In my varied legal practice, I have represented refugees, single mothers, foster children — and multinationals with U.S. compliance needs as well as small businesses including nonprofits and social enterprises.

I am a Harvard College and Columbia Law School graduate with publications in the legal literature. I am trained in mediation at the North Shore Community Mediation Center and MWI. I am fluent in French and conversational in German and Dutch.

I provide outside general counsel and compliance services to businesses; draft commercial, civil, and family agreements.

I provide litigation support and legal writing and editing services for other law firms, and represent clients directly in litigation, agency hearings, and appeals.

My compassion, pragmatism, and communication and legal writing skills to help individuals and businesses reach deals, prevent and resolve disputes, and protect their interests. I have won writing awards since high school, including for best brief in my class at Columbia Law, an invitation to join the Columbia Law Review, election to its Ad Board, and selection of my Note for publication. I have overturned many unfavorable court judgments and agency decisions on appeal. I taught legal research and writing at New England School of Law and continue to train and mentor appellate lawyers for the Committee for Public Counsel Services. As an appellate lawyer, I have overturned all but a few agency decisions and court judgments that I have challenged on appeal.

BACKGROUND

Before founding Branch Legal LLC, I represented civil rights and employment plaintiffs at Justice First LLP in Oakland, public benefits and disability claimants at Community Legal Aid, and death row inmates for the Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco. I clerked for Judges Leo T. Sorokin and M. Page Kelley of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and interned for Judges Raymond Lohier of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and Elizabeth Stong of the Bankruptcy Court in the Eastern District of New York.

I have volunteered my legal services at Open Door Legal in San Francisco, Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts, Northeast Legal Aid, the Women’s Bar Foundation Family Law Project, and the Federation for Children with Special Needs. I also represent battered women through the Journey to Safety program at Jewish Family and Children’s Service.

A former policy researcher and program analyst, I continue to do policy research, with a focus on access to justice, organizational effectiveness and accountability, and corporate influence on public policy

PUBLICATIONS

"Benefit Corporations: How to Enforce a Mandate to Pursue the Public Interest?," Columbia Law Review (2012).

"Defining Literacy and Citizenship: Official Language Arts Curricula in the United States and France," Journal of Citizenship Teaching and Learning (2011)

EDUCATION

A.B., Harvard College

ABD, Harvard Graduate School of Education

J.D., Columbia Law School

Languages: French (fluent), German (conversational), Dutch (conversational)

State Admissions: Massachusetts, New York, California

Federal Admissions: Northern and Central Districts of California, District of Massachusetts.