Shira Levine to Join LAS-ELC as SPILF Fellow

We are pleased to announce that Shira Levine will join us this fall as a Stanford Public Interest Law Foundation (SPILF) Fellow.  Each year, Stanford Law School awards Public Interest Fellowships to recent graduates who have a history of public service, who provide leadership within the law school, and who are committed to careers as lawyers in the public service.

As a fellow, Shira will represent subcontracted immigrant workers who face wage and hour violations in LAS-ELC’s WageHELP program.  Her project’s goal is to stem wage theft in low-wage industries, including the janitorial, security guard, warehouse, and construction industries.  To that end, Shira will litigate the cases of workers who seek to obtain remedies through the federal and state court systems and will establish a walk-in clinic at the offices of the California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement in Oakland and San Francisco. 

Shira first came to LAS-ELC as a summer law clerk in 2010, and she further developed an interest in representing low-wage immigrant workers – one she has cultivated by participating in Stanford’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and Community Law Clinic.  After completing her undergraduate degree in History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Michigan, Shira worked as a bilingual first grade teacher for Teach for America and taught predominantly immigrant students in the Bronx.  She spent a year in Israel where she worked with migrant workers from Nigeria and the Philippines, and then joined the 2008 Obama field campaign in Ypsilanti, Michigan. 

Shira is currently clerking for the Honorable Harry Pregerson of the Ninth Circuit.

Fellowships

Skadden Fellowship Sponsorship

Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center is pleased to invite applications for sponsorship of a Skadden Fellow for the two-year period beginning in September 2013.  The two-year fellowship offers a recent law school graduate the opportunity to obtain training in litigation as well as many other aspects of public interest practice.  The Skadden Fellowship Foundation awards approximately 25 fellowships per year to graduating law students and outgoing judicial clerks.  Skadden Fellows develop projects that provide legal services to persons who are poor, elderly, and/or homeless, persons with disabilities, and others who are deprived of human or civil rights.

Legal Aid seeks to sponsor a candidate to work within our Wage and Hour Enforcement Litigation Program- WageHELP.  Applicants are encouraged to propose and discuss project ideas in this program area which works to ensure that all workers benefit from the protections of wage and hour law.  These laws address a range of issues, including minimum wage, overtime wages, unpaid work hours, vacation pay, wage deductions, meal and rest periods, and more.  Criteria for sponsorship include:

• Demonstrated commitment to the rights of poor and working people.
• Established knowledge of and interest in wage and hour, employment, and/or civil rights law.
• Excellent communications skills; Spanish fluency strongly preferred.
• Strong academic performance; excellent legal research and writing skills.
• The ability to work independently and cooperatively with others.
• Membership in the California Bar preferred.

Legal Aid will accept applications through Monday, June 25, 2012.  Please prepare a detailed cover letter describing your interest in the organization and the Fellowship.  Send it along with your résumé, transcript, a list of three references, and two writing samples to:

Skadden Fellowship Committee
The Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center
180 Montgomery Street, Suite 600
San Francisco, CA  94104
Fax:  415 593-0096
Email:  hchen@las-elc.org

The full announcement is available here.

Legal Aid Society-Employment Law center is an equal employment opportunity employer and will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religious creed, sex (including pregnancy), gender, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, medical condition including genetic characteristics, mental or physical disability, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity (including transgender status), weight, height, linguistic characteristics (such as accent and limited English proficiency, where not substantially job-related), citizenship status, or any other basis prohibited by law.  Legal Aid also prohibits discrimination based on a perception that an individual has any of the characteristics of the protected classes of race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, mental disability, physical disability, medical condition, marital status, or sexual orientation, and further prohibits discrimination against an individual who is associated with a person who has, or is perceived to have, any of those characteristics.  Legal Aid will also make reasonable accommodation for disabled applicants and employees, unless such accommodation would result in undue hardship.