Goldstein Award winners successfully challenge discriminatory code enforcement practices

Also at the Annual Reception & Dinner, the 2010 Steven M. Goldstein Award for Excellence will be presented to the Florida Equal Justice Center Inc., the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, and Florida Legal Services for their project, "A Challenge to the City of Lake Worth's Use of Selective Code Enforcement." The runners up for this biannual award are the Florida Legal Services Migrant Farmworker Justice Project and Gulfcoast Legal Services.

You can read more about the winning project next month in the Spring 2010 issue of Speaking of Justice. Don't receive Speaking of Justice? Just look for the "Subscribe" button at the bottom of this e-newsletter to sign up.

Orange County legal aid attorney receives Young Lawyers Professionalism Award

Cara Dobrev, attorney with the Legal Aid Society of the Orange County Bar Association, received the 2010 Young Lawyers Lawrence G. Mathews Professionalism Award, given each year  to a lawyer that aspires to the highest ideals of professionalism.

Dobrev developed her passion for public service as a fellow with Equal Justice Works, a national organization that sponsors two-year public interest law fellowships. The Florida Bar Foundation provides matching funds to its legal aid grantees to help support their EJW Fellows' salaries. As an EJW Fellow, Dobrev was placed with the Legal Aid Society of the OCBA, where she now serves as the Guardian ad Litem Program coordinator.

In 2009-10 Dobrev was also a Fellow in the inaugural class of The Florida Leadership Development Institute, sponsored by The Florida Bar Foundation. Dobrev was presented with the award, sponsored by the Orange County Bar Association, on March 25 at an OCBA luncheon. 

Step up to the challenge. Support the legal needs of children.

Helping support the legal rights of Florida's low-income children starts with a simple check mark made on the 2010-11 Florida Bar fee statement.

Florida Bar President-elect Mayanne Downs asks that Bar members make a voluntary contribution of at least $45 to
The Florida Bar Foundation's Lawyers' Challenge for Children
campaign to help bring benefits of the law and lawyers to the lives of poor children.

The difference lawyers can make through the Lawyers' Challenge for Children are life-changing. Kamesha Grant, 18, said she doesn't  know where she'd be without the help of Legal Aid and her Guardian ad Litem. Your gifts help serve the legal needs of thousands of children like Kamesha.

Legal Aid fights for tenant's rights

The Legal Aid Society of the Orange County Bar Association and its staff attorney Mike Resnick helped nursing student Ericka Davis and her five children stay in their rented home after it went into foreclosure.

Florida law only requires a 24-hour eviction notice to tenants of a foreclosed property, but Resnick cited a federal law giving tenants the right to remain in their rented property until their lease runs out, or until 90 days after the property goes into foreclosure.

See the coverage by WFTV Channel 9 in Orlando.

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