What Have I Done?

In addition to my work as a lawyer, I have spent thousands of hours teaching, coaching, and mentoring future lawyers. I have been an adjunct professor at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School since 2002, where I first taught legal writing and have taught legal ethics for the past 12 years. I also have coached trial advocacy teams at Georgetown University Law Center for more than 15 years and have helped the amazing students who run the school’s advocacy programs develop it into one of the most respected organizations in the country.

I also served for 8 years as co-chair and then chair of Wiley Rein’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, where I worked to support the voluntary bars to make the profession more diverse and inclusive and to remove any barriers to advancement facing women and others who have traditionally been underrepresented in management and partnership ranks.

I have devoted thousands of hours to pro bono representations, often advocating on behalf of victims of racial discrimination. As one example, working with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs several years ago, I spent over 1,000 hours over a two-year period as lead counsel representing the NAACP and 17 individuals in a race discrimination lawsuit against a major restaurant chain. The proudest moment of my legal career came when I stood in the court where Thurgood

Marshall won Monk v. City of Birmingham and Lucy v. Adams, addressed the Honorable U.W. Clemon, one of the first ten African-American attorneys admitted to the Alabama Bar, with my co-counsel Bill Baxley, the former Alabama attorney general who devoted his tenure to putting the 16th Street Baptist Church bombers in prison, and introduced myself as counsel for the NAACP.

Georgetown University Law Center Team - AAS Tournament (Regional Champions and National Finalists).

Georgetown University Law Center Team - 2017 Tournament of Champions Team (National Finalists)

I currently serve on the Board of DC Refers, a nonprofit organization that connects individuals of limited means with dedicated lawyers willing to represent them on terms that they can afford. And I have previously served the D.C. Bar by serving two terms on the Litigation Section (now a Community) Steering Committee and by chairing a joint working group of the D.C. Bar and the D.C. Access to Justice Commission, which successfully recommended changes to the D.C. rules to facilitate limited scope representations. The working group submitted its recommendations within a year of its first meeting, a remarkable accomplishment given the work that went into it, and then for more than five years we responded to a series of challenges to our recommendation that any limited scope representation must be reasonable under the circumstances. Each time a challenge came in, my colleagues and I promptly rose to address it, and the last of our recommendations was adopted – reasonableness intact – in November 2018.

Endorsements:

Past DC Bar Presidents

Andrea C. Ferster
Ronald S. Flagg
George W. Jones, Jr.
John "Jack" C. Keeney, Jr.
Carolyn B. Lamm
Myles V. Lynk
Andrew H. Marks
Patrick McGlone
John W. Nields, Jr.
Stephen J. Pollak
James J. Sandman
Annamaria Steward
Joan H. Strand
Robert N. Weiner
Melvin White

Other Bar leaders

Rod Boggs
Edgar Class
Jill Dash
Marc Fleischaker
Ann K. Ford
Mark Herzog
Bridget Bailey Lipscomb
Amy Nelson
Kendra Norwood
Allen Orr, Jr.
Lee Petro
Jessica Rosenbaum

Organizations

National Bar Association Region XII
DC Consortium of Legal Service Providers
Greater Washington Area Chapter, Women Lawyers Division, National Bar Association (GWAC)
Hispanic Bar Association of the District of Columbia (HBA-DC)
Asian Pacific American Bar Association of the Greater Washington, D.C. Area, Inc. (APABA-DC)
South Asian Bar Association of Washington, DC (SABA-DC)
Washington Bar Association (WBA)
Washington Council of Lawyers