NEWS & UPDATES
PUBLIC INTEREST/PRO BONO NEWS BU Law students are increasingly interested in public service and pro bono work as part of their legal education, while our faculty and alumni consistently demonstrate a commitment to public interest in their professional lives. Here are a few highlights from the past year.
The organizations where students volunteered include: • AIDS Action Committee (Boston) • Bet Tzedek (Los Angeles) • Center for Law and Education (Boston) • Death Penalty Litigation Clinic (Kansas City) • Fair Employment Project (Boston) • Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions (Boston) • Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (Boston) • Michigan Legal Services (Detroit) • Mississippi Center for Justice (Biloxi, MS) • New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (Newark) • Orleans Public Defenders (New Orleans) • Pine Tree Legal Services (Portland, ME) • Refugee & Immigration Assistance Program of Catholic Charities (Newark) • South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (Harlingen, TX) • Victim Rights Law Center (Boston) • Volunteer Lawyers Project (Boston)
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HONORS In April, the White House and US Department of Health & Human Services honored Manjusha P. Kulkarni (’95) as a “Champion of Change” for her work educating Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders about the Affordable Care Act.
BU LAW CELEBRATES PRO BONO ACCOMPLISHMENTS In the spring, BU Law hosted the annual Year-End Pro Bono Celebration to recognize two alumni and one faculty member for their lifelong commitment to pro bono work, as well as the graduating 3L and LLM students who completed the most pro bono hours during their Law tenure. Recipients in 2013–2014 were: • Public Service Alumni Award: Avner Shapiro (’94) • Pro Bono Alumni Award: Angela Gomes (’05) • Pro Bono Faculty Award: David McHaffey (’95) • JD Pro Bono Award: Elizabeth McIntyre (’14) • LLM Pro Bono Award: Zhaokun Duan (LLM’14)
BU Law to Award New Fellowship to Students to Work as Public Defenders Boston University School of Law has agreed to join a select group of law schools in the Gideon’s Promise Law School Partnership Project (LSPP) that will provide fulltime fellowships to students to work in under-resourced public defender offices. BU Law joins the law schools at Northwestern University, University of Chicago, UCLA, NYU, and American University in this program being coordinated by Gideon’s Promise, a nonprofit organization in Atlanta dedicated to public defense reform. The LSPP is funded in part by a $1 million, three-year grant from the US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance. The first recipient of the fellowship is Thomas McCants (‘14). BU Law Announces 2014 Public Service Fellows BU Law awards full-time public service fellowships to a select group of its most recent graduates to provide legal assistance for up to a year to underfunded nonprofit organizations and government agencies nationally and abroad. The Class of 2014 Fellows are: • Irene Burga, Natural Resources Defense Council, Santa Monica, CA • Emily Crim, Elder, Health & Disability Unit, Greater Boston Legal Services, Boston, MA
PHOTOS BY BU SCHOOL OF LAW AND BU PHOTOGRAPHY
BU Law Students Spend Spring Break Doing Pro Bono Work in Nine Cities Sixty-two BU Law students participated in the School’s spring break pro bono service trips to nine cities across the United States to work on a variety of legal issues, ranging from foreclosure prevention to disaster recovery to language access. Each group comprised two to fourteen students, with involvement from a BU Law professor, staff member, or alumnus. These pro bono service trips provide students with an opportunity to bring their classroom learning into the field and to assist clients with a variety of real-world legal issues.