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Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI): cultivating a lifelong commitment to public interest law
Greetings!
We at PILI are always mindful of the debt of gratitude we owe to the many supporters whose contributions to and involvement in PILI have sustained us since our founding in 1977. Particularly during this season of the year, we would like to express our sincere thanks to our donors, sponsors, volunteers, board members, team members, and participating agencies, whose support of PILI over the years has helped cultivate a lifelong commitment to public interest law in Illinois. Our growth and our accomplishments as an organization have arisen out of your commitment, collaboration, encouragement, and hard work, and we are wholeheartedly grateful.
In this newsletter, we look ahead to our 2011 Annual Award Luncheon on December 1. We also report on our summer programs evaluations and spotlight our two newest board members, a 2011 PILI Fellow and a 2011 PILI Intern.
This and more below! We hope you find this e-newsletter informative and we wish you a wonderful holiday season and a safe and happy new year!
With Gratitude,
The Staff of the Public Interest Law Initiative
Michael G. Bergmann, Executive Director
Shana Heller-Ogden, Development & Communications Associate
Julia Kepler, Office Administrator
Sheila Simhan, Program Manager
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PILI News
2011 PILI Annual Awards Luncheon Celebrating Service: The Legal Profession At Its Best  The 2011 PILI Annual Awards Luncheon is coming up on Thursday, December 1. Each year, this event honors people and organizations whose impressive contributions to public interest and pro bono work in Illinois inspire us and make us proud, and this year in particular we are pleased to present our awards to the following worthy recipients:
Distinguished Public Service Award: Chief Justice Thomas L. Kilbride, Illinois Supreme Court Pro Bono Initiative Award: Mayer Brown LLP Distinguished Alumni Award: Justin Lee Heather, 2001 Fellow Kathleen K. Clark, 1997 Intern The Annual Awards Luncheon will be held at the Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel with a reception at 11:30 am followed by lunch at 12:00; the event will conclude by 1:30. Tickets are available on our website at www.pili-law.org/annualawardsluncheon, or you may contact us by e-mail or by phone at 312-823-5127. We are thankful to our many sponsors for their support of this year's event. New PILI Named Internship from the Jewish Judges Association of Illinois PILI is pleased to announce a new PILI Honorary Named Internship for the summer of 2012: the Justice Robert E. Gordon Scholar, Jewish Judges Association of Illinois. On behalf of the Jewish Judges Association of Illinois, Judge Michael Hyman said the following about their decision to sponsor a PILI Intern: In celebration of our first 10 years of existence, the Jewish Judges Association of Illinois wanted to acknowledge an extraordinary effort on behalf of the Association by one of its members. We do not have an executive director or maintain drawers of archives. Nonetheless, we have a guide and advisor, a trusted treasurer, annual dinner chair extraordinaire, and a living repository of institutional memory. We have Justice Robert E. Gordon. The officers felt that a PILI Internship named in honor of Justice Gordon would not only recognize his inspiring commitment to the law, the legal community, and our organization but also, hopefully, inspire a future lawyer to emulate that commitment in his or her professional career by way of this unique opportunity to work with a public interest law agency. The Jewish Judges Association of Illinois's sponsorship of a Named Intern makes a difference in the life of a law student and in the lives of poor, low-income, and underserved individuals and families in Illinois. PILI thanks the Jewish Judges Association of Illinois for their generous support of PILI in sponsoring this Honorary Named Internship for 2012! Support PILI With a Year-End Gift We hope that you share in PILI's mission to cultivate a lifelong commitment to public interest law among law students and lawyers. You are directly connected to our successfully achieving our mission by your involvement and support. As we close 2011, please consider making a donation online today to help PILI continue to make a difference for law students, lawyers and most especially, the poor and underserved of Illinois. Click here to make your donation online. |
PILI Law Student Internship & Graduate Fellowship Programs
PILI Interns (first or second year law students) and PILI Fellows (recent law school graduates) work in and learn about public interest law, and begin what PILI hopes is a lifelong commitment to public interest law and pro bono work. Below is the latest news about PILI's Internship and Fellowship Programs. Visit PILI's website to learn more about the Internship and Fellowship Programs.
Application Periods for Spring and Summer 2012
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Law students at a 2011 PILI Law Student Pro Bono Event
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The application period is currently open for 2Ls wishing to apply for a Summer 2012 PILI Internship and for all law students wishing to apply for a Spring 2012 Internship. Law students in their first year of law school may apply for Summer 2012 PILI Internships starting December 1. Please visit our website for information on how to apply for summer or school-year Internships, and for a list of agencies participating in our Law Student Internship Program. Summer 2011 Programs Evaluations Report PILI regularly conducts thorough process and outcome evaluations of our Internship and Fellowship Programs. This summer's evaluations showed high levels of satisfaction and positive outcomes for our Interns, Fellows, and for supervisors at PILI Participating Agencies: - 100 percent of Interns and Fellows rated their PILI experience as "good" or "excellent," with the vast majority - 86 percent of Interns and 80 percent of Fellows - selecting "excellent."
- 92 percent of supervisors rated their experience with PILI Interns or Fellows this summer as "excellent," and an additional 4 percent "good."
PILI Internship Program Needs Assessment Study In addition to our regular program evaluations, this summer PILI also conducted an extensive needs assessment study regarding legal service agency need and capacity for law student interns. Given the hundreds of interns who apply annually for a few dozen positions, and given the extent of the legal need among low-income Illinoisans, we wanted to determine whether and to what extent the legal service agencies participating in our programs needed and had the capacity to host more law student interns. Results of our multi-stage study showed that - Interns are highly satisfied with the quality of supervision they receive and with the overall quality of their experience; they believe that their agencies both need and can meaningfully accommodate more law student interns.
- Supervisors are highly satisfied with the quality of work their interns provide and believe interns contribute greatly to the furtherance of their mission; they believe that their agencies both need and can meaningfully accommodate more law students interns.
- In total, supervisors at 33 legal service agencies requested an additional 102 PILI Interns for the next summer and school-year. That is more than 2.5 times our current summer and school-year class!
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PILI Alumni Program
Today, over 3,000 law students and graduates have participated in PILI's Internship and Fellowship Programs. The Alumni Program maintains the connection between these lawyers, PILI and the public interest law community. Below is the latest news about PILI's Alumni Program. Visit PILI's website to learn more about our Alumni Program.
PILI Alumni Reunion Reception PILI held our second annual Alumni Reunion Reception on
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PILI Alumni Katie Deibert, Susie Bucaro, and Cathy Yu
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October 5 at Bin 36 in Chicago. Attended by fifty PILI Alumni from 1979 to 2011, this event brought together old and new friends to celebrate the PILI Internship and Fellowship Programs. Thank you to all of the PILI Alumni who were able to join us! It was wonderful to see you and to reconnect. PILI would especially like to thank our 2011 Alumni Sponsors, listed on our website. All proceeds from the event went directly to supporting a 2012 PILI Alumni Named Intern. More pictures are available on our Facebook page.
PILI Welcomes New Alumni Board Members From among applicants from each class of PILI Interns and Fellows, PILI selects one Intern Representative and one Fellow Representative to serve on the PILI Board of Directors for a term of two years. PILI is pleased to announce our two new Representatives from the Class of 2011: PILI Fellow Barbara Barreno and PILI Intern Arturo Hernandez. Barbara and Arturo are also this newsletter's Alumni Spotlights, below. Their backgrounds, experience and commitment to the mission of PILI will make them valuable assets to PILI's Board of Directors. Welcome! Barbara Barreno, 2011 PILI Fellow  Barbara recently graduated from Vanderbilt University Law School and spent her summer serving as a PILI Fellow at the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) while studying for the bar. "I had a terrific experience working at NIJC," says Barbara. "From the first day of my Fellowship, I was given a great amount of responsibility and had access to clients so I could immediately apply my skills to the organization's cases." Her work included conducting new and returning client intake, preparing U Visa applications, drafting letters requesting prosecutorial discretion to the Department of Homeland Security, preparing applications for employment authorization and drafting affidavits for applications for immigration relief. She also conducted research on drug cartels in Mexico and helped prepare a client for an asylum interview. Barbara has maintained a longtime interest in immigration law. Before starting law school, she worked as a law clerk at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles processing citizenship and U Visa applications, and while in law school she led the National Latina/o Law Student Association, which supported the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act as its Policy Initiative. Click here to read more.
Arturo Hernandez, 2011 PILI Intern  The Illinois State Bar Association Young Lawyers Division sponsors a PILI Intern each summer to focus on issues of particular relevance to children and youth as part of their Children's Assistance Fund. This summer, Arturo Hernandez was the recipient of this PILI Named Internship position, and his work at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless embodied the spirit of the ISBA YLD Children's Assistance Fund. A major part of Arturo's work this summer was to help homeless children and families whose school was being closed by Chicago Public Schools because of low enrollment. "I have read literature about what happens to children who move from school to school," says Arturo. "Homeless children lose about six months of development, and there is also anxiety, depression, and a feeling of not fitting in at the new school. Seeing this first hand, however, was a lot more eye-opening." The instability that these children already experienced in housing and in their family lives they also now had to deal with at the educational level. "Hearing these children discuss how devastated they were by having their school close was a humbling experience. It made me realize the importance of the work we do and brought our work to life." Click here to read more.
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PILI Pro Bono Initiative Program
Through its Pro Bono Initiative, PILI works collaboratively with law firms, corporations, public interest law agencies and law schools to create and promote work environments, programs and opportunities that help new associates and seasoned attorneys actualize their commitment to pro bono work. Below is the latest news about PILI's Pro Bono Initiative. Visit PILI's website to learn more about our Pro Bono Initiative Program. PILI Contributes to ABA National Pro Bono Summit
PILI hosted the Illinois Forum on Pro Bono in September, which was co-sponsored by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service. PILI and the ABA collaborated on the discussion topics for the Forum as a lead in to the ABA's National Pro Bono Summit, which was held in Washington DC on October 24-25. The invitation-only event brought together over 100 individuals representing a broad spectrum of the legal profession to explore ways to reinvent the pro bono legal services delivery system. Michael Bergmann, PILI's Executive Director, was invited to participate in the Summit on behalf of PILI. The ABA distributed PILI's summary of the ideas and strategies to improve the pro bono delivery model generated at the Illinois Forum on Pro Bono to all Summit attendees, contributing to the Summit's ultimate goal of developing a nationally coordinated action plan for improving the pro bono legal services delivery model. Pro Bono Spotlight: Takeda Pharmaceuticals, North America
 After several months of conceptualizing and designing a pro bono program, Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America, Inc.'s (TPNA) Legal Department officially kicked-off its new pro bono program on September 22, 2011. Kenneth D. Greisman, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of TPNA was on hand at the kick-off to voice support for the program's launch and to encourage members of the legal department to engage in pro bono legal services. The launch was festive, including balloons and cake, while also showcasing several of the agencies and pro bono opportunities available for TPNA's legal department. Click here to read more.
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Customized Pro Bono Resources and Opportunities
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