Salena Copeland is the Executive Director of the Legal Aid Association of California.
Salena Copeland, Executive Director
As LAAC’s Executive Director, Salena oversees all of LAAC programs. This includes everything from supporting the board of directors through their bylaws revision process to visiting California state legislators as a member of the Bench Bar Coalition to helping to plan Pathways to Justice, one of the largest statewide conferences for legal services attorneys. Salena sees her role at LAAC as helping to make sure that the community connects with each other, even when they may not see a connection.
Before coming to LAAC, Salena ran the Justice Bus Project as a OneJustice Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps Legal Fellow. Salena is a 2007 graduate of Stanford Law School. While there, she was a clinical student at the Stanford Community Law Clinic and interned at two Bay Area Public Defenders’ offices. Prior to law school, she was an AmeriCorps volunteer literacy specialist at an elementary school in Austin, Texas, and a preschool coordinator at a family shelter in Menlo Park.
Please contact Salena at scopeland@laaconline.orgor at 510-893-3000 ext. 106.
Links: Twitter page. | Staff page. | (Current as of: March 24, 2017)
PRESS/RESEARCH BY THIS PERSON
Op-Ed , OpinionOpinion: Why California should boost legal aid funding
Salena CopelandSan Jose Mercury News
March 23, 2017
We join with legal service organizations throughout California in calling on the state to provide $30 million to reach the national average in civil legal aid funding. President Trump’s budget threatens to eliminate all federal aid provided through the Legal Services Corporation. That leaves the state’s Equal Access Fund to help bridge this growing gap. Established in 1999, the fund receives just $10 million a year, a number that has only been boosted once – a $5 million increase that many of us fought hard for in this year’s state budget.
This page last modified: Fri, March 24, 2017 -- 9:30 am ET