StanfordSummer2007

P U B L I C I N T E R E S T A T S T A N F O R D L A W S C H O O L S U M M E R 2 0 0 7
2 Executive Director’s Note 2 News Briefs 3 Alumni Spotlight on John Whitelaw ’86: Lifelong Legal Services Advocate Thrives in Trenches
4 Postcards from the Field: Students Share Photos, Speak About Public Interest Summer Internships 8 Clinical News Update
As the new executive director of the
John and Terry Levin Center for Public
Service and Public Interest Law, Susan J.
Feathers has an ambitious vision for the
center and is thrilled to be at the helm.
She states, “I can’t imagine a more
exciting position for someone in my
field. Stanford is unique in its abiding
commitment to clinical legal education
and public service, both of which are
central to its mission.”
EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE ENABLES QUICK STARTEXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE ENABLES QUICK START
As a 14-year veteran of public interest
education administration who also
practiced public interest law for eight
years, Feathers has already begun to
launch new programs and identify ways
to enhance existing ones.
Prior to joining Stanford, Feathers
served as assistant dean of public
service at the University of Pennsylvania
Law School. She achieved national
Feathers Named New Levin
Center Executive Director
Nationally Recognized Public Interest Educator to Lead
Expansion of Public Interest and Pro Bono Programs
Each year, she and supervising
attorneys from the nonprofits trained
and supervised as many as 300 students,
who in turn provided legal assistance to
thousands of indigent clients.
Moreover, Feathers played a
significant role in expanding Penn’s
international presence, including
planning several delegations to Cuba
and El Salvador and creating the Public
International Fellows programs.
With her Public Interest Scholars,
Feathers also planned a wide range
of conferences, many of which were
published in leading law journals,
focusing on Civil Gideon, Terrorism and
the Constitution, (Continued on page 7)
acclaim for leading the first mandatory
law school pro bono program, which
became the first recipient of the ABA’s
Pro Bono Publico Award.
Feathers placed 800-900 students each
year in pro bono projects at hundreds
of public interest organizations in
Philadelphia and worldwide—77%
of students exceeded the minimum
requirement of 70 hours.
In addition, she launched award-
winning student-run projects,
including the Animal Rights Project,
the Immigration Project, the Marshall
Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project,
the Prisoners’ Rights Project, and the
Reproductive Rights Project. Feathers
also created the first student-run LGBT
pro bono project for which she won
the Advocate for Justice Award from
the Philadelphia Bar Association’s
Committee on the Legal Rights of
Lesbians and Gay Men.
Susan J. Feathers was appointed executive
director of the John and Terry Levin Center for
Public Service & Public Interest Law.
PHOTO:JOENETO

2
Save the date! Public Interest Welcome
Dinner for Students, Alumni, Faculty
The Levin Center will host a welcome
reception for first-year students and returning
students on Wednesday, September 5 in
Crocker Garden at 5:30 p.m. Alumni and
faculty are encouraged to join us. Please
RSVP to nasun@stanford.edu.
New Initiatives Will Be Launched to
Engage Public Interest Alumni
With an eye towards increasing the involve-
ment of public interest alumni, the Levin
Center is pleased to announce several new
initiatives targeting public interest alumni.
The first program of the year will be the
Alumni Mentors-in-Residence program, which
will bring mid-level public interest alumni (3-
10 years out) back to campus to provide
one-on-one student counseling and present a
substantive lecture to the larger community.
The Levin Center will also host receptions in
several major metropolitan areas for public
interest alumni to meet Levin Center staff and
learn more about our current programs. The
first one will be in the Bay Area in September,
followed by one in Washington, DC in early
October and one in New York City in January.
More details will follow shortly.
Plans are also in the works for building an
on-line community for alumni to interact with
one another and with students. Stay tuned!
Executive Director’s Note
I am deeply honored to join Stanford Law School as the Executive
Director of the John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and
Public Interest Law. Stanford’s deep and abiding philosophical and
financial commitment to clinical legal education, pro bono, and public
interest careers make it a new frontier for legal education. I eagerly
look forward to working with Stanford students, faculty, and graduates
in building your already impressive public interest program.
As lawyers we can play a vital role in working to create a more just
and humane society. We have the potential to raise, sharpen, and
resolve many of the pressing legal issues of the day: the plight of the
homeless, the treatment of detainees, the hazards of toxic waste.
Nonetheless, the challenges facing public interest and pro bono attor-
neys are formidable: uncertain and often diminishing funding, a lack of
centralized resources, and an undefined job market often deter stu-
dents from pursuing full-time careers in the public sector. In my role
as the Executive Director of the Levin Center, I hope to ease some of
the challenges of launching public service careers while also encourag-
ing students pursuing careers in the private sector to do pro bono work.
In the coming year, we plan to increase the depth and breadth of
our pro bono opportunities to include national and international field
placements; to offer rigorous and ongoing individualized counseling
and mentoring programs; and to more fully integrate the academic, pro
bono, and field placement experiences that form the foundation for
your careers.
Through all of our programs and initiatives, the Center strives to
nurture your vision, creativity, energy, gifts, and passion and allow
them to inform your professional choices. To be effective public
interest and pro bono attorneys we need not only to critique and judge
the current systems of inequity, but also to reenvision systems of power
and offer credible solutions and visions for sustainable change. By
honoring your vision of justice you have the power to transform the
debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which our most
pressing legal issues are resolved, and fulfill your own greatest
potential.
Susan J. Feathers
News Briefs

3
C
hance made the decision for him
when John Whitelaw ’86 found
himself faced with two equally
attractive career paths at the beginning
of his legal career.
Whitelaw was finishing his clerkship
with Judge John Ferren of the District
of Columbia Court of Appeals when
he found himself pondering his next
career move. His wife was in medical
school and he had to go wherever she
matched for her residency. Whitelaw
was interested in both direct civil and
criminal work and did not have a
preference.
He explains, “It was going to be with
either a public defender or a legal aid
because I knew I wanted client work.
When my wife matched in Minneapolis,
it turned out that Legal Aid was hiring
and the PD wasn’t.”
DIRECT SERVICES THE RIGHT FIT FOR WHITELAWDIRECT SERVICES THE RIGHT FIT FOR WHITELAW
Fortuitous circumstances led to a very
fulfilling career in legal services. Twenty-
one years later, Whitelaw is still working
in direct legal services and currently
serves as the supervising attorney of
the Public Benefits Unit at Community
Legal Services in Philadelphia.
He observes, “It turns out that this is
what I was meant to do. I think many
people don’t understand that what you
are ultimately happy at doing on a day-
to-day basis has less to do with what your
beliefs are than what your temperament
is. I am very temperamently suited to
direct legal services. In retrospect, I
know that I’m not suited to doing PD
work. It has nothing to do with my
belief in the value of the work, but
it’s about what makes me happy on a
gut level on a day-to-day basis. What
suits me is having lots of cases, as I like
juggling lots of clients and the hustle
and bustle of lots of things going on at
once.”
Over the course of his career,
Whitelaw has worked primarily in
civil legal programs providing direct
services, including Legal Aid Society
of Minneapolis, Appalachian Research
and Defense Fund in West Virginia,
and Community Legal Aid Society in
Delaware. He also spent a year with
the Federal Defender Association in
Philadelphia doing capital habeas work
but decided he was better suited to
direct legal services.
When Whitelaw reflects on this
work, he says, “The work is challenging
and intellectually interesting. I have
never been bored. Something new is
happening every day. And they couldn’t
pay me enough to do any other work.
That’s the real truth.” He adds, “My
passion is representing lots of clients
and trying to fit in policy work as I can. I
have other colleagues who are less suited
to volume work and much better at
coordinating and managing significant
policy campaigns such as legislative
and administrative advocacy—areas
where I have less talent and inclination.
Again, it has nothing to do with
political beliefs, as I totally believe in my
colleagues’ work, and sometimes wish
that I were more suited to it. Luckily
I work for an organization that allows
many different types of advocates to
flourish.”
SOCIAL JUSTICE DREW WHITELAW TO LAW SCHOOLSOCIAL JUSTICE DREW WHITELAW TO LAW SCHOOL
Whitelaw decided to go to law school
after having what he calls “a lightbulb
moment.” As an undergraduate
student, he took a semester off to work
as a resident tutor for a program called
“A Better Chance.” [See www.abetterchance.
org] ABC seeks to identify highly
motivated students of color who are at
or above grade level with demonstrated
leadership potential and refer them to
some of the nation’s top private and
public schools. As a resident tutor living
in Connecticut, Whitelaw attended
a conference on racism when the
“lightbulb” went off.
He says, “I realized that one, the
revolution was not happening and two, it
was not going to happen in my lifetime.
For me, in order to try to accomplish
social reform work, I needed to become
a public interest lawyer. It was literally
that sort of revelation. I knew I wanted
to try and do some type of social reform
work, but it was at this conference when
I was away from school for a semester
that I decided I wanted to be a lawyer.”
He chose Stanford because of its
reputation and because he had never
been to California. “I wanted to go
have an adventure. Plus, I liked the
apocryphal story of looking up an
assignment in a book and finding that
someone has already marked where
you’re supposed (Continued on page 6)
John Whitelaw ’86
Alumni Spotlight
Lifelong
Legal
Services
Advocate
Thrives in
Trenches
PHOTOCOURTESYOFJOHNWHITELAW’86

4
My first weekend in Washington DC coincided with the 20th
anniversary of Rolling Thunder’s first Run for the Wall. Every
Memorial Day, hundreds of thousands of bikers ride into DC from
across the country to call attention to veterans’ issues. Much of the
emotionally charged weekend was centered on the Vietnam War
Memorial, and the ghosts of the past were manifest. I saw men
speak to names on the wall as if the people they represent were
present; one man stood in the same place for more than six hours
to mourn the only friend he lost in Vietnam. The fact that these
people—and I—came from across the country to be in DC under-
scores the special significance Americans see in our nation’s
Capitol, in the way it evokes both the American Dream, and,
sometimes, our nightmares.
- Geoffrey King ’09
Senate Judiciary Committee
Washington, D.C.
New Delhi isn’t an easy place to live. The power goes out about every hour, there are lizards,
peacocks (the national bird), cows, deer, and monkeys everywhere. And this is the capital.
Despite the lack of infrastructure, this place is truly incredible simply because of the people. I
visited a rural village (where more than 70% of Indians still live) last weekend and the family
(which was so large that their houses took up an entire street) insisted on giving me a present
before I left to ensure my return. Since they didn’t have any sweets, they gave me 10 rupees
(about 25 cents). Although this doesn’t sound like much, it’s about how much these villagers
make in a day. That’s the kind of generosity that makes India a pleasure to visit, despite the
difficulties involved.
A modification of Samuel Johnson’s famous quote comes to mind, “When a man is tired of
Delhi, he’s tired of life.”
- Scott Shackelford ’09
U.N. Development Program Access to Justice initiative
New Delhi, India
This summer has been a pleasant combination of the expected and the unexpected.
As anticipated, most of my work has been litigation-related. However, I have also had
an inside look into the reproductive justice movement, ranging from legislative
advocacy to grassroots mobilization and public education campaigns. Law Students
For Choice organized events throughout the summer, including a day of advocacy
training and intimate lunches with leaders in the movement. Plus, we have fun! This
photo is from the ACLU’s First Annual Summer Olympics, where Team “Feministas,”
comprised of interns, attorneys, and staff in the Reproductive Freedom and Women’s
Rights Projects took a third place victory (out of 6 teams), even though we had to
leave early with two events to go.
- Emily Maglio ’09
ACLU, Reproductive Freedom ProjectNew York, NY
PHOTO BY GEOFFREY KING
PHOTO COURTESY OF EMILY MAGLIO

5
The border is a strange place. Strands of barbed wire in some places, a sheet metal fence in
others, holes and fence posts where it soon will be. Desperation and hope permeate the place,
as the border winds its way through cities and deserts. It is summertime, and in Arizona that
means temperatures hitting 120 degrees and migrants suffering and dying. They lie still during
the day, and then walk through the desert at night, trying to stay one step ahead of la migra,
the Border Patrol. For me the border is a check point that I can cross on foot, waving my
driver’s license and answering “U.S. citizen” to the agent. But for the detained children that I
am working with this summer through the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, the
border constitutes the final hurdle to cross after they have come on their own all the way from
Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador or Ecuador, riding on top of trains, in trailers, buses and
boats, finally making it to Mexico to walk for days in the desert before getting caught. They
come from extreme poverty, in search of a better chance at survival. Working with the kids, I
am learning compassionate lawyering: listening to each child’s heartbreaking story, confronting
harsh immigration laws, and trying to reconcile the two in the most humane way possible. And
as I spend time on the border this summer, I am witnessing the suffering caused by this
artificial line and the immigration policies that accompany it, as well as the determination and
resilience of the migrants who will risk everything to get across.
- Yara Lomeli-Loibl ’09
Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project
Florence, AZ
POSTCARDS FROM THE FIELD
PHOTO COURTESY OF YARA LOMELI-LOIBL
It’s tough to pick a single highlight from my internship at the Justice Department. As an intern in the
office that handles all federal political corruption cases, I chose the right time to spend a summer in
Washington, D.C. I’ve been assigned to a variety of interesting cases: an army official who stole money
from the Iraq reconstruction efforts, a federal prosecutor who intentionally withheld exculpatory evidence
during a terrorism trial, a deputy cabinet secretary who helped his girlfriend raise money from lobbyists,
and a handful of matters relating to the Jack Abramoff investigation.
There’s a lot of legal research and writing, but so much more. I sat with two DOJ attorneys and an FBI
case agent as they discussed how to convince a recently arrested suspect to “flip” and agree to wear a
wire in an upcoming undercover investigation. I traveled to Virginia with two other attorneys to convince a
federal magistrate judge to sign off on an arrest warrant. I was invited to multiple meetings of the
Section’s “Indictment Review Committee,” where we reviewed the evidence collected in a grand jury
investigation and decided whether to indict the suspects. And I sat about 25 feet from Scooter Libby
when a federal judge sentenced him to 30 months in prison. (My memories of the event, it turns out,
have lasted longer than the sentence itself...) All in all, it’s been an amazing experience, one that I
wouldn’t trade for any amount of Big Firm summer associate money.
- Andrew Bruck ’08
Department of Justice, Criminal Division
Washington, D.C.

6
(Continued from page 3)
to look, as opposed to at another law
school where the page would be torn
out. I had the sense that Stanford
would be a much more cooperative
environment since it was so small.”
Whitelaw reflects that he had a great
time in law school in significant part
because he knew why he was there. “It’s
much more difficult if you don’t know
why you’re there. I was in law school
because to become a lawyer, to do what
I wanted to do, I needed to go to law
school. Knowing that makes it easier to
deal with things that are not so pleasant
like the On-Campus Interview program
where others are dressing up in suits and
you’re trying to not to get sucked into
the law firm bandwagon.”
As a law student, Whitelaw spent
both his summers back east because
his wife-to-be was in medical school
in Virginia. His first summer he went
to Charlottesville, Virginia to work
for Legal Aid. His second summer,
Whitelaw worked for Bredhoff Kaiser,
a labor-side law firm in Washington,
D.C. that represents clients like the
United Steelworkers of America and the
National Education Association.
PROVIDING INSIDER ADVICE TO LAW STUDENTSPROVIDING INSIDER ADVICE TO LAW STUDENTS
To students who want to work in
public interest law, he advises, “The
single most important thing that top
public interest organizations are looking
for is evidence of past public interest
work on applicants’ resumes. You have
got to have something on your resume
that shows you’re interested in doing
public interest work. We’re really not
going to look at someone—no matter
where they go to school—if there is not
the slightest hint of why they want to do
public interest work.”
He also adds that clinical work can
greatly enhance a student’s application.
Whitelaw states, “I’m much more
impressed with clinical options now
available to law students. [Taking
traditional law school classes] didn’t
teach me how to do this work. I learned
mostly theoretical concepts, which
are not very useful on a practical level
of how to do poverty work. But I am
not sure that law school is necessarily
designed to teach you how to be a lawyer
on a day-to-day basis. Most of my day is
negotiating with the welfare office to fix
problems for my clients or doing trial
level hearing.”
CLIENTS MOTIVATE AND INSPIRE COMMITMENTCLIENTS MOTIVATE AND INSPIRE COMMITMENT
Whitelaw is passionate about the
importance of this work. “You do
poverty work because you believe in the
cause. It sounds pretentious, but it’s
true. One of my colleagues at another
legal aid program is a nun and has done
social justice work for years. Her belief
in the work is religious. Some people’s
belief in the work is political. There are
all sorts of reasons you believe in this
work.”
Currently, Whitelaw helps clients
secure public benefits as a supervising
attorney at Community Legal Services
in Philadelphia. “My clients on welfare
live on $205 per month. If I help them
get disability benefits, they receive $650
Alum Continues to Find Fulfillment Helping Clients Overcome Poverty
per month. Getting benefits for people
changes their lives. You go from hell to
something somewhat more tolerable.”
Whitelaw also does advocacy work
alongside traditional lawyering. “I train
a lot of social workers and teach them
how to get and maintain welfare benefits
for their clients. It’s an important part
of what I do and I usually do a training
every week.”
While many of his cases are
straightforward, Whitelaw says that
he gets unusual cases all the time
and considers those his specialty. For
example, he had a client with mental
illness who sought help after he was
denied disability benefits.
“Getting him benefits based on his
current claim was routine, as he had
good medical records. What was weird
was that he used to get these benefits
and couldn’t tell us why he lost them.
In fact, he only mentioned it in passing
during our intake. So I went digging
and it turns out [the administrators]
totally screwed up [by withdrawing his
disability benefits] and he had been too
mentally ill to deal with it.”
Whitelaw adds, “When he came to us,
he had not received disability benefits
in four years and was living on welfare at
$205 per month. When we finished, he
started getting $650 per month and they
owed him $40,000 in back benefits.”
Success stories like this reinforce
Whitelaw’s passion for the job. “I love
my job even though it drives me crazy.
What I worry about is not having done
enough. The waiting room is just as
full now as it was twenty years ago when
I started. Yet my expectations of what
I can accomplish have changed. I
am not going to end poverty. You get
out of law school very idealistic and
arrogant. Poverty is not going to come
to an end because of the work I do. But,
am I making a real difference on an
individual and policy level? Yes, there’s
no question about it.”
“Poverty is not
going to come to
an end because of
the work I do. But,
am I making a real
difference on an
individual and policy
level? Yes, there’s no
question about it.”

7
Continued from page 1
and Suing the Government: Velasquez
and Beyond.
Professor Louis Rulli, the chair
of Penn’s faculty-student Public
Service Committee, which oversees
their public service program, praises
Feathers, “Susan does the work of at
least three professionals and is able to
do it all superbly. . . .Susan has built an
extraordinary program that is a national
model. I am confident that you will find
Susan a passionate, visionary leader.”
In the Philadelphia and national
public interest legal communities,
Feathers has served on the executive
boards of the ACLU, Community Legal
Services, and Pennsylvania Institutional
Law Project, as well as the AALS Pro
Bono Section and the Equal Justice
Works Board of Advisors.
Prior to joining Penn, Feathers was the
Director of Public Service Counseling
and Programs at Yale and before that,
she served as the founding Director of
the Public Service Program at Brooklyn
Law School.
LEGAL PRACTICE ALSO INFORMS HER WORKLEGAL PRACTICE ALSO INFORMS HER WORK
While pursuing a master’s degree
in sociology at the University of
Pennsylvania, Feathers worked for
David Ferleger on the precedent-setting
landmark case Halderman v. Pennhurst
School (holding that proper habilitation
for the retarded cannot be provided
in a long-term institution). She says,
“He inspired me to go to law school to
pursue disability rights and awarded me
the Edward V. Sparer Fellowship.”
At Northeastern Law School, she
worked with the Law Project for Multi-
Handicapped Children, Prisoners’ Legal
Assistance Project, Jamaica Plain Legal
Services, and the Committee for Public
Counsel Service.
Her most rewarding experience while
at Northeastern was working with one
Advocate’s Expertise Will Play Critical Role in Levin Center Expansion
Faculty Public Service Speaker Series,
and a Pro Bono Supervisors’ Training.
On February 2, 2008, we will co-sponsor
a symposium titled ‘Education as a Civil
Right’ with the Stanford Journal of Civil
Rights and Civil Liberties.”
She concludes, “Working
synergistically with SLS’ Legal Clinics,
the Levin Center hopes to provide a
fertile training ground for the future
leaders of the profession as well as to
promote student and faculty scholarship
informed by the needs of the public
interest legal community.”
OUTSIDE INTERESTS BRING BALANCE TO WORKOUTSIDE INTERESTS BRING BALANCE TO WORK
Feathers has a broad range of interests
beyond law school administration,
including writing, teaching, and
litigation. Her most recent publication,
“The Iroquois Influence on American
Democracy,” co-authored with her
sister, Cynthia Feathers (also a public
interest attorney), was inspired by
their grandfather who was born on a
reservation.
Feathers’ writing is not confined to the
law. In fact, she is the author of a book
on yoga, as she is a certified Sivananda
yoga instructor and has taught in Costa
Rica, Canada, Bahamas, and Mexico in
the past ten years.
She has also served as co-counsel on
Saleh v. Titan, the first class action lawsuit
filed on behalf of Abu Ghraib detainees,
and taught courses in human rights,
appellate advocacy, and legal writing.
But still, among her many interests,
her greatest passion is inspiring the next
generation of attorneys.
As Jessica Alms, one of Feathers’
students at Penn who worked closely
with her, says, “Susan not only has a
creative legal mind, but also amazing
intuition. . . . She is the perfect
embodiment of a mentor to a new,
innovative generation of public interest
lawyers.”
of her mentors, Larry Daves, assistant
counsel in Plyler v. Doe, at his civil rights
firm Daves Hahn & Levy in Tyler, TX.
She says, “He’s a true people’s lawyer
who taught me the importance of
combining community organizing with
litigation to be an effective advocate.”
Upon graduating, Feathers spent
almost five years as an appellate counsel
with the Legal Aid Society, Criminal
Appeals Bureau in New York City.
Following her experience at Legal Aid,
she served as a supervising staff attorney
for Hofstra Law School’s Criminal
Defense, Constitutional Litigation,
Disability, and Housing Rights Clinics.
While at Hofstra, Feathers worked with
Alan H. Levine on CARECEN v. Glen
Cove, for which the two received an
advocacy award for their work on behalf
of El Salvadoran day workers in a lawsuit
challenging the constitutionality of an
ordinance prohibiting day workers from
soliciting work.
Feathers reflects, “It was at Hofstra
that I developed a profound respect
for the work of clinicians and became
steeped in clinical pedagogy.”
OUTLINING HER VISION FOR LEVIN CENTEROUTLINING HER VISION FOR LEVIN CENTER
With the support of staff, Feathers has
instituted several new programs that will
bolster existing efforts to serve public
interest students and expand outreach
to alumni.
She announces, “The Levin Center’s
initiatives for the upcoming year include
expanding programming to include
our first in-house pro bono project, the
SLS Social Security Disability Project
supervised by experienced attorney
and Levin Center staff member, Lisa
Douglass. We will also build upon our
already robust public interest programs
to include the first annual SLS Public
Interest Fellows Retreat and Bay Area
Alumni Reception, the first annual
SLS Public Interest Awareness Week, a

8
About Create Change
Create Change is designed and produced by
the staff of the John and Terry Levin Center for
Public Service and Public Interest Law. Unless
specifically noted, all articles are written by
staff:
Executive Director: Susan Feathers
Associate Director: Anna Wang
Pro Bono Program Director: Jennifer Fan
(BA ’95)
Director of the Social Security Disability
Project: Lisa Douglass (BA ’93, MA ’94)
Events Manager: NaSun Cho (BA ’98)
Legal Assistant: Lynda Johnston
Program Assistant: Suzy Tollerud (BA ’07,
MA ’08)
Intern: Lisa Chan
To receive the newsletter by e-mail, please
visit https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/
listinfo/create_change. If you have any
problems subscribing to the list, please write
to public.interest@law.stanford.edu.
Create Change is published quarterly via email
and past issues are available on our Web site.
Articles, letters, and photos are welcome.
Please send them to:
Create Change
c/o Levin Center
Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
http://publicinterestlaw.stanford.edu
Environmental Law Clinic
In early July, the Environmental Law
Clinic received an order granting its
motion for preliminary injunction to
halt all construction for the so-called
Sunrise Douglas development projects
east of Sacramento, covering thousands
of acres of vernal pool habitat. The
virtually wall-to-wall residential
developments would have destroyed a
large swath of the last remaining high-
quality vernal pool habitat in an area
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has
concluded is critical to the survival and
recovery of vernal pool species.
The court enjoined further activity
pending compliance with the National
Environmental Policy Act. This is a
key victory for our clients because it
allows them to participate in proposing
potential design and offset measures
to mitigate the destruction, as the law
intended.
Kudos to the ELC student team -- to
Craig Segall ’07, who spent untold hours
mastering the science, gathering expert
declarations, drafting legal arguments,
and arguing the case in a grueling
hearing before the court, and to Sam
Woodworth ’08 and Jessica Townsend
’08, who worked into the wee hours
of the night drafting and editing legal
arguments and helping Craig prepare
for oral argument. Clinic Director
Debbie Sivas, fellow Holly Gordon,
and Legal Assistant Lynda Johnston
supervised and supported the students’
extraordinary work.
Community Law Clinic
Katie Burghardt ’08 and Alexis
Rickher ’08 recently received great
news from an expungement client they
successfully represented this past spring.
Their client had been struggling for
Clinical News Update
Editor’s note: This is a summary of e-mail announcements sent by Professor Larry Marshall, Associate
Dean for Public Interest and Clinical Education.
the last several years to get her Certified
Nursing Assistant (CNA) license from
the state of California, but was precluded
because licensing boards review criminal
convictions, even expunged ones. After
representing her in the expungement
proceedings, Katie and Alexis helped
their client prepare a comprehensive
application to the licensing board
documenting her rehabilitation. The
clinic has just learned that the client was
granted her license by the state.
Perry Grossman ’08 and Matt Rubin
’08 were happy to learn that their hard
work on behalf of two dishwashers whose
final wages were unpaid was rewarded
when the employer acquiesced to
their claims at a Labor Commissioner
settlement conference. The employer
had fought very hard and refused to
produce legally-required employment
documents. Yet the workers, who kept
scrupulous records and had correctly
calculated their unpaid wages and
overtime, received the full amount they
were owed with the help of the students.
Margaret Cohen ’08 prevailed on
behalf of a client seeking expungement
of a minor criminal record. This
client was an immigrant who was
facing significant difficulty in securing
employment due to one old conviction.
Thanks to Margaret’s hard work on this
case, including taking time off from her
summer job to represent this client at
his court hearing, her client’s record was
cleared and he will no longer face this
barrier to employment.
Sara Chin ’08 and Alexis Rickher ’08
won a significant victory for their client
whose Section 8 housing subsidy was
threatened with termination. Their
client was a single father who had turned
his life around after the birth of his son
and is now the boy’s primary caretaker.
Mr. A. faced eviction and loss of his
Section 8 voucher after the Housing
Authority alleged that his child’s mother
was living at his residence in violation
of Housing Authority policy. As a
result of Sara and Alexis’s tenacious
advocacy, including researching court
files, countless witness interviews,
and defending the termination at an
administrative hearing (held during
their exam period!), Mr. A.’s voucher
was reinstated, ensuring stable, safe
housing for him and his son.
Thanks for all of these victories also go
to CLC Director Juliet Brodie, Danielle
Jones, Severa Keith, Lupe Buenrostro
and Adelina Arroyo.

StanfordSummer2007

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked (18)

Similar to StanfordSummer2007 (20)

More from Susan Feathers (7)

StanfordSummer2007