Lisa LeSage’s biggest pet peeve is people picking on other people.

A seasoned civil rights attorney, she’s worked on fair housing and housing discrimination cases, and dozens of legal cases with farmworkers, including work as prosecutor on the only slavery case ever heard in the state of Oregon.

A longtime member of St. Andrew Parish, she’s now at work at Lewis and Clark College’s Law School as assistant dean for the business law program.

But those social justice ethics are still with her.

She recently helped Lewis and Clark Law School launch the Small Business Legal Clinic, a service providing legal services to low-income small and emerging businesses — in particular those run by women and minorities.

“It’s important to find a need of the community, then create opportunities to fill that need,” said LeSage. “We began by asking, ‘What else can we do for our community as a private institution?’ We ended up with the legal clinic.”

The Small Business Legal Clinic opened its doors in October 2006. According to LeSage and the law school, 95 percent of Portland businesses employ fewer than 50 workers, but until recently, there were no coordinated legal services in Oregon dedicated to serving the needs of small, low-income, and minority entrepreneurs.

“The Small Business Legal Clinic is a powerful example of how public-private collaboration and a passion for economic justice can create a much-needed resource for marginalized communities, while simultaneously providing valuable education to future lawyers — the collaborative nature of this clinic makes it an innovative model for the country,” said LeSage.

The clinic obtained funds from the Portland law firms Tonkon Torp, Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt and Stoel Rives, as well as the Portland Business Alliance and Bank of the West.

LeSage also approached the Portland Mayor’s Office and the Portland Development Commission and suggested a public-private partnership between the city and Lewis and Clark. The clinic received a $100,000 grant from the city and reduced-cost office space from the Portland Development Commission within its own building on the corner of Northwest Fifth and Everett Streets in downtown Portland.

In addition to providing practical experience for Lewis & Clark law students the clinic ensures the increased availability of business-transactions attorneys able to provide pro bono legal assistance in their areas of expertise.

LeSage said the clinic is believed to be the only business law clinic in the country that has a coordinated pro bono component certified by the state bar, as well as funding by the city, the chamber of commerce, business and major law firms.

By supporting small businesses, the clinic will encourage the creation of new jobs, strengthen the city’s economic infrastructure by assisting individual small businesses, and facilitate community development.

The clinic will also promote volunteerism by familiarizing law students with the needs of low-income small businesses, by introducing them to the tradition of pro bono legal work, and by expanding the opportunities for interested business-transaction lawyers to engage in socially meaningful pro bono activities.

The potential client base for the Small Business Legal Clinic is estimated to be at least 1,000 low-income small businesses annually in the Portland metropolitan area, and is expected to impact approximately 3,000 people. This client base includes small business owners served through the clinic’s collaborations with small business incubators, as well as those who seek help directly from the clinic.

All of this makes sense to those who know LeSage; that she would be behind such an effort.

Father Dave Zegar, now pastor of St. Luke Parish in Woodburn, knows about LeSage’s commitment to Catholic social teaching.

While pastor at St. Alexander Parish in Cornelius, he was working with the Hispanic community in the Washington County area.

LeSage at the time was a Legal Aid attorney.

“We got involved first with issues related to migrant camps,” said Father Zegar, who was part of an effort through the church to help bring agencies and organizations together; to work together and share information on issues related to the Hispanic community — Legal Aid was a part of that.

“We were able to do work to get some laws changed,” said Father Zegar, who also recalls, as does LeSage, that sometimes that work involved some pretty scary happenings; like having a shotgun pointed at them.

“I wasn’t there when she had the gun pointed at her,” said Father Zegar. “But she was so talented, dedicated, so concerned about social justice, that it didn’t surprise me. The difference is that she has always approached it in a way that was very helpful — she wasn’t antagonizing, she got things done.”

Father Zegar also recalls LeSage helping a man from Oaxaca, Mexico, who ended up in the state mental hospital merely because no one could understand his rare dialect of Spanish.

“That one made the national news here in this country and in Mexico,” said Father Zegar. “I’m the one who brought him back to Mexico — she did all the legal work and working together on this process. She took a lot of cases a lot of attorneys probably wouldn’t even bother with. She’s really very talented and dedicated.”

Part of Father Zegar’s admiration for LeSage also comes from her survivor-ethic; now that she’s beaten cancer twice as well.

“It’s her energy that keeps her moving,” said Father Zegar.

After graduating from college in the early 1980s, LeSage lived for a while in Guatemala and Chile, seeing first hand the results of bad U.S. foreign policy, she says.

Upon returning to the states, she stumbled on St. Andrew Legal Clinic, in Northeast Portland, which at the time was still associated with the parish.

She went in and asked if she could have a job — she ended up volunteering as a law clerk where she worked all throughout law school at Lewis and Clark. “It was a great place to work,” said LeSage. “They allowed me to bring my baby into the office while I worked.”

They did criminal defense, social security/disability, worker’s compensation, personal injury, family law — anything and everything, says LeSage.

At this time she also became a member of the parish.After finishing law school, she had the choice to work at the legal clinic or to work for the Legal Aid Office for Farmworkers.

She chose the latter, working at their offices in Hillsboro. She worked there for almost four years before joining a law firm of ex-legal services lawyers.

“It was the best integrated law firm I ever worked for,” said LeSage, whose partners were an Asian, a Latino, a Jew, and herself.

Her law firm’s focus was on immigration law and civil rights law.

She then went into private practice for herself where she worked on cases in civil rights; racketeering; consumer fraud; and class action suits representing mainly low-income families and clients.

“I was always interested in civil rights in college,” said LeSage. “I was born I think with a fundamental sense of the fact that I don’t like people picking on other people. I don’t care what religion you’re from — that’s pretty basic.”

From a family of six children, LeSage says her parents always tried to instill the concept of “treat others the way you wish to be treated.”

Her present job at Lewis and Clark presented itself to her.

She was teaching here part time over the years, but decided to take the position because she felt like a change, and felt it was her way to pass on her knowledge of social justice to students.

“Honestly, I didn’t like going to law school, but the opportunity to have the power of a law degree is a helpful thing to others,” says ­LeSage. “I was part of class action suits that eventually changed the way people did things.”

Although the job at Lewis and Clark is a tad bit less active, she is encouraged and excited by efforts like the Small Business Legal Clinic.

“A high percentage of Lewis and Clark students go into some form of law that deals with the public interest,” says LeSage. “And that to me says something about what we’re doing here.”