Lisa D'Souza has pursued a public interest legal career since graduating from law school in 1996.  As part of Texas Rural Legal Aid's farmworker division, Lisa spent two years representing migrant workers on labor and employment issues.  She conducted outreach to low-income communities in order to inform them of their rights under the law and worked with a network of service providers to disseminate information to and make contacts with low-income families.  

Situated in the pediatrics department of Boston Medical Center, the Medical-Legal Partnership for Children allies pediatric clinicians with lawyers to ensure that families’ basic needs are met.  My project focuses on improving the access of immigrant families to public benefits by targeting the legal obstacles, community myths and fear those families face.  Through direct representation, training of clinical partners and collaboration with community groups, I help clients navigate the complex legal landscape around public benefits access.  

Jack Dailey has implemented the Disabled Homeless Outreach Project (DHOP), a project of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego (LASSD) Pro Bono Program.  Through outreach clinics, the DHOP targets homeless individuals with physical and/or mental health disabilities for legal services.  The LASSD Pro Bono Program has proven a natural fit for the DHOP’s outreach clinic model.  

LFC is an organization dedicated to finding a safe, permanent, loving home for each child it represents by providing them with the highest quality legal and social work services.  My project addresses the immense issues affecting children in foster care who require special educational services and, those who may not have disabilities, but are still struggling to succeed academically.  Through legal advocacy, representation, and outreach, my goal is to ensure LFC clients are afforded the educational services and opportunities they deserve.  

I will represent Spanish-speaking renters who have been thrust into the foreclosure crisis by their landlords’ default.  Without English skills it is practically impossible to navigate the already infuriatingly complex intersection of foreclosure law and tenants’ rights.  By keeping lawful renters in their homes I will protect the value of bank-owned properties while sparing the surrounding community from the blight and crime accompanies vacant homes.  

After two decades of flight from the city to the suburbs, the population of the District of Columbia has started to rise, and newcomers to the city, predominantly white and upper class, are moving into traditionally low-income areas.  The effects of the city’s economic renaissance could not be more evident: almost 75% of low-income renters have unaffordable rent burdens, live in dilapidated housing, or live doubled and tripled up with friends or family.  While housing costs have risen, the average income of the poorest DC families has remained unchanged over the last twenty years.  

Michele Davila is hosted by the Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem (NDS).  NDS is a non-profit organization that provides free criminal and civil legal services to Harlem residents.  As a summer legal intern at NDS, Michelle had the opportunity to observe criminal trials, write omnibus motions, assist in testimony preparations, interview potential clients and arrange voluntary surrenders to police precincts.  

At Southern Legal Counsel (SLC), Shelbi Day is addressing the civil rights and human rights abuses that result from the criminalization of homelessness in Florida.  Criminalization has inspired a trend of arresting, citing, and punishing homeless people for conducting life-sustaining activities, such as sleeping, eating, and using the restroom in public, when they have no other place to conduct these activities.  This punitive approach drives the homeless out of public view rather than addressing the root causes of homelessness, and it can violate the civil and human rights of homeless people.  

The Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center formed in September 2001 to provide legal, technical, research and policy assistance to grassroots community groups engaged in a wide range of community development efforts throughout New York City.  My project focuses on providing transactional legal services in collaboration with community-based organizations.  This will enable immigrant and low-wage workers, especially in the Bronx, to energize economic opportunities through cooperative enterprise and small business development.  

My fellowship project addresses the need for affordable housing in the greater Los Angeles area using California Housing Element law.  This includes commenting on local housing element drafts, monitoring jurisdiction compliance and advocating to promote policies to more effectively preserve and produce affordable housing.  The current lack of affordable housing, coupled with condo conversions and the scarcity of available land to develop new housing, puts low-income residents of Los Angeles at risk of homelessness.  

Coming Home Middle Georgia is an initiative of the Georgia Justice Project that assists clients with correction, modification, and expunging of criminal histories.  We serve our clients by providing criminal history counseling to give them the practical skills they need to succeed in the work force and beyond in addition to serving as a legal advocate in a variety of forums.  Additionally, we advocate for reform in our state in order to reduce the number of barriers to reentry that affect our clients.  

My project focuses on the failure of the criminal justice system to identify and accommodate individuals with developmental disabilities who have been charged with a crime.  Focusing first in Alachua County, Florida, I will provide education and resources to those working within the criminal justice system and caretakers of people with MR/DD.  I will also create an avenue for all involved to communicate their concerns and ideas.  

Michael Deemer is working at the Ohio State Legal Services Association (OSLSA) to combat predatory lending practices throughout Ohio.  OSLSA is a non-profit law firm that provides direct legal services to twenty-nine counties in Appalachian Southeast Ohio, as well as state support to Ohio’s legal aid programs.  Based in Columbus, Michael collaborates with Ohio’s Equal Justice Foundation and its Equal Justice Works Fellow to develop litigation strategies to proactively confront predatory lenders.  

Alaric Degrafinried works with the National Housing Law Project (NHLP), a national housing law and advocacy center in Oakland, California that was founded in 1968.  The goal of NHLP is to advance housing justice for the poor by: increasing and preserving the supply of decent affordable housing, by improving existing housing conditions (including physical conditions and management practices), by expanding and enforcing low-income tenants’ and homeowners’ rights and by increasing opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities.  At the NHLP, Alaric provides support and legal assistance to local advocates regarding Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Section 3 regulations.  

At the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of San Francisco, Elisa Della-Piana combats the criminalization of homelessness.  Through the Homeless Rights Project, Elisa identifies policies that criminalize homeless people and challenges those policies through legislative advocacy, impact litigation, and individual representation.  The Homeless Rights Project fits well with the ongoing work of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which has been active in challenging anti-homeless policies in San Francisco for over a decade.  

Stephen Demik works on the Unrepresented Condemned Inmate Project, a special unit of the California Appellate Project in San Francisco.  His project addresses the needs of over two hundred unrepresented condemned inmates who are awaiting appointment of counsel.  These needs include addressing legal questions relating to inmates' individual cases while they are unrepresented; obtaining records relating to inmates' life histories, which are at risk of being destroyed during the time that the inmates are unrepresented; and addressing common issues with systematic implications for this population of unrepresented condemned inmates.  

Brent Denzin works with Midwest Environmental Advocates, a nonprofit environmental law center in Madison, WI.  Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA) provides legal and technical assistance to community-based groups, local governments and tribal governments that are fighting for environmental justice.  Brent’s project focuses on the environmental impacts of big-box developments, most notably Wal-Mart, in Wisconsin.  

Kathleen (Kate) Devlin serves the immigrant and refugee populations in Brockton and Boston.  Catholic Charities Immigration Clinic of Brockton (ICB) is one of two nonprofits serving low-income immigrants in Plymouth County, which has over a thirty percent immigrant population.  ICB offers community education on immigration law for local organizations and immigrants, represents individual clients and trains pro bono attorneys and law students to represent clients.  

Gurdeep is working with the Legal Aid Association of Los Angeles' (LAFLA) Employment Unit.  She provides "Know Your Rights" community education workshops to community groups, organizations and schools in Los Angeles County, California.  A major component of the project is to recruit and train law students to present "Know Your Rights" presentations in the community, thereby exposing students to a public interest experience.  

There are more than two thousand mobile home parks in Washington State, housing approximately 10% of the state’s population.  Many of these people are elderly, disabled, and/or young families, farm workers and people with limited incomes.  Ishbel states, “These people buy mobile homes with the vision of fulfilling their American dream of homeownership, only to awaken to the American nightmare where the landowners have all the property rights and therefore all of the control over who and how people will live in their mobile home parks.  

The objective of my project is to combat the civil hardships that accompany criminal proceedings in the areas of employment and housing.  I will also address the unreliability of the criminal record system in Georgia.  Continuing to punish those reentering society after criminal justice encounters calls into question principles of fundamental fairness.  

Deinise Dominguez provided low-income, immigrant parents with high quality legal services on education-related issues; trained community residents about their education-related rights; and catalyzed civic activism around improving Brooklyn's worst public schools.  .  

Kriste Draper has implemented a Homeless Youth Outreach Project (HYOP), hosted by the Children's Advocacy Institute (CAI).  Through outreach clinics, HYOP provides legal services to homeless youth, focusing on education and health care.  HYOP provides CAI a unique opportunity to gain access to an otherwise difficult to reach population.  

John Duffy’s project involved developing pro se resources for the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Court and to make those resources available to other tribal courts in North Dakota and South Dakota.  His project focused on several key areas: (1) a mediation system, (2) pro se form development, (3) tribal code development, (4) web site development and (5) community outreach.  The Rosebud Reservation is a million square acres of prairie encompassing 20 remote Indian communities.  

Kelli Dunn works on behalf of low-income tenants with mental disabilities at Texas Rural Legal Aid in Austin.  The goal of her project is to remove the barriers that these tenants experience in accessing and keeping safe, decent, affordable housing.  Kelli strives to achieve this goal by educating tenants, community advocates, landlords, pro bono lawyers and legal services attorneys in the one-third of Texas that is Texas Rural Legal Aid's service area on the rights of tenants with mental disabilities under such disability rights laws as the federal Fair Housing Act.  

Molly Dunn worked in partnership with the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office to address the special education needs of at-risk and delinquent youth.  Her project was inspired by her work in her law school’s Youth and Education Clinic.  As Molly began representing children with learning disabilities in special education matters, she discovered that a large number of her clients were also involved in the juvenile justice system.  

As an Equal Justice Works Fellow, I will advocate for D.  C.  public school students facing suspension or expulsion.  

Although low-income working people make a vital contribution to the economy and communities of Texas, it is shockingly common for many of these men and women to not be paid for the work they perform.  This is especially true for immigrant workers and low-income Texans who work in the construction industry.  Developing new expertise in low-wage construction law is the next critical steps in a state-wide movement to expand access to justice for low-income working people.