Public Counsel eNews

Struggle for Equal Justice Continues

On behalf of our entire staff, board and most importantly our clients, thank you for helping make 2006 such a remarkable year, for your steadfast commitment to our work and for your willingness to play such a critical role in providing equal justice, opportunity and hope to all members of our community.

SO MUCH MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE...but following are some of the things that, thanks to your support, we were able to accomplish in 2006:

Children's Rights Project

• Finalized our 5,500th adoption of a child out of the foster care system and into a loving family;
• Worked with other stakeholders to obtain, in a highly publicized case, a preliminary injunction to require that families adopting disabled children be given a benefit rate adequate to support these children’s complex needs;
• Assisted over 1,200 children avoid foster care by aiding their families and friends who care for them to establish legal guardianships.

Community Development Project

• Assisted over 400 nonprofit organizations and micro-businesses with their legal needs so they can focus their limited resources on their critical work in distressed communities;
• Developed an innovative method of using a panel of pro bono volunteers to respond to pressing employment law issues frequently faced by community organizations;
• Created legal trainings for minority and disadvantaged micro-businesses to strengthen their ability to bid for city contracts.

Immigrants' Rights Project

• After four years of litigation working with extraordinary pro bono volunteers, we moved closer to justice for Isaac, a severe torture victim, with two young children, Fritz and Kelly, who remain at risk of detention by a repressive regime in Cameroon.  This week, the U.S. government approved petitions for asylee status for the children;
• Secured more favorable SIJS (Special Immigrant Juvenile Status) rulings, to assist abused or neglected immigrant children, than any program in the country;
• Announced the launching in January 2007 of a new Immigrants’ Rights Legal Clinic at the UCLA School of Law.

Child Care Law Project

• Assisted over 1,500 childcare providers who take care of over 10,000 children in distressed communities with their legal and licensing needs;  
• Saved an outstanding family child-care provider, caring almost exclusively for low-income children, from having to close her doors because of an attempt by authorities to wrongfully terminate her operations;
• Started a new project to increase and diversify the early childhood education workforce, and to improve the professionalism and skill set of existing providers.

Consumer Law Project

• Provided over $12 million in legal services to victims of real estate fraud, auto scams, and other forms of consumer abuse;
• Obtained, with outstanding pro bono attorneys, a settlement requiring payment by a title insurance company of more than $200,000 for fraudulent loans taken out by a scam artist against a Latino couple with three young children;
• Obtained, thanks to extraordinary work by our volunteers, a judgment for over $340,000 on behalf of a 90-year-old client who was induced through fraud to transfer his home to an unscrupulous paralegal who posed as an attorney.

Homelessness Prevention Law Project

• Recruited, trained and supervised nearly 500 summer associates from Los Angeles’ major law firms to spend a day advocating on behalf of more than 1,000 impoverished and homeless individuals to enable them to access emergency food, health, mental health and shelter to which they are legally entitled;
• Persuaded Los Angeles County to fund a major expansion of Homeless Court;
• Filed, with other stakeholders, a lawsuit which received national attention to reform the practice of dumping homeless patients on skid row.

Celebrating 35 Years of Equal Justice!
Public Counsel celebrated its 35th anniversary at last year's William O. Douglas Award Dinner on June 8, 2006.  The highlight of the evening was a remarkable performance by a special guest and Public Counsel friend - Academy Award-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams - whose high octane peformance dazzled the sold-out crowd of nearly 1,400 people. 

Those honored at the dinner exemplify the highest principles of equal access to justice, freedom of expression and equal rights.  They included: Best Buy Co., Inc., which received the Corporate Achievement Award; Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, who received the Community Leadership Award; and the law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, LLP, which received the Law Firm Pro Bono Award.

Colleague of the Year - Virgie Ayala
While I love to brag about our staff all the time, our Karen Paull Memorial Colleague of the Year Award allows our board of directors to select an exceptional Public Counsel staff member whose work stands out as the epitome of the dedication and compassion that characterizes the Public Counsel staff overall.  This year’s honoree was Virginia “Virgie” Ayala.  Virgie is the senior paralegal in Public Counsel’s Children’s Rights Project (CRP) and while she is famous for her sunny disposition, compassion, efficiency and cooking – I just call her Public Counsel’s official “mom.”

The Summer Clerks
Our 2006 summer class of 51 students was made up of extraordinary scholars and even better friends.  We all miss their enthusiasm and energy.

This year’s summer class was extraordinary not only for its sheer size but for its scope of work, which was as varied and as far-flung as the law schools from which they came.  While Logan Elliot (UCLA) and Erica Yen (Hastings) stayed close to the office working diligently on critical transactional matters for our Community Development Project, Heather Gorman (Harvard) and Alida Garcia (Columbia) traveled throughout the county representing secondary students in special education cases.  The 14 clerks in our General Relief Advocacy Project (GRAP) came from schools across the nation and they served over 1,500 clients across Los Angeles County.  Mary Craver (Tulane) was a transfer student from New Orleans whose law school, Tulane, was in ruins after Hurricane Katrina.  Mary was a total star in our Adoptions Project and, fortunately, both she and Tulane are doing fine now.

Alanna Frisby, Columbia
Alida Garcia, Columbia
Ana Buchberg, Berkeley
Andrew Kong, Loyola
Ara Cho, Tufts
Brooke Minor, University of Virginia
Chesney Allen, Kansas State University
Christian Canas, UCLA
Crystal Yagoobian, Pepperdine
David Lopez, Loyola
Elisabeth Centeno, Stanford
Eric Wu, Notre Dame
Erica Yen, UC Hastings
Heather Gorman, Harvard
Ify Offor, University of Wisconsin
Ivy Cheung, Whittier
Jake Holland, UCSB
Jennifer Douglas, USC
Jennifer Phan, UC Davis
Joanna Arkema, Roger Williams
Joanna Casasola, UCLA
John Lansing, Loyola
Josh Ludmir, University of Michigan
Kara Stein, McGeorge
Kassandrea Perez, Pepperdine
Kristen Murphy, Whittier
Lara Hoffman, UCLA
Logan Elliot, UCLA
Margarita Suknovalnik, Southwestern
Marvin Vallejo, Southwestern
Mary Craver, Tulane
Matt Dayton, Duke
Mayra Navarro, UCLA
Melissa Wagner, Regent University
Michelle Keogh, USC
Monica Ortiz-Sanchez, Loyola
Monica Pirri, University of Wisconsin
Monika Harris, University of Wisconsin
Nabeel Perache, University of Michigan
Nicole Perez, UCLA
Patricia Rodriquez, USC
Paul Bost, Vanderbilt
Pegah Vakili, Southwestern
Porcia Thurston, UCLA
Renee DeLellis, Loyola
Sarah Dailey, Boston University
Suliana Lutin, UC Hastings
Tim Phillips, Mira Costa HS
Yasmine Abdel-Aal, Whittier