usc law family
Ninety years of paving the way toward justice Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles celebrates fruitful connection with USC Gould By Diane Krieger
As the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) celebrates 90 years of public service, USC Gould alumni reflect on a long relationship with the region’s oldest legal aid organization. LAFLA was launched at the law school in 1929. Then-Dean Justin Miller had recruited clinical education pioneer John S. Bradway, a practicing attorney and University of Pennsylvania sociologist, to design it. The Southern California Legal Aid Clinic Association (LAFLA’s precursor) saw 1,400 clients in its first year and enlisted the entire third-year class — 72 students — as apprentices. Its first case, according to LAFLA Deputy Director Fernando Gaytan ( JD 2002) was a cattle dispute
LEGAL AID FOUNDATION OF LA IN 2018 >> provided more than $17
million
in economic benefits to clients
>> helped more than
100,000 people,
including 272 victims of human trafficking and 1,375 veterans
>> served nearly 40,000
walk-in
clients through its community clinics and
courthouse-based self-help legal access centers
>> h andled more than 25,000
calls through its call center
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USCLaw magazine
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between a small farmer and a large landowner. The city’s topography has changed dramatically, but LAFLA’s mission remains the same today — “to serve as many people as we can in seeking access to justice,” says Gaytan. By 1935, the organization had outgrown its headquarters in the original USC law building and relocated in downtown. Today, it operates out of five offices, four courthouses and dozens of communitybased and virtual clinics, hospitals, public libraries and a call center. It employs 143 professionals, most of them attorneys and paralegals. It also enlists more than a thousand pro-bono volunteers, including Gould students and alumni.
A PASSION FOR PUBLIC SERVICE One private attorney with close ties is Amber Finch ( JD 2002). Last year, she joined LAFLA’s board and currently chairs its pro-bono committee. “The most prized, heartfelt wins in my career have been pro-bono cases,” says Finch, a partner in the Reed Smith LLP Los Angeles office. As a student at USC Gould, she was active with the Public Interest Law Foundation (PILF) and the Post-Conviction Justice Project. Determined to “lead by example,” Finch has ramped up her own pro-bono hours since becoming a LAFLA board member. “I make sure I’m out there,” she says. She participated in several LAFLA clinics last year, including the day-long Compton Homeless Veterans Stand Down, where her team assisted more than 30 veterans. She has helped clients convicted of misdemeanors clear their records at a LAFLA expungement clinic, and volunteered at a LAFLA Skid Row Clinic, where she met, among others, a woman who had been wrongfully evicted and reduced to sleeping in her car with her three kids.
