The Lawyers Clearinghouse celebrated its 23rd Annual Meeting on June 7th at Nixon Peabody. Joseph Flatley and Jeffrey Sacks co-chaired the event which was attended by 150 people. Jeff Sacks welcomed our guests and Board President Andrew Stern introduced the Lawyers Clearinghouse video which highlighted the work and mission of the organization.

Joe Flatley introduced our guest speaker, Paul Grogan, President and CEO of The Boston Foundation. Paul complimented the Clearinghouse on the fine work it has done in the community and congratulated the awardees on their well-deserved recognition. He spoke about the great success of the campaign to preserve affordable housing and the work yet to be done.

L to R: Jeff, Ellen, Tripp, Cindy, Joe, Aaron

Joe and Jeff presented Leadership Awards to Ellen Feingold, Aaron Gornstein, Tripp Jones, and Cindy Rowe for their efforts to protect affordable housing and preserve the affordable housing law in the Commonwealth. Ellen and Tripp thanked the Clearinghouse and reiterated the importance of continuing to work in support of affordable housing. Aaron added his thanks and summarized the goals of a major affordable housing campaign that CHAPA is launching in the fall. Cindy was also grateful to be recognized and described her involvement on the Clearinghouse board for the past 18 years and her admiration for the contributions that the Clearinghouse has made to the nonprofit sector and homeless community.  She also thanked the Clearinghouse staff for their hard work.

Board member, Jeffrey Katz, closed the meeting by recognizing the staff for their dedication and hard work and thanking all attendees for their continued support.

We are especially grateful to Nixon Peabody for hosting our event, Forrest Milder for his photography, and to our Event Committee and our many Event Sponsors that helped to make this event our most successful to date. Thank you for your help and support.

For more information and pictures of the event, please visit our website (all photos courtesy of Forrest Milder).

The Lawyers Clearinghouse is pleased to announce that Rebecca A. Lee and Teresa M. Santalucia have joined the board of directors.

Rebecca is a partner at Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge where she represents developers, non-profit organizations, and lending institutions in a wide range of real estate matters, including land use and development permitting, financing, leasing and condominium creation.  

Teresa is an associate at Klein Hornig and focuses her practice on a wide range of affordable housing and community development activities. She has taken on a number of pro bono cases through the Clearinghouse’s Community Legal Referral Program.

Nancy Blueweiss, Leslie Cook, Kathleen McGrath, Stephen Nolan, Kathleen Phelps, and Christian Rivera were elected to serve additional three year terms. Andrew Stern (President), Benjamin Tymann (Vice-President), Jeffrey Katz (Treasurer), and Maribeth Perry (Clerk) were elected to serve as officers for additional one year terms.

Rebecca Alperin is Of Counsel in the Corporate Department at Brown Rudnick, with a primary focus on employee benefits matters. She is experienced in the many aspects of employee benefits law, including the design and ongoing administration of benefit plans and programs, as well as the identification of employee benefits issues triggered by corporate mergers and acquisitions. In addition, Becky has experience in drafting and negotiating executive employment agreements.

The Lawyers Clearinghouse is fortunate that Becky has volunteered to assist when nonprofits apply to us for assistance with employment benefits matters. She sees participation in pro bono activities and representation of small tax-exempt organizations as a win-win for everyone. Not only does the organization benefit from legal expertise and insight that it would not otherwise have access to, but it allows her to continue to develop and become more well-rounded professionally and gain involvement in community based organizations.

The goals of the organizations that she has assisted are often different than those of her larger for-profit clients. With smaller budgets and less ability to incentivize employees, her pro bono clients look to her to design and facilitate the implementation of employee centered human resource policies and programs. She considers herself fortunate to work with organizations that are enthusiastic about providing comprehensive programs to their employees and states that “they just need some help and guidance in getting there and complying with the ever changing legal playing field”.

Becky has taken on several matters through the Lawyers Clearinghouse referral program and feels that the Clearinghouse has been extremely helpful in finding and referring pro bono matters that build on her area of expertise. She had taken on cases involving review of existing personnel policies and employee handbooks for compliance with employment laws and regulations and has designed a compensation and benefit program for the executive directors of a community based organization. In that case, the interests of the directors were adverse to one another, but by explaining in plain English the program’s design, and how it meets the needs of each individual director and the organization, the program was adopted.  She remains committed to assist with any matters referred to her by the Lawyers Clearinghouse.

While participation in pro bono work is voluntary, her firm encourages all of its attorneys, paralegals and legal professionals to participate in pro bono and public service activities. They also create opportunities for non-legal staff to participate in firm initiatives. Brown Rudnick has a long history of promoting the public interest through pro bono work and community service. They expanded that commitment ten years ago with the creation and endowment of the Brown Rudnick Charitable Foundation and the opening of the Brown Rudnick Center for the Public Interest. The Center enables the firm to increase the impact of their public interest efforts through blending pro bono representation, community service and charitable giving in support of selected nonprofit organizations in those communities. Their pro bono representation has focused on unemployment benefit appeals, indigent artists, veterans, civil rights, inner-city education, and homelessness. The Clearinghouse is especially grateful to the firm for its participation in and support of our Massachusetts Legal Clinic for the Homeless.

Becky began doing pro bono legal work in law school where she became involved in both the UnemploymentActionCenter, representing individuals denied unemployment benefits, and the Women in Prison Project, teaching legal research to inmates in a New York State Department of Correctional Services women’s maximum security prison. She has maintained her commitment to pro bono work throughout her legal career and is now very much interested in becoming a Guardian ad Litem and hopes to be able to accomplish that goal in the future.

Thank you to Becky and Brown Rudnick for their commitment to pro bono work and their community.