Ross Dolloff brings more than 25 years of varied legal services experience to his position as National Training Director of the Center for Legal Aid Education. After receiving his JD from the American University’s Washington College of Law in 1980, Ross began his career-long commitment to legal services as a staff attorney in the Selma office of the Legal Services Corp. of Alabama, where his practice involved civil rights and discrimination, voting rights, public benefits entitlement and transactional assistance to community based organization throughout Alabama’s black belt. More recently, after a stint as managing attorney of the Holyoke office of Western Massachusetts Legal Servlces, Ross spent the last fifteen years as the Director of Neighborhood Legal Services in Massachusetts.

Throughout his career, Ross has written extensively about legal services practice, delivery systems and program management and to the development of training for legal services staff. His articles have appeared regularly in both the Management Information Exchange Journal, Clearinghouse Review and legal publications in his home state of Massachusetts. While a managing attorney and then program Director, Ross contributed to the design of training packages for Basic Lawyering Skills, Community Lawyering, and Affirmative Litigation Training and has served as a trainer or presenter for dozens of programs in New England and elsewhere, sponsored by the Center for Legal Aid Education, the New England Training Consortium, individual legal services organizations, state CLE providers and community based organizations.

In 2006, Ross left his Director position to join the Center (then called Legal Aid University). "Throughout my career in legal services, I felt that I had gradually seen a loss of a shared national sense of what it means to be a legal services staff member and advocate and a shared set of expectations and standards for how to do the work creatively and effectively.. I remember the series of training programs available to me when I was starting out – Basic Lawyering Skills, Federal Practice, what was then called Multi-forum advocacy - as invaluable, both in helping me learn the essential skills and craft of lawyering, but perhaps even more in helping me understand the potential role of my legal services practice in the broader effort to change the conditions of poverty in America.

"It was from this shared vision of the potential importance of our work in a larger social change effort that much of my own work and personal vision and values as a legal services worker developed and emerged. As I reached this next stage of my career, having served in many different capacities for much of my adult life in individual local legal services organizations, I looked around and asked myself, what would I want to help establish in our national legal services community in a more general sense. Ultimately, the answer was the redevelopment of that shared system of vision and values, transmitted through a shared set of learning experiences that combined these elements with practical skills training to improve our overall effectiveness and the quality of the work experience for advocates and emerging new leaders. With that as a goal, there was nowhere else to be than here at LAU. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to devote myself to this effort."

Courses Taught

• 2006-2007 NE Leadership Institute
• 2008-2009 NE Leadership Institute
• Case Planning & Discovery
• Community Lawyering
• Essential Skills for Paralegals and Legal Assistants
• Supervision Skills for Equal Justice Providers

Vice President of Training Programs

Ellen Hemley brings over 30 years of experience in the equal justice community to her role as Vice President of Training Programs. Prior to joining the Shriver Center, Ellen served as executive director of the Center for Legal Aid Education, which provided training and leadership development programs to equal justice advocates nationally. Previously, Ellen was Director of Training at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute where, among other things, she oversaw CLAE's predecessor, the Legal Services Training Consortium of New England. She also served for many years as an independent consultant; her clients included the American Bar Association, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the Florida Bar Foundation, the Washington Access to Justice Commission, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, the Massachusetts Union of Public Housing Tenants, and scores of other legal aid networks, bar foundations and justice-related programs across the country.

Courses Taught

• 2006-2007 NE Leadership Institute
• 2008-2009 NE Leadership Institute
• 2009-2010 Florida Leadership Institute
• 2010-11 Florida Leadership Institute
• Affirmative Litigation
• Board Development
• Board Development - May
• Community Lawyering
• Community Legal Education
• Essential Skills for Hotline Supervisors
• Supervision Skills for Equal Justice Providers
• Supervision Skills: Difficult Conversations & Constructive Feedback
• Whole Client / Whole Advocate

Joan Boles is the deputy director of Bay Area Legal Services. In 1982 she received her J.D. from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois, prior to which she volunteered with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity in London, England, working with homeless women, and in the South Bronx, New York, working with children. Joan has been with BALS for over 20 years advocating on behalf of low-income clients. She opened BALS’ Wimauma Office at the Beth-El Farmworker Mission in 1994 and worked on various projects including domestic violence and migrant/farmworker women; naturalization; affordable housing; and environmental justice. Joan has been in her present position since 2000 and is also the project director of the ChildNet Domestic Violence Collaborative and of the L. David Shear Children’s Law Center.

Courses Taught

• Community Lawyering

John Bouman is president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, where he also remains the director of advocacy – his original position since 1996. He joined the Center in May 1996 after twenty-one years at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, where he supervised public benefits advocacy from 1985. Recently, John led the successful statewide effort to create the FamilyCare program to provide health insurance to up to 300,000 working poor parents of minor children. He is a founding and current member of the steering committee of the National Transitional Jobs Network, as well as a frequent lecturer and trainer on a variety of social policy, advocacy, and lawyering subjects. He is a 1975 graduate of Valparaiso University School of Law and member of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and the Chicago Bar Association.

Courses Taught

• Community Lawyering

Carolina Guacci has joined the University of Miami School of Law with the Children & Youth Law Clinic as a Visiting Clinical Instructor/Supervising Attorney.  She is the newest addition to the growing clinical setting at the law school. She earned a B.A. from the University of Florida with a dual-major in Philosophy and Gender Studies.  She later received her J.D. from the City University of New York School of Law (2004). While in law school, she participated in the Economic Justice Project and with Equality Concentration, two of CUNY’s well-established legal clinics. She was awarded a Public Interest Law Association fellowship and a UJA scholarship. From the beginning of her career, Guacci has helped strengthen the under-represented of New York City through a combination of direct service, research, community education and support by working with the Peter Cicchino (LGBTQ) Youth Project at the Urban Justice Center, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Main Street Legal Services. Guacci continues her mission of practicing law in the “services of human needs” by working with the strong, passionate, and dedicated team of the CYLC. Prior to joining the University of Miami, Guacci was a Staff Attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Practice in Queens, New York representing and defending indigent children in juvenile delinquency proceedings.

Courses Taught

• Community Lawyering

  Jennifer Hill is Staff Attorney for the Workplace Justice Project of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. The WJP works closely with community, labor, and women’s groups to address “wage theft” among low-wage workers. Jennifer came to FIAC in August 2007 as a Skadden Fellow. Jennifer is a graduate of the University of  Michigan Law School. Prior to attending law school, Jennifer worked as a union organizer for roughly 12 years and was involved with international labor solidarity work in Latin America.

Courses Taught

• Community Lawyering

Zenobia Lai is a veteran legal services lawyer having spent more than fourteen years at Greater Boston Legal Services. She launched the Community Law Project in 2006 to further expand the community lawyering practice that emphasizes lawyers’ collaboration with community groups and other professionals to build grassroots capacity.  Prior to that, Zenobia spent more than a decade leading the Asian Outreach Unit that provides linguistically and culturally accessible legal services to limited-English-proficient Asian immigrants in Greater Boston.  She has practiced in the areas of land use, zoning, housing, immigration, disability, domestic violence and family law.

During her brief hiatus from legal services, Zenobia was the executive director of Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco.  She was also the Deputy Research Director of the New York-based Human Rights in China where she researched and compiled parallel reports to the UN on China’s progress in implementing two key international human rights covenants and wrote on legal reform and social justice issues in China.

Aside from practicing law, Zenobia serves on the boards of directors of various non-profit groups, runs a legal segment on a Cantonese cable television show in the Boston area and teaches part-time at University of Massachusetts – Boston.

Courses Taught

• 2008-2009 NE Leadership Institute
• 2009-2010 Florida Leadership Institute
• 2010-11 Florida Leadership Institute
• Administrative Hearing Skills
• Community Lawyering
• Essential Skills for Paralegals and Legal Assistants
• Negotiation Skills
• Negotiation Skills Online
• Supervision Skills for Equal Justice Providers
• Whole Client / Whole Advocate

Before attending law school, John Little served as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa and worked as a longshoreman in New York, having first received his B.A. degree from the University of Alabama in 1969. He received his J.D. degree from Gonzaga University School of Law in 1978. Upon graduation he was awarded a two year "Reggie" community lawyering fellowship through Howard University and was assigned to work with a small legal services program in north Alabama. In 1985 he began his present employment as a community development specialist attorney with Legal Services of Greater Miami, where he is responsible for providing free legal assistance to nonprofit corporations engaged in housing, economic and community development activities in ethnically diverse low-income neighborhoods. John has extensive experience in the legal aspects of small business, real estate development and affordable housing.

Courses Taught

• Community Lawyering

Carol S. Miller is a University of Florida College of Law graduate from 1980.  After four years in private practice, Carol joined Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, Inc. (JALA). Her interest in community development arose from spending six years volunteering on the board of Springfield Neighborhood Housing Services.  During the two years she was president, SNHS saved seven houses from demolition and rehabilitated them for sale to low-income residents. Her time on the board led to joining the Florida Legal Services Community Economic Development Workgroup, a state-wide network of attorneys and paralegals. Carol chaired this group from June 1993 to February 1996 and is still active with its successor umbrella group. In 1989, JALA agreed that Carol could add to her caseload community groups producing affordable   housing. Carol also served on the Mayor's Economic Development Trust Fund Advisory Committee for the Northwest Quadrant of Jacksonville from June 1991 to October 1994.

In 1997, JALA allowed Carol to begin Jacksonville's Community Counsel Center, which recruits volunteer attorneys to represent client groups on a project by project basis.  In 1998, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid received a grant from CDBG funds for Carol to spend 50% of her work-hours representing neighborhood associations primarily composed of residents with low-incomes.  Since 2004, Carol has worked full-time with the Community Counsel Center of JALA and represents about 17 non-profit organizations (know as community development corporations) working to revitalize low-income neighborhoods.

Courses Taught

• Community Lawyering

Reilly Morse is a senior attorney at the Biloxi office of the Mississippi Center for Justice, where he works on affordable housing policy and community development. As a solo attorney, he served as a Municipal Court Prosecutor and Judge for the City of Gulfport, and spent ten years in environmental public interest litigation.

Prior to 196 he belonged to two Gulf Coast business law firms. In 2006, he was awarded the first Equal Justice Works Katrina Legal fellowship. He received the 2006 Edwin Wolf Award for Public Interest Law from the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the 2008 Hugh White Award from the Episcopal Network for   Economic Justice. He has testified five times before Congressional committees about federal disaster recovery programs.

He is a co-founder of the Steps Coalition, Secretary for the Gulf Coast Renaissance Corporation, and an adviser to many social justice non-profits in coastal Mississippi. He is a graduate of Millsaps College and the University of Mississippi Law School. His publications include “Mitigating Disaster: Lessons from Mississippi,” 77 Miss. L. J. 101 (2008) (co-authored with Karen A. Lash) and “Environmental Justice Through the Eye of Hurricane Katrina,” Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (2008). His most recent report written for the Steps Coalition, "Hurricane Katrina: Has Mississippi Fallen Further Behind?" was the subject a September 21, 2009, New York Times editorial. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/opinion/21mon1.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

He is married with two daughters and resides in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Courses Taught

• Community Lawyering

A former staff attorney with ACLU of Mississippi, Raine Thompson now works in the public benefits office at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services/New Orleans Legal Assistance. She is an Equal Justice Works Katrina legal fellow, and a graduate of the University of Iowa College of Law. A member of various community groups and forums, Raine helps to educate victims of Hurricane Katrina about their rights, as they continue to recover from the disaster. She has trained attorneys, law students, and advocates locally and nationwide on FEMA disaster assistance and the appeals process, as well as local attorneys and advocates on the Louisiana Road Home program policies and appeals. As well as serving as a faculty member for Basic Lawyering Skills, Raine has also participated in CLAE’s Community Lawyering and Structural Racism training programs.

Courses Taught

• Community Lawyering