Bruce Allen Scott brings more than 30 years of legal experience to his position as Supervising Paralegal at Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida, Inc. After receiving his Legal Assistant/Paralegal degree at the University of Central Florida in 1978, Bruce began his commitment to legal services as a Consumer Affairs  Assistant through the CETA program at Central Florida Legal Services in 1979. In 1980, he became a Public Benefits Paralegal with Central Florida Legal Services. Most recently, he has been a Supervising Paralegal with Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida, Inc. since 2004 when Central Florida Legal Services, Inc. merged with Greater Orlando Legal Services, Inc and Withlacoochee Area Legal Services to form Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida, Inc. He has also been an advocate in the area of public housing.

Courses Taught

• Administrative Hearing Skills

A founding partner, Lisa G. Arrowood has been at Todd & Weld LLP for 16 years, specializing in business litigation, employment disputes, medical malpractice and personal injury, and legal malpractice. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Lisa is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, vice chair of the State Committee, co-chair of the Tort Litigation Committee, and, since 1997, a member of the Litigation Curriculum Advisory Committee at MCLE. For the Boston Bar Association, as well as at MCLE, Lisa has periodically been an expert panelist on such subjects as Trial Practice and Discovery Matters.

Courses Taught

• Trial Skills

Stefanie A. Balandis is a senior attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services, where she works in the Housing Unit. At Harvard Law School, where she received her J.D., she served as president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, interned as a public defender, and did human rights work in the former Yugoslavia. After a stint in Guatemala learning Spanish, Stefanie’s first legal services job was in the bay area of San Francisco, before she moved back east in 1996. She specializes in representing tenants with challenging mental illnesses and also represents tenant groups in their efforts to preserve affordable housing. She has served as a trainer for a number of trial advocacy trainings geared toward legal services lawyers, and is on the Board of Directors for the Women’s Bar Association.

Courses Taught

• Trial Skills

Gregory Bass has been in legal services since 1981, with programs in Alabama, Washington, California and Connecticut: for the past 12 years at Greater Harford Legal Aid, where he is litigation director focusing on federal and state court class actions and individual litigation. Throughout his career, Greg has worked in a number of different areas, including benefits, housing, health, family, senior, consumer, employment, and civil rights. He has taught at numerous legal services trainings, many of which have been through CLAE. In his spare time, Greg enjoys racquet sports, hoops, baseball, music, reading, and travel. A Seattle expatriate, he now lives in New England with his wife, son, two dogs and two cats.

Courses Taught

• Affirmative Litigation
• Case Planning & Discovery

Dick Bauer is a Senior Attorney in the Housing Unit at Greater Boston Legal Services, to which he has recently returned after spending most of the past year here at CLAE as the Senior Equal Justice Training Fellow.   An MIT and Northeastern Law School graduate, Dick served as a mentor in CLAE’s inaugural Leadership Institute. He has been in Legal Services since 1982, and a member of the Supreme Judicial Court Standing Advisory Committee on the Rules of Civil Procedure since 1998.  In his other life, Dick is Chair of the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission, the Somerville representative on the Middlesex Canal Commission, Co-Chair of the Jewish Labor Committee, an Executive Committee member and Past President of Congregation Kahal B'Raira, a member of the Social Action Committee of Congregation B’Nai Brith, and a leader in the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. For fun, Dick likes to lead historic bicycle tours and is the Vegvayzer (“way-shower”) of a Workmen’s Circle’s Yiddish conversation group.  His wife Roberta Bauer is a regulatory specialist at the Community Research Initiative of New England. They have three children (including their son-in-law), and recently did the Harbor-to-the Bay AIDS ride on their tandem bicycle for the third time (once again in the pouring rain).

Courses Taught

• Affirmative Litigation
• Case Planning & Discovery

David Begley began his legal career in 1983 in private practice in Massachusetts. He is a third generation lawyer in his family. He left law in 1993 and began doing social work for various AIDS service organizations. He moved to Florida from Boston in 1996 and began working with the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County in 2000 in their HIV/AIDS Project and has been doing SSA appeals since then.  He passed the Florida Bar in 2003. David handles all aspects of benefits procurement from the initial application through reconsideration, hearing and Appeals Council. He has done hundreds of appeals and has been successful in obtaining well in excess of $1,000,000 in lump sum benefits for clients of Legal Aid Society. He has presented on social security issues at several United States Conference on AIDS (USCA) sponsored by the  National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) and has done numerous trainings and in-services to local organizations and groups on the SSA appeals process. David is also on the Steering Committee for the SOAR (SSI/SSD Outreach, Access and Recovery) Project in Palm Beach County.  SOAR is a model to obtain  social security benefits for the homeless disabled and has a national success rate of 70%. He is currently a candidate to become an ALJ for the Social Security Administration.

Courses Taught

• Administrative Hearing Skills

Randall Berg’s first job out of law school was to establish the Florida Justice Institute, a small public interest law firm in Miami, where he remains 30 years later. The firm has been involved in numerous individual and major statewide class action lawsuits for injunctive relief and damages to improve Florida's prisons. It handles other large impact cases for the poor, especially in the areas of housing, disabilities, and education. The Florida Justice Institute also established and initially staffed the first IOLTA program in the country in Florida, and then worked nationwide to establish IOLTA programs as the National IOLTA Clearinghouse, and later defended IOLTA's constitutionality. Randy’s pro bono work includes being the past president and legal panel chair of the ACLU of Florida.

Daniel Biagiotti is the Managing Attorney at The Legal Advocacy and Resource Center, a civil legal hotline that provides advice, referrals to low income Massachusetts residents. He has been the managing attorney at LARC since 1996. Prior to this he worked in a private law firm handling bankruptcies, housing, family, and traffic matters. He also has had a solo practice that focused on Juvenile law issues. He began at LARC in 1993 as a volunteer and worked there as a staff attorney and a hotline supervisor prior to becoming the Managing Attorney. He is a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association Access to Justice Council and the Boston Bar Association Public Service Committee. He is a 1992 graduate of the New England School of Law and is licensed to practice in Massachusetts and in the US District Court Massachusetts.

Courses Taught

• Essential Skills for Hotline Supervisors

Anne Blanchard is litigation director at Connecticut Legal Services, the program she joined immediately after passing her bar exam and remains at nearly 20 years later. Most recently, Anne served as co-counsel in the Carr v. Wilson-Coker suit, a class action which challenged the lack of adequate dental services for low income children that resulted in an $80 million settlement in 2008. She has also appeared before the Second Circuit multiple times, for cases involving special education, social security, and mental health issues. Away from work, Anne is a nationally-ranked kayak athlete—a pursuit through which she has had the pleasure of representing America on the world stage (World Championships in the Czech Republic last September, before you ask).

Courses Taught

• Affirmative Litigation
• Discovering Electronic Data

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

Jim Breslauer ("Bres") is the Advocacy Coordinator at Neighborhood Legal Services in Lynn and Lawrence Massachusetts. He started his legal   services career in Lancaster Pennsylvania before there were Selectric typewriters or white out. After a break selling high end stereo equipment, he worked for the Pennsylvania Coalition on Food and Nutrition doing statewide food stamp and school breakfast and lunch work. Then Reagan defunded the program. Luckily his wife, Deb Thomson, got a legal services job in Massachusetts and they moved to New England. A year later he was hired by Merrimack Valley Legal Services in Lowell as their benefits attorney. After six years, he became Associate Director/Litigation director at MVLS. On April 1, 1996 (no foolin - actual date) he was hired as the Advocacy Coordinator and staff humorist (not necessarily in that order) at NLS. He lives with Deb, 3 dogs and 3 cats in central Mass. Their son Andy and their 2 grandchildren, Sandra and Eric, live in Lowell.

Courses Taught

• Administrative Hearing Skills
• Affirmative Litigation
• Fundamentals of Attorneys Fees

For the last year and a half, Sharon Bundrage has been at Florida Rural Legal Services, where she specializes in housing related issues as a staff attorney. A member of the Florida and Georgia Bar Associations, Sharon is a former criminal law defense attorney and a former child welfare legal services attorney. She received her J.D. from Texas Southern University in 1993, before which she spent nine years serving as a police officer.

Bob Capistrano is director of advocacy and training at Bay Area Legal Aid (before joining his current program in 1999, he spent 23 years at San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation). He works primarily in the areas of public benefits, health access, and public and subsidized housing, and has authored chapters five and eight of the Federal Practice Manual. Bob is president of the Legal Aid Association of California, and a board member at the General Assistance Advocacy Project. His prior experience as a trainer includes various NLADA Substantive Law conferences and a 2008 EJW/West California Practice and Advocacy Skills training; his recreational endeavors involve economics, history, roots music, and something else called ‘zydeco dancing’ (apparently popular in Louisiana).

Courses Taught

• Affirmative Litigation

Janice is a 1988 graduate of Northeastern University School of law. She has devoted the majority of her decade-plus years practicing law as a legal services attorney in programs including the San Antonio Community Law Center and the Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts.   She played a formative role in the creation and development of the Massachusetts Justice Project, a legal aid hot-line program, where she managed the Worcester office from 1997 until 2003.  Currently she is the Executive Director of the intake and advice hotline for all of Connecticut, Statewide Legal Services of Ct, Inc.

Courses Taught

• Essential Skills for Hotline Supervisors

David Cruickshank advises law and other professional services firms on practice management, leadership development and talent retention strategies. He works with professional development partners, departments and hiring partners to convert training to a strategic advantage of the firm.  David creates customized programs on time management, delegation, feedback and business development skills. He has worked as a training consultant in top 50 firms in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States since 1990. As a former law professor and practitioner in Canada, he became well known for the study and practice of skills such as negotiation, interviewing, drafting and effective communications. He teaches as an adjunct at the Pepperdine Law School master’s program and is a frequent conference speaker. David has most recently been Director of Professional Development at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison in New York. He has a master’s degree in law from Harvard Law School. His law degree and B.A. were earned at the University of Western Ontario. David lives in Manhattan and enjoys weekends of cycling, kayaking and running in upstate New York.

Courses Taught

• Designing and Delivering Great Training
• Designing and Delivering Great Training
• Supervision Skills for Equal Justice Providers

Roberto Cruz is a staff attorney with the Legal Advocacy Center of Central Florida (LACCF). LACCF is a non-profit law firm dedicated to litigating impact cases and class action law suits on behalf of low income individuals in the Central Florida area. Roberto has been practicing law for 10 years and working with LACCF for 18 months. He has led or co-counseled several state and federal cases on issues involving civil rights, fair housing, affordable housing, mortgage foreclosures, and rescue scams. He became involved in affirmative litigation, particularly, because of the prospect of making a positive impact in the community and protecting the public interest. Roberto believes that cases and projects impact our community and hold public and private institutions accountable for unlawful, discriminatory, unfair and deceptive practices.

Robert “Bob” Dwyer is a staff attorney with Florida Institutional Legal Services.  Prior to that Bob was the managing attorney of the Kissimmee office of Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida (CLSMF) since 1999.  Bob represented clients in pubic housing, subsidized housing and mobile home evictions in the Orlando office of Greater Orlando Area Legal Services, Inc. (which merged to form CLSMF in 2004) in both state and federal court.  Bob has also represented clients in Social Security, Bankruptcy, Consumer and Family Law matters since 1992.  He graduated from the State University of New York, College at Genesee in 1987 and earned his J.D. from Ohio Northern University in 1990.  He is a member of the New York and Florida Bar.

Courses Taught

• Administrative Hearing Skills

Bruce W. Felmly, a trial lawyer with over 30 years of experience, is co-chair of the Litigation Department at McLane, Graf, Raulerson & Middleton, New Hampshire. His practice involves representing companies and individuals in trial in a wide range of commercial disputes including insurance recovery, anti-trust, real estate and other business disputes. Bruce is also well-versed in substantial personal injury matters, and has substantial experience as a mediator and in alternative dispute resolution. He is a former president of the New Hampshire Bar Association and a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He received his J.D. from Cornell Law School in 1972.

Courses Taught

• Trial Skills

Joel Ferber is the managing attorney of the Health and Welfare unit of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, where he has conducted extensive policy analysis and advocacy regarding welfare reform, Medicaid, managed care, the Food Stamp Program, and low income health care issues. Joel has litigated Medicaid and other public benefits cases in the United States District Courts and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He was also one of the lead attorneys representing Missouri consumer groups in the settlement of a lawsuit involving the reorganization of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri: a settlement that established the Missouri Foundation for Health, the largest health care foundation in the state of Missouri. Joel has been a presenter at numerous state and national conferences dealing with Medicaid, public benefits, and low-income health issues, and has written extensively on these and other subjects in Clearinghouse Review, the St. Louis University Law Journal and elsewhere. Joel is a graduate of John Hopkins University and New York University School of Law.

Courses Taught

• Fostering Affirmative, Broad-Based Advocacy

Janet Gilligan has been at Rhode Island Legal Services for most of her practice. She has worked primarily in Family Law with a special interest in child abuse and neglect cases. Janet has frequently taught at Rhode Island Bar Association and Family Court seminars as well as being an adjunct faculty member at the University of Rhode Island and Roger Williams University School of Law. She has been regularly involved with Basic Lawyering Skills and other CLAE trainings since 1999.

Valory Greenfield is a public benefits attorney at the Miami office of  Florida Legal Services, a program she first joined in 1996 (having previously held a similar position at Legal Services of Greater Miami for eleven years).  She received her J.D from the University of Miami School of Law, and has since served as an adjunct professor at Florida International University, teaching legal aspects of social work practice and as a guest lecturer at other local law schools.  With her FLS colleague Cindy Huddleston, Valory has co-authored the “Dissolution of Marriage and Public Benefits” chapter in The Florida Bar’s publication Florida Dissolution of Marriage (all editions from 1998 to present).  Valory has been active with the Boards of Directors of the Miami Workers Center, the Human Services Coalition of Dade County, and the Bromeliad Society of South Florida.  In her spare time, she performs with the improvisational theater troupe Chasing Tales.

Courses Taught

• Administrative Hearing Skills

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

Prior to joining the Florida Legal Services team in January 2007 (where she now practices primarily in the areas of health law and family law), Amy Guinan worked in private practice for five years representing plaintiffs in Consumer Protection class action. Amy has also served as the legislative counsel for the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, as the director of public policy and advocacy for the Florida Developmental Disabilities Council, and as the staff attorney for the Florida House of Representatives’ Committee on Health Care Services. She is an active volunteer with her local bar association’s pro bono program, and as a guardian ad litem.

  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

Jane Honoroff has been a practitioner in the mental health and social work field since 1969 and a mediator since 1984. She is a founding partner in The Mediation Group, and also conducts a private psychotherapy practice. Jane spent a number of years at the Somerville Mental Health Clinic working on a child abuse treatment team, has worked in Boston area hospitals providing in-patient psychiatric and medical social work services, and continues to provide supervision to social work clinicians and students. Jane also conducts weekly consultations to advocates at Greater Boston Legal Services. 

Courses Taught

• Whole Client / Whole Advocate

Phillip Kassel has worked in legal services programs in Minnesota, Washington, and Massachusetts for nearly 27 years in a host of capacities and specialties. He has litigated, lobbied, or negotiated key reforms for a wide variety of clients. Currently, he serves as Advocacy Director of South Coastal Counties Legal Services, where he is engaged in several community-based school reform campaigns and leads the Program’s education advocacy.

Bill Kennedy is the Managing Attorney/Deputy Director of Legal Services of Northern California (“LSNC”) in Sacramento, a position he has held since 1990. In his 36th year of practice, his legal work has focused primarily on housing and civil rights. In the 1980’s Bill was lead counsel on a number of successful civil rights challenges to discriminatory police practices of the Border Patrol. He and his colleague have brought several actions that focus on the nexus between land use and civil rights. He has also developed a vibrant economic development practice that addresses the “asset gap” between White America and Racial/ethnic communities. Projects include:

• Pioneering the “virtual development” model, projects have created single-family homes for purchase by more than 500 families earning as little as $17,000 per year.
• Placed over 1000 families on welfare into jobs averaging $9.50 per hour with benefits.
• Incorporated dozens of job cooperatives using the Limited Liability Corporation model in which there is no Employer/Employee relationship.
• Opening 9 child care centers in low income communities of color which cater to employees working in retail and service sector.
• Making Individual Development Accounts (IDA’s) available for education, home purchase or small business start up.
• Supporting Earned Income Tax Credit campaigns to finance projects for low-income neighborhoods suffering from disinvestment.
• Launching the Race Equity Project that integrates newly developing Cognitive Science into civil rights law.

Bill believes that the attorneys should never be a crutch upon which communities depend but a partner in making a community’s dreams manifest. He has been counsel to the Sacramento Valley Organizing Community, ACORN, the Mutual Assistance Network of Del Paso Heights and Asian Resources.

Courses Taught

• Fostering Affirmative, Broad-Based Advocacy

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

  A trial attorney since 1970, Martin Lawyer has now been at Bay Area Legal Services for over 35 years. He has extensive civil trial and litigation experience in the areas of housing, consumer, and employment law, with a particular substantive specialty in real estate. Martin serves as lead counsel on class action suits, and as Appellate attorney at all levels of Florida and United State Courts (his latest result a win: Basco v. Machin, 514 F.3d1177 [11th Cir. 2008]). He received his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law, and has since made numerous CLE and legal services training presentations in the areas of mobile home park law, landlord-tenant law, and federally-subsidized housing rights of recipients. Recreationally, Martin enjoys bicycling, running and watching soccer – especially the national team and far-away Glasgow Celtic. 

Courses Taught

• Case Planning & Discovery

Ann Lever has spent the last 29 years at the Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, where she is currently litigation director. Throughout her career she has litigated a number of affirmative impact cases in areas of healthcare access, fair housing, housing preservation, special education, immigration, treatment of the homeless, and other civil rights and poverty law issues. One of Ann’s fair housing cases resulted in the first federal appellate decision holding that the demolition of federally assisted housing constituted disparate impact race discrimination in violation of the Fair Housing Act. A graduate of Saint Louis University School of Law, Ann also serves the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing Opportunity Council Recovery, has completed a term on the board of trustees of the ACLU-Eastern Missouri, and is an adjunct professor at Saint Louis University School of Law instructing on pretrial civil practice.

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

Having been a capital partner and then counsel in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP – where he worked for 16 years until 2007 – James J. Marcellino is now at Hanify & King, where he continues to specialize in business dispute litigation. An adjunct faculty member at Boston College Law School (where he received his J.D.), James’ teaching experience is varied and long, incorporating numerous lectures to client, industry and professional groups on a wide range of litigation matters. James is a former president of the Boston Bar Association and a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. 

Courses Taught

• Trial Skills

Cynthia Mark is the managing attorney of the Asian Outreach Unit (AOU) at Greater Boston Legal Services. She specializes in immigrant workers rights, the barriers they face in the workplace, and the rights of limited-English-proficient persons. Cynthia graduated from Northeastern University School of Law. Before law school, she worked at the Chinese Progressive Association teaching English as a Second Language and citizenship classes, and organizing Chinese immigrant workers to advocate for their rights. She’s been a CLAE trainer for Basic Lawyering Skills, Community Lawyering and in the course of Leadership Institute.

Natalie Maxwell joined Southern Legal Counsel in 2005 through a fellowship sponsored by Equal Justice Works, the Florida Bar Foundation and Greenberg Traurig, LLP. During her fellowship, Natalie focused on increasing access to affordable, accessible housing for low-income people with mobility impairing disabilities. She is a member of The Florida Bar and the Public Interest Law Section of The Florida Bar. She received her JD from American University Washington College of Law, Washington DC in 2005; and a BA in Spanish and a BS in Journalism from the University of Florida in 2002. While in law school, Natalie worked on consumer law issues as a student attorney in the Women & the Law Clinic.

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

 Will Ogburn has been the Executive Director of the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) since 1987. NCLC is a low income advocacy organization, publisher of the major treatises on consumer law, a support center for legal aid programs, and sponsor of the annual Consumer Rights Litigation Conference. The Center is sometimes called 'the nation's consumer law experts.' 

Mr. Ogburn has presented and written widely on consumer law. He has served as Deputy Commissioner of Banks in Massachusetts; in the Executive Office of the President; with Congress' Legislative Reference Service; in the Law Reform Unit of Cleveland Legal Aid; as a member and Chair of the Federal Reserve Board Consumer Advisory Council; and on the Board of Directors of the Consumer Federation of America and the National Association of Consumer Advocates. 

He was awarded the National Association of Consumer Advocates' Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, and the William J. Proxmire Lifetime Achievement Award by the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers in 2001. 

Thomas E. Peisch has over 30 years of experience as a trial lawyer, and is a founder and partner of Conn, Kavanaugh, Rosenthal, Peisch and Ford LLP: a 30+ lawyer firm in Boston. Thomas’ primary areas of expertise are civil and criminal/regulatory litigation; he is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, and a former prosecutor and vice-chair of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers. He is a graduate of both Dartmouth College and Boston College Law School.

Courses Taught

• Trial Skills

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

Karen Richards is the poverty law project director at Vermont Legal – a position she has now held for over nine years. The Poverty Law Project provides legal services to income eligible clients in the areas of public benefits, housing, family (domestic violence), consumer and unemployment compensation. Vermont Legal Aid (VLA) is a statewide non-LSC program. PLP services are delivered by a team of 12 attorneys and two paralegals. Prior to coming to VLA, Karen was a staff attorney, specializing in housing, at Connecticut Legal Services in the Waterbury office.

Courses Taught

• Case Planning & Discovery

Wendy Robbins is a senior attorney with the Legal Aid Society of the Dade County Bar Association practicing Family Law, Domestic Violence, Dependency, and Administrative Appellate Law for the past 11 years. In addition to her ‘normal’ family law cases, she is the project attorney for the Transitioning Youth Administration Appeals Project and the Foster Youth Legal Services Referral Project. Prior to coming on board at Legal Aid, Wendy practiced civil litigation in Lake Worth, Florida. She is graduate of the University of Miami Law School, where she is a member of the Iron Arrow Honor Society, and is a second generation native Miamian.

Courses Taught

• Administrative Hearing Skills

Patricio Rossi is a staff attorney with Neighborhood Legal Services in Lynn, MA. Having begun his career at NLS under a grant he received from the Berkeley Law Foundation, Patricio now focuses primarily on subsidized housing issues. Under the grant, he coordinated the design, implementation and operation of a "Lawyer for the Day" program in the Northeast Housing Court. The program provides the opportunity to receive legal assistance to all indigent tenants in the Court. A veteran of several CLAE trainings, Patricio is a 2003 graduate of the Northeastern University School of Law, where he received one of the inaugural Public Interest Law Scholar awards, and a 1995 graduate of Brown University.

Courses Taught

• Whole Client / Whole Advocate

Elizabeth Segovis is the director of Low Income Taxpayer Clinic, and director of training, at Rhode Island Legal Services, where she has now worked for 15 years. Throughout more than 20 years in legal services, primarily practicing family law, Elizabeth has garnered extensive trial experience, including many jury trials in Texas, one of only two jurisdictions in the US that permits jury trials in family court matters. Currently enrolled in an MS Taxation program at Byran University, Elizabeth received her J.D. from Southern Methodist University, is a member of the NERTC advisory committee, and a previous trainer for many different CLAE course deliveries. She serves on the Board of Directors of Goodwill Industries of Rhode Island and is an active volunteer with the Rhode Island chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Courses Taught

• Trial Skills

Gerry Singsen is a legal services consultant and trainer. His clients are legal services program staffs, managements and boards of directors, and the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission. He has written extensively on legal services goals, management, practice and regulation. He has delivered his training on “Financial Management in Legal Services” to more than a thousand legal services managers over the past 20 years, and has designed and delivered innovative training programs on productivity, board of directors responsibilities, the role of middle managers, leadership and many other topics. He has been a project director, deputy director and middle manager in legal services programs, was Vice President of LSC between 1979 and 1982, founded and directed the Ford-Foundation-funded Interuniversity Consortium on Poverty Law and was a lecturer at Harvard Law School from 1984 to 1994 (teaching professional responsibility and the delivery of legal services by legal aid programs . . . and by megafirms). As a consultant, he helped board members, bar leaders and program managers in more than 20 states plan their responses to LSC's state planning and reconfiguration initiatives between 1998 and 2004.

Courses Taught

• Board Development

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

Abigail Turner is the Litigation Director at Legal Aid Justice Center in Central Virginia. She serves as counsel and consults in complex litigation and other initiatives. She partners with Justice Center staff in planning strategy using administrative advocacy, media and partnering with the low-income community. Abigail recently played a major leadership role in the Justice Center’s strategic planning initiative. Her expertise includes litigating complex poverty law and civil rights cases; representing clients in policy advocacy; and training lawyers.

She worked as Litigation Director in trying and supervising complex litigation in New Hampshire with New Hampshire Legal Assistance and then at Mid-Minnesota Legal Assistance in Minneapolis. She practiced plaintiffs civil rights law with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in her first lawyer job and then with the Legal Services Corporation of Alabama for 11 years. A graduate of George Washington University Law School, she also has an MA degree in economics. In 2006 she was awarded the Hennepin County Pro Bono Publico Public Sector Award for her work in Minnesota organizing legal services for Katrina refugees.

Courses Taught

• Fostering Affirmative, Broad-Based Advocacy

Litigation director at New Haven Legal Assistance Foundation, Shelley White has litigated numerous cases in federal and state courts (involving the Fair Housing Act, Medicaid, and federal and state constitutional claims), including appeals to the Second Circuit and to Connecticut Supreme and Appellate Courts. Twenty two years at her program, Shelley has previously worked for the ACLU of Connecticut (for five years) and for one year as a lobbyist for Connecticut legal services program. She has been an Affirmative Litigation trainer for over 10 years and participated in the design of this program. In her spare time, Shelley particularly enjoys reading and the theatre, and spending quality time with her adult sons and her dog, Lily.

Courses Taught

• Affirmative Litigation
• Fundamentals of Attorneys Fees

Since 1988, Ruth Whitney (a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and of Simmons School of Social Work) has had a private practice in Arlington, MA, where she sees individuals, couples, and families in psychotherapy. She continues to do Guardian ad Litem work and has been appointed in eight Massachusetts counties by several dozen judges. She also consults to divorcing families and serves as a parenting coordinator. Ruth is on the Institutional Review Board of Mount Auburn Hospital and the Executive Board of the Cambridge Family and Children’s Services Agency. She is past president of the Massachusetts Chapter of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts and the Cambridge-Somerville Area Board of the Department of Social Services. She is a long-time faculty member of the Trial Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School and has been a consultant for forensic issues to the Couples and Families Clinic at Cambridge Hospital and Greater Boston Legal Services. Ruth is a frequent teacher and speaker on topics related to divorcing families and the social worker in the Court.

Courses Taught

• Whole Client / Whole Advocate

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

Laurie Yadoff graduated from Hiram College in Ohio, attended Franklin Pierce Law School in New Hampshire and graduated in 1981.  Laurie was a Public Defender in New Hampshire from 1981 – 1985, a Court Administrator in New Hampshire from 1986-1996, and a Middle School Teacher from 1999-2003.  In 2003 she joined the Coalition for Independent Living Options as a staff attorney until 2006.  From 2006- 2007, Laurie was with Legal Aid of Broward as a Dependency Attorney. She is presently with Coast to Coast Legal Aid of South Florida as a Public Benefits staff attorney.

Courses Taught

• Administrative Hearing Skills

  A graduate of Harvard Law School, Albert P. Zabin practices – for Duane Morris LLP – in the area of civil litigation, including business disputes, partnership and close corporation disputes, trade secrets, intellectual property, mediation and arbitration as a neutral, insurance, and torts. Albert is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a guest lecturer at Tufts University and, previously, has been a visiting instructor at both Boston College Law School and Northeastern School of Law. He has authored many journal articles on product liability, trial practice and civil procedure, and serves on the IOLTA Grant Committee for the Massachusetts Bar Foundation, where he is a life member.

Courses Taught

• Trial Skills

Linda Zazove is the deputy director for Programs and Advocacy at Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation, a 65-county program in central and southern Illinois, where she has worked for most of her 28 years practicing law. Her current responsibilities include program planning, as well as encouraging, supporting, and engaging in strategic litigation and advocacy. Linda has been involved in affirmative litigation involving public benefits, discrimination and housing issues, and has also clerked for a federal judge. Early in her career, she was in private practice for four years, where she filed her first class action on behalf of Illinois Social Security recipients whose benefits had been terminated without a showing of medical improvement. Linda served on the ABA Task Force to Revise the ABA Standards for the Provision of Civil Legal Aid, and is currently on the board of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.

A director at the Goulston & Storrs Boston office, Richard M. Zielinski is a general trial lawyer who specializes in complex, “bet the company” litigation. He has successfully defended major law firms throughout the United States in legal malpractice cases, partner withdrawals and attorney disciplinary hearings, and has extensive trial experience in a wide range of business and real estate disputes. Richard is a graduate of Harvard Law School, a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and, at present, chair of the Massachusetts State Committee. His teaching experience incorporates Harvard Law School, MCLE, and innumerable lectures and seminars on evidence, trial practice and substantive litigation topics – areas of law that he has also written about in many different contexts.

Courses Taught

• Trial Skills