2020
SIGNATURE
EVENT
MAKING CIVIL LEGAL AID INDISPENSABLE
Keynote by
KAREN LASH
Honoring
JULIA R. WILSON
2020 Access To Justice Award Recipient
MARCH 19
3-5 PM
The LSFN invites you to join us as we hear from 2020 Keynote Speaker Karen Lash, about the work she has done to:
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Transform how federal and state government officials think about and use civil legal aid to improve their work project outcomes.
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Increase the pool of government dollars available to legal service providers.
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Build allies and partners in the executive branch who will defend and support the role of legal services.
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Effectively leverage modest private philanthropic seed funding to gain access to ongoing large scale government funding.
WE EXPECT THE EVENT TO REACH CAPACITY
THERE IS NO CHARGE TO ATTEND
WHEN /
MARCH 19, 2020
3-5 PM
WHERE /
Public Policy Institute of California
Bechtel Conference Center
500 Washington St., #600
San Francisco, CA 94111
ABOUT THE EVENT /
Our annual Signature Event is purposely open to a wide community, including legal service funders, NGOs, CBOs, law students, attorneys, judges, court staff, and other interested in civil legal aid.
Each year the LSFN puts on several events to help educate our community and bring together those with a shared interest in supporting legal services, as we believe these organizations are a critical tool to use to address poverty alleviation. Visit the LSFN website to learn more.
KAREN
LASH
As a political appointee in the Obama Administration, Karen A. Lash served in leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Access to Justice (ATJ) and as the first Executive Director of the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR). Karen conceptualized, implemented, and led LAIR, a first-of-its-kind executive branch policymaking model for civil legal aid, that brought together 22 federal agencies to identify programs, policies, and initiatives that could work more effectively and efficiently by incorporating legal aid.
After leaving the Justice Department, Karen joined American University’s School of Public Affairs Justice Programs Office as a Practitioner-in-Residence and Director of The Justice in Government Project. With funding from the Open Society Foundations, Public Welfare Foundation, and The Kresge Foundation, Karen is applying the lessons learned from LAIR to state agencies to similarly ensure that scarce resources are most effectively used to achieve state goals regarding low income and other underserved populations by adding legal aid partners.
She is a frequent conference keynote and presenter, and her recent publications include Civil Justice Needs Federal Leadership, Center for American Progress Issue Brief (with Maha Jweied) (September 2019); Executive Branch Support for Civil Legal Aid, Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (Winter 2019); How Civil Legal Aid Can Tap Federal Funds to Support Partnerships with Schools, Bar Associations, Courts, and Hospitals to Improve the Lives of Those Affected by Substance Use Disorders, (with Casey Chiappetta) MIE Journal (Winter 2018); The Obama Legacy: Legal Aid Across Government Agencies, Talk Poverty, (December 22, 2016); and Federal Government as Your Partner: What Advocates Should know about Federal Resources for Veterans’ Legal Aid, 68 S. C. L. Rev. 209 (2016). She is a Senior Fellow at Center for American Progress and currently serves on the boards of advisors to the UC Berkeley/Irvine School of Law Civil Justice Research Institute, DC Bar Foundation, Voices for Civil Justice, and Tzedek DC.