Each year, LAAC offers the Dan Bradley Fellowship to fund law students who want to spend their summer working at a LAAC member legal aid organization. The Fellowship is awarded to outstanding students who want to pursue a career in public interest law and who want to spend their summer working in a rural area or on a rural issue. The Dan Bradley Fellowship not only gives law students the opportunity to explore a career in legal services, it offers legal services programs a new source of dedicated and energetic summer staff.
More about the Dan Bradley Fellowship
Following are the 2015 Dan Bradley Fellows:
Bianca Dueñas
UC Davis School of Law ’16
California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation
“This summer I am working with California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation on a campaign to provide education and legal assistance to rural immigrant communities on the recent executive actions. Given the recent Texas injunction, which as temporarily blocked the anticipated implementation of DAPA and extended DACA, there is a huge need for information. The injunction has caused a lot of confusion in immigrant communities, especially those in the rural areas of California’s northern central valley. Utilizing presentations, workshops, and individual consultations, I have been able to help disseminate the relevant executive action information to rural communities and to providing information on how immigrant communities can continue to prepare for DAPA and extended DACA.”
Kaitlin Toyama
UC Hastings ’17
California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc.
“I am spending my summer at California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) in Modesto, interning with the Community Equity Initiative (CEI). CEI is a program of CRLA that aims to address and eliminate social, political, and environmental factors that negatively impact disadvantaged, unincorporated communities in the Central Valley. In the counties covered by the Modesto office – Modesto, Merced, and Stanislaus – one of the major issues facing our client community is the lack of affordable housing. In order to address this, one of my tasks for CEI has been to research General Plans and Housing Elements of local governments in our region to ensure they are complying with the law by planning, zoning for, and building adequate affording housing. In addition, I have worked on a project to stop a recycling plan located next to a low-income community of color from crushing vehicles for scrap metal, and am researching language access policies so limited-English speakers can fully participate and access information from their local public agencies. “