Mike Wiers met the legendary Bangor attorney Lew Vafiades only once or twice. But like most lawyers of his generation, the 55-year-old Hartland attorney knew Vafiades, who died in 2001 at the age of 81, by reputation.

Last month, Wiers was awarded the first Lew Vafiades Pro Bono Award by the Maine Volunteer Lawyers Project. It wasn’t the first time Wiers (pronounced wires) has been honored by the organization, but it was the most meaningful.

“I am honored and humbled to receive an award connected with Lew,” he said recently from his office in the Somerset County town of 1,000. “I would not consider myself in the same league as Lew. He was a true gentleman and an outstanding lawyer who did lot of trial work. I didn’t know him all that well.

“I’m a country bumpkin from out in the sticks, but the one or two times I came in direct contact with him, he knew me.”

The Maine VLP created the award named after Vafiades as part of its 20th anniversary celebration. The organization provides assistance regarding civil legal matters to people at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty level. Over the past two decades, the VLP and the attorney volunteers who work with it have assisted more than 165,000 callers and provided free representation to more than 25,000 clients, according to director Mary Richardson.

While defendants charged in criminal matters are entitled to have attorneys appointed by a judge to represent them if they cannot afford to hire them, litigants in civil legal matters are not. That is one of the reasons volunteer attorneys take cases that range from family to consumer to employment law to benefits and income maintenance, Richardson said recently.

Lawyers are not required by the rules that govern their profession to volunteer their services, but pro bono work is a deeply rooted professional tradition. Richardson said that Maine attorneys who work with the organization are generous with their time, taking on between 10 percent and 15 percent of their cases pro bono, or without compensation.

That is the kind of standard set by Vafiades, according to Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice Paul Rudman, who presented the first award named for his old friend and colleague.

“If more lawyers were like Lew, there’d be no need for this organization,” he said. “Find me somebody who came to Lew and asked for legal help and was denied [because of financial hardship]. … He exemplifies the best in the bar.”

Wiers, who has accepted 36 VLP cases since 1996, sees pro bono work as part of his responsibility.

“I think that it’s part of our responsibility as attorneys,” he said recently.

Richardson praised Wiers for his willingness to take on the most time-intensive cases – parental rights action, divorces involving children and domestic violence issues.

Raised on a dairy farm in St. Albans, Wiers said that after 28 years on the job, he doesn’t know why he wanted to become a country lawyer, but he still finds it satisfying.

“It is a special privilege to do this type of work, but I could not do what I do without my wife, Libby, and the excellent staff I have,” he said. “Much privilege brings with it a responsibility to give something back to people who don’t have it.”

The VLP also presented the award named for Vafiades to the firm that he founded in 1972 with his cousin Nicholas Brountas, known today as Vafiades, Brountas and Kominsky. Over the past few years, the Bangor firm has taken on 65 cases, according to Richardson.

Cushing Samp of Hampden, perhaps better known for her performances with the Penobscot Theatre Company than her legal work, was given the VLP Legal Services Outstanding Volunteer Award. Samp was honored for her 20 years of work as a volunteer at Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Bangor.

For more information on the Maine Volunteer Lawyers Project, call (800) 442-4293 or visit the Web site at www.vlp.org.