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

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

Marta Ramos was born, raised, and educated in Bogota, Colombia, before moving to the United States in 1979, where she began working at Greater Boston Legal Services a few years later. Marta received her Paralegal Certificate from Northeastern University in 1990, and practiced employment law until 1992. For the past 17 years, she have been practicing disability law and also representing non-English speaking clients with MassHealth eligibility issues. Marta specializes in representing the homeless and those with immigration related issues in both disability and MassHealth cases.

Courses Taught

• Essential Skills for Paralegals and Legal Assistants

In 1989, Cathy Willard became a disability benefits paralegal at Neighborhood Legal Services after working for two years in a small law firm in Newburyport, and after eight years as a 5th and 6th grade teacher. In the meantime, she has expanded her area of practice to include the Elder Law Project representing elders in a wide range of substantive areas, such as housing, benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, and consumer issues. Cathy serves as a member of several advisory boards including the Paralegal Advisory Board at North Shore Community College, the Money Management Program of Massachusetts, and the Elder Service Plan of the North Shore.

Courses Taught

• Essential Skills for Paralegals and Legal Assistants

Deborah Witkin has been with Connecticut Legal Services since 1986, including a one year stint "on loan" as a Visiting Professor of Law at the Poverty Law Clinic at the University of Connecticut School of Law. She was a Visiting Professor of Law for three years, serving as the founder and director of the Health Law Clinic at Quinnipiac University School of Law, during which time she co-designed and taught "Introduction to Representing Clients." During the past twenty-two years Deborah has practiced in the areas of family, benefits, education, housing, disability, mental health, and elder law. She became the CLS director of Development in 1998, and the deputy director in 2007. In addition, she participated as a mentor in the CLAE Leadership Institute, and as a trainer in a variety of legal services settings. Deborah’s J.D. is from the University of Connecticut School of Law (1986), and she also has a B.S. in Behavioral Disabilities from the University of Wisconsin- Madison (1977). Before enrolling in law school, she taught special education middle and high school students for four years.

Courses Taught

• Essential Skills for Paralegals and Legal Assistants