helping with their schoolwork. She regularly donated plasma to make ends meet. One summer, she recalls, her child had two outfits. They’d wear one and she’d hand wash it at night in the sink to avoid paying for laundry, letting it dry while they wore the other the next day. 

As in high school, Koffron graduated early. When her older brother got accepted to a Ph.D. program in Pasadena, she and her toddler moved with him so they could qualify for affordable housing. There, Koffron obtained her teaching license and started working in Los Angeles-area schools. 

“As I became familiar with my students’ parents, they would open up about the obstacles that they couldn’t overcome—how they would be turned away when they sought help,” Koffron says. “It was clear there was a gap in services being provided, and that they needed somebody who truly understood where they were coming from.”

Koffron hoped she could be that somebody. She was already familiar with the courtroom. “By the time I got to law school, I had been a child in the center of custody disputes between my parents; helped a family member with an appeal of a federal conviction back in high school; handled my own paternity suit when my child was born; and a change of domicile action in order to move to California after college, which I could only do by giving up child support. I was aware not just of the complexity of law, but of how.” 

So she took the LSAT, got into law school and returned to Michigan. But not having much money again led to complications. “In most of the traditional law schools, students aren’t allowed to work when they’re a 1L. I had a partial scholarship for law school, but I had an extra mouth to feed and daycare is expensive. So what do you do? You go into debt,” she says. “The domino effect of having been a teen mom seemed like it would never end.”

Helping other people and families navigate that system is what sustains Koffron and her husband in their law practice today. “A lot of injustices occur simply because some people believe that if they try to defend themselves, no one will listen. Or they are told, ‘This is the way things have to be,’ and don’t see any other option,” she says. “I’m drawn to cases where people feel they have no way out. It’s where I feel like I can do the most good.”

She credits her success to their commitment to the Jewish principle of tikkun olam.

“Repairing the world is what I’m here to do. One family at a time, one policy at a time,” Koffron says. “I would be lying if I said that was my primary concern when I was 20 and decided to go to law school. I was angry then. … Raging against the machine was my motivation back then. Nowadays, I’m focused on making sure the machine is working for everyone.”