During the January 2003 meeting of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) in Washington, D.C., the selection of East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) Executive Director Jeff Selbin as a Bellow Scholar was announced. Mary Louise Frampton, Director of the Center for Social Justice at Boalt Hall School of Law (UC Berkeley) is a co-recipient of the award, conferred by the Public Interest Committee of AALS’s Clinical Section.
The Bellow Scholar program, in its inaugural year, is designed to honor the work of Gary Bellow, and to focus on innovative anti-poverty or access to justice projects that encourage collaboration and empirical analysis. Projects in Denver and Boston also were recognized. The local project will utilize graduate students in law and other disciplines to develop and test meaningful outcome objectives of legal services practice.
According to Mr. Selbin, “It is an honor to receive this recognition from our peers, and especially meaningful for me, since Gary Bellow was a mentor of mine in law school and a pioneer in the fields of both legal services and clinical legal education. I’m also delighted to continue our close partnership with Boalt Hall in general and Mary Louise Frampton in particular – the Center for Social Justice is a wonderful model for law schools around the country, and our work with Mary Louise demonstrates the tremendous potential of joint university-community ventures.”
The East Bay Community Law Center was founded by students from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law with the dual mission of providing high quality legal services to low-income residents of Alameda County and clinical legal education opportunities for law students. EBCLC’s direct legal services to the low-income community include housing, income and employment support, HIV/AIDS, and economic development. EBCLC’s clinical program exposes law students to the needs of low-income clients and communities, and provides them with the skills to make a difference in the lives of real clients.