Old School, Minnesota Lawyer Kim Dayton Respects Her Elders

WHEN SHE STARTED A NEW JOB in Atlanta after growing up and attending law school in Kansas, Kim Dayton knew she would make plenty of friends. But she never expected to get better acquainted with her grandparents––who lived in North Carolina, just a three-hour drive away.

After a few weekend visits, Dayton learned how her grandparents were living. “They were very low-income and not well educated. In fact, my grandfather couldn’t even read,” she says. “I saw how important programs such as the establishment of senior centers, transportation services, and programs like meals on wheels were to them in their old age.”

This experience helped inspired her to pursue a life helping seniors. In 1995 Dayton established a volunteer clinic for helping the elderly with legal issues in Lawrence. And when she became a faculty member at William Mitchell College of Law in 2005, she created the Center for Elder Justice and Policy, which collaborates with organizations that help with the elderly in order to make more efficient use of their resources. “Academic institutions have a lot of resources that small organizations don’t,” explains Dayton. “My center connects our resources to the community.”

One group the center––alongside Volunteers of America, Senior Services, Protective Services and Elder Justice Fellow Andrea Palumbo––focuses on helping is elder orphans––seniors without friends or family who can help them make decisions concerning personal or financial matters.

“Minnesota doesn’t have a system set up to keep the elderly out of poverty,” Dayton says. She believes that institutions like William Mitchell should create greater public awareness of these issues. “Our elderly are being devastated by increased gas prices combined with their fixed incomes,” she says. “Even if they don’t drive themselves, there are programs like Meals on Wheels that end up having to cut back on their services.”

So where is the center? “Right here,” Dayton says, tapping the top of her desk that, with its towers of paper, could be a diorama of a city. The center isn’t a physical building that people can walk into and get legal advice. “It’s really more of a concept,” she says. “We are trying to connect William Mitchell’s resources––our library, our students who have the time to do research, and their passion to be engaged––with the community.”

Dayton’s students work hundreds of volunteer hours on projects such as making sure the policies in nursing homes are upheld, and creating the policies themselves––such as the Caregiver Leave Act, which would help relieve the financial burden of having to take time off from work in order to care for a loved one.

“I consider the students I graduated to be a huge success,” Dayton says. “Now they have the tools to help spread the word and find solutions for these issues that will affect everyone.”

Grandpa and Grandma would be proud.

–– Courtney "Coco" Mault

First published in Minnesota Law & Politics Magazine