2008 Woodie Awards
Harvard Tops Skadden Fellowships Again. 3L 2007 Fellows Eager to Begin
Erin Archerd
Issue date: 1/18/07 Section: News
"My project, the Mental Health Advocacy Project at Lawyers For Children (LFC), is designed to promote the rights of children in foster care to gain timely, consistent, and individualized mental health services through direct representation, community and institutional education, and impact litigation," said Kernan.
OPIA helped direct her to several organizations doing good work in foster care. Kernan approached LFC over the summer to find out if there were any areas that would benefit from a fellowship project and the Executive Director and Deputy Executive Director immediately identified mental health.
"They said that in representing thousands of children in foster care for the past 20 years, LFC has become acutely aware of the profound mental health needs of children in foster care and of the foster care system's chronic failure to confront these needs appropriately," Kernan said. "I was very excited to draw on my background in psychology and my understanding of the foster care system and of the challenges confronting children in this system to design my fellowship project."
Sarah Bolling will work at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society representing low-income homeowners in foreclosure litigation and arbitration.
"I will be litigating over the predatory aspects of their home loans, which can involve failure to disclose the real interest rate, fraud and misrepresentation, excessive fees, flipping of a loan (which means refinancing it over and over with no real benefit to the borrower, sucking out the equity), etc," said Bolling. "The two lawyers currently in the Home Defense Program at Legal Aid do mostly negotiation (because they are swamped with all of the people that need assistance), so I will be adding litigation to the panoply of tools they use to help their clients."
Bolling started looking for an organization to work with by talking with many anti-predatory lawyers about "whom they would want to learn from if they were a young lawyer just starting out."
OPIA helped direct her to several organizations doing good work in foster care. Kernan approached LFC over the summer to find out if there were any areas that would benefit from a fellowship project and the Executive Director and Deputy Executive Director immediately identified mental health.
"They said that in representing thousands of children in foster care for the past 20 years, LFC has become acutely aware of the profound mental health needs of children in foster care and of the foster care system's chronic failure to confront these needs appropriately," Kernan said. "I was very excited to draw on my background in psychology and my understanding of the foster care system and of the challenges confronting children in this system to design my fellowship project."
Sarah Bolling will work at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society representing low-income homeowners in foreclosure litigation and arbitration.
"I will be litigating over the predatory aspects of their home loans, which can involve failure to disclose the real interest rate, fraud and misrepresentation, excessive fees, flipping of a loan (which means refinancing it over and over with no real benefit to the borrower, sucking out the equity), etc," said Bolling. "The two lawyers currently in the Home Defense Program at Legal Aid do mostly negotiation (because they are swamped with all of the people that need assistance), so I will be adding litigation to the panoply of tools they use to help their clients."
Bolling started looking for an organization to work with by talking with many anti-predatory lawyers about "whom they would want to learn from if they were a young lawyer just starting out."
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