Speaker Series

Each semester, PILF brings a range of speakers to discuss their experience in public interest law and offer advice to students who want to pursue careers in pro bono opportunities in that field. All students are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Contact Usama Kahf for more information about Speaker Series events.

Past Events:

Social Justice Lecture Series (Sponsored by Loyola Law School, the Faculty Public Interest Committee, and PILF)

Jennifer Gordon - February 2008
Jennifer Gordon is Associate Professor of Law at Fordham Law School in New York City, where she teaches Immigration Law, Labor Law, and seminars on public interest law and the relationship of law to organizing. Prior to joining the Fordham faculty, in 1992 Gordon
founded the Workplace Project in New York, a nationally recognized grassroots workers center that organizes low-wage Latino immigrants to fight for just treatment on the job. After leaving the Workplace Project in 1998, she was the J. Skelly Wright Fellow at Yale Law School. Gordon has also worked as a consultant to the AFL-CIO, the Campaign for Human Development of the Catholic Church, and the Ford Foundation, among others. Her book Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights was published in 2005 by the Belknap imprint of Harvard University Press. Gordon was chosen in 1995 as one of National Law Journal's forty leading lawyers under the age of 40 in the United States. In 1998, she was named "Outstanding Public Interest Advocate of the Year" by the National Association for Public Interest Law (now Equal Justice Works). She was awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1999.

Julie Su - Inaugural Social Justice Lecturer, October 2007
View the video of Ms. Su's lunchtime presentation.

Julie A. Su is Litigation Director at the non-profit Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California (APALC), an affiliate of the Washington D.C.-based Asian American Justice Center. 

Su was one of the leaders in fighting for the freedom of the Thai garment workers who were enslaved for years in an apartment complex in El Monte, California and served as lead counsel in a federal lawsuit against the garment manufacturers and retailers whose clothes they sewed.  Since then, Su and APALC have litigated nearly a dozen corporate accountability lawsuits with garment workers.  Su was one of six “national leaders” to appear in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s exhibit on sweatshops and is a co-founder of Sweatshop Watch. 

Su also litigates to end discrimination and segregation in education and in the workplace.  She has represented African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans in cases ranging from a challenge to UC Berkeley’s admissions policy to Abercrombie & Fitch’s hiring practices.

Su was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2001.  She was also one of three women named by the Gruber Foundation in 2006 for its international Women’s Rights award, and received the 1996 Reebok International Human Rights Award.  She was listed in the Los Angeles Magazine 2006 year-end issue as one of L.A.’s “Influentials.”  In 2005, the Daily Journal named her one of the “Top 75 Women Litigators” in California and she is consistently listed as a “Southern California Super Lawyer.”  She has been recognized for her work by the American Lawyer, Ms. magazine, Working Woman, Redbook, Biography magazine and was profiled on the Lifetime Program “Final Justice” and the PBS show “Personal Best.”  Then-President Clinton named Su and three other women across the country for their pioneering work in his proclamation of Women’s History Month in March 1997.

She received her law degree from Harvard Law School in 1994 and her undergraduate from Stanford University.  She joined APALC as a Skadden Fellow in 1994, a prestigious fellowship given to 25 recent law graduates devoted to working in the public interest each year.

Su is the daughter of Chinese immigrants.

Other Speaker Series Events:

Pro Bono Work in a Private School Setting
James Gilliam, Associate Pro Bono Coordinator for Paul Hastings' Los Angeles and Beijing offices, and Loyola Law School alum, visited on February 6 to discuss doing pro bono work in a private firm setting.

Immigration Attorney Stacy Tolchin
Immigration attorney Stacy Tolchin visited Loyola on Wednesday, September 12. View a video of her presentation (requires RealPlayer).

Loyola Faculty Panel
Professors Kathleen Kim, Alexandra Natapoff, and John Nockleby shared their experiences working in the field of public interest on Monday, October 1. View a video of the panel discussion.