DePaul University College of Law

Past LRAP Recipients

Jean Bax (‘01) Bax has been a staff attorney at Life Span Center for Legal Services and Advocacy since November 2001. While at DePaul, she was involved with the Public Interest Law Association (PILA), National Lawyer's Guild (NLG), the Justinian Society, and Phi Alpha Delta. She interned at Life Span through a domestic violence seminar course and continued working there throughout the summer of 2000 with a PILA summer stipend and Equal Justice America Fellowship. After graduating, Jean helped launch the Louise Project, which provides law students and staff the opportunity to mentor students at Jones College Prep, a local public school, and served on the advisory committee through 2005. She also worked at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago representing clients in order of protection, divorce, and custody proceedings. Jean currently serves on the Board of Directors of Cases for A Cause, Inc., a nonprofit devoted to improving the lives of children in the Illinois foster care system. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Brothers & Sisters of Love, a nonprofit dedicated to ending gang violence in Chicago. Bax was a 2008 LRAP Recipient.

Peter Bibler (’05) Bibler is a staff attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (LAFMC) Westside office, which provides free civil legal services to low-income and elderly clients of Chicago's Westside and western suburbs. He has been with LAFMC since October 2006, and practices landlord-tenant law, family law, consumer law, foreclosure defense, bankruptcy, unemployment and public benefits. He is currently representing clients who have been the victim of foreclosure rescue scams and risk losing their homes and equity. Bibler was a 2007 and 2008 LRAP Recipient.

Annie Gregory (‘05) Gregory specializes in nonprofit healthcare compliance as the Manager of Grant and Contract Compliance at Howard Brown Health Center, a nonprofit community-based organization that provides healthcare and social services to over 13,000 HIV-positive and low-income Chicagoans yearly. While at DePaul, she was active in PILA, the Community Development Legal Clinic, and the DePaul Journal of Sports Law and Contemporary Problems. As a senior law student, she was a Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI) Fellow in the HIV/AIDS Unit of LAFMC. She also received an Equal Justice Works Fellowship to work at Uptown People's Law Center, a small legal aid office providing legal assistance to low-income residents of Chicago's Uptown community. Annie is also grateful for the PILA summer stipend she received to intern at the Pilsen-based Latino Union of Chicago's legal clinic. Gregory was a 2008 LRAP Recipient.

Ben Johnson (‘07) Johnson currently works at the Disability Rights Bureau of the Illinois Attorney General's office, working to protect the rights of people with disabilities through investigations, providing technical assistance, negotiating settlements, and various other projects. He came to DePaul with an interest in public interest law, and specifically in the law as it pertains to persons with disabilities and special education. During law school, he was a research assistant for Professor Mark Weber for over two years, focusing on special education issues. He was also involved in PILA, the International Law Society (ILS), worked in the Criminal Appeals Clinic, and participated in the DePaul Moot Court Appellate Team. In his second year, Ben served as a clerk in the office where he currently works. Ben also currently serves on the Attorney General's Select Committee on Special Education and is working on a project aimed at improving the accessibility of Illinois polling places on Election Day. Johnson was a 2008 LRAP Recipient.

Beth Johnson (’05) Johnson is a staff attorney at the Cabrini Green Legal Aid Clinic (CGLA). She has been with CGLA since October of 2005 and is now the Director of the Criminal Records Program. Johnson represents clients who need to clear past criminal records through expungement, sealing, waivers and clemency. Additionally, she manages the Expungement Help Desk at the Daley Center, which serves more than 3,000 clients per year. Johnson was a 2007 LRAP Recipient.

Amy Kessler (’00) Kessler is an Assistant Public Guardian at the Office of the Cook County Public Guardian. She represents abused and neglected children as their attorney and guardian ad litem. Kessler litigates on behalf of abused and neglected children involved in the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) system and advocates for them both in and out of the courtroom to ensure they are receiving proper care and services from DCFS. Kessler has been practicing in the field of public interest for the past 7 years. Kessler was a 2007 LRAP Recipient.

Gil Lenz (’05) Lenz is as an Assistant Appellate Defender at the Office of the State Appellate Defender, First District, in Chicago. He has been with the Appellate Defender since September 2005. He represents indigent criminal defendants who are appealing their convictions or who are appealing the denials of their post-conviction petitions. Lenz has been involved with efforts to pass federal legislation that would create a LRAP for attorneys working as public defenders or prosecutors. Lenz was a 2007 LRAP Recipient.

Heidi Linn Lambros (‘96) Lambros is currently an Assistant Appellate Defender with the Office of the State Appellate Defender in Chicago, where she has worked since 2002. Through this position, she has argued and defended five criminal cases before the Illinois Supreme Court, winning an outright reversal of a conviction in In re Ryan B. and remand for a new hearing in People v. Brown. She has also won reversals of criminal convictions in the Illinois Appellate court in the cases of People v. Scott and In re J.T. She began an interest in criminal defense law while in DePaul's extern program, where she clerked for two years at the Cook County Public Defender's Office in the Homicide Task Force. In 2000, Heidi was accepted into the LL.M. program in Child and Family Law at Loyola University in Chicago. While in the program, she had the opportunity to work in the Child Law Clinic representing children in the child protection (abuse and neglect) system, as well as in delinquency proceedings. She won a CALI award for the highest grade in Child, Parent, and the State. Heidi is currently on the Advisory Council of the Illinois Juvenile Defender Resource Institute, run in partnership with Northwestern University School of Law and the MacArthur Foundation, which seeks to extend resources to juvenile defenders throughout the state. Heidi was a 2008 LRAP Recipient.

Nora Phillips (‘07) Phillips works at Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (LAFMC) as an Equal Justice Works Fellow where she focuses on obtaining U visas for immigrant crime victims who cooperate with law enforcement. While at DePaul, Nora participated in the DePaul Asylum and Immigration Clinic during her second year of law school. Throughout law school, she interned at LAFMC in the Migrant Project and, later, the Immigration Project. Nora currently serves on the Associate Board of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and has served on the selection committee for the Chicago Bar Foundation Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Public Interest Law Scholarship. Phillips was a 2008 LRAP Recipient.

Adam Poe (‘06) Poe has been a staff attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid in Richmond, CA, since 2008, where he represents low-income and disabled clients in eviction defense and advocates for access and preservation of public housing benefits. He also assists clients in settlement negotiations and loan modification efforts with foreclosing entities. He has appeared as a panelist at several foreclosure mitigation workshops throughout the Bay Area. As a law student, Adam clerked at the Cook County Public Defender and at Cabrini Green Legal Aid (CGLA) where he participated in a program dedicated to the sealing and expungement of criminal records. Adam was active in the DePaul Latino Law Students Association (LLSA) and was a founding member of the Illinois Law Students Association (ILLSA). He twice received a PILA summer stipend and graduated with a certification in Public Interest Law. In 2006, he received DePaul's Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarship Award for his essay "Effecting Institutional Change Through Interest Convergence: The Vitality of Dr. King's 'Multi-Racial Army' of the Poor." Using the CGLA program as a model, Adam designed a "clean slate" criminal records sealing/expungement pilot that set to launch in Richmond in April of 2009. He is also involved in several community and neighborhood organizations dedicated to expanding the availability and affordability of low-income housing in the East Bay. He is active in the San Francisco La Raza Lawyers Association (SFLRA) and volunteers at Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland. Poe was a 2008 LRAP Recipient.

Teri Ross (’06) Ross is a staff attorney with Prairie State Legal Services in the Waukegan office, serving Lake County. She has been with Prairie State since September of 2006 and she works with low-income individuals, families and senior citizens of Lake County in cases involving domestic violence, housing and public benefits. During her time at DePaul, Ross served on the Center for Public Interest Law Committee, the PILA Board, and chaired the LRAP Committee. Ross was integral in the creation and development of the Loan Repayment Assistance Program. Ross was a 2007 LRAP Recipient.

Shawna Scheidel (’05) Scheidel is an attorney at the Legal Aid Society in Louisville, Kentucky and was awarded the first Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs Fellowship. Scheidel works in the Family Advocacy Program, where she represents victims of domestic violence in protective order hearings and then in dissolution of marriage proceedings. During her time in Chicago, Scheidel interned at the Office of the Cook County Public Guardian in the Child Protection Division, representing abused and neglected minors in court proceedings. Scheidel was a 2007 LRAP Recipient.

Jed Untereker (‘06) Untereker is the Litigation Director for the Working Hands Legal Clinic (WHLC), where he focuses on wage and hour litigation and community outreach at. In support of Chicago's worker and community centers, he regularly gives workshops and presentations on issues affecting immigrant workers, such as no-match letters, discrimination, and wage violations. While a student at DePaul, Jed was a CALI Award winner with the Center for Justice in Capital Cases, a Sullivan Fellow, a member of the Women’s Human Rights Initiative, and a volunteer advocate at Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues. During his law school summers, he participated in the Chiapas Human Rights Practicum and interned with Cabrini Green Legal Aid (CGLA). He is currently a member of the CGLA's Young Professional Board. Untereker was a 2008 LRAP Recipient.

Claudia Valenzuela (‘02) Valenzuela is currently a managing attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center's (NIJC) Adult Detention Project. While at DePaul, Claudia was a Jeanne and Joseph Sullivan Fellow at DePaul's International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI); a Mansfield Fellow with LAFMC; and a Public Interest Law Intern (PILI) with the Midwest Immigrant & Human Rights Center of Chicago (now NIJC). Claudia was also a recipient of Mayor Daley's Leadership 2000 Scholarship. Valenzuela was a 2006 and 2008 LRAP Recipient.

Eleni Wolfe-Roubatis (‘07) Wolfe-Roubatis currently works at NIJC in the Detention project. At NIJC, she represents low-income immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers in the custody of immigration authorities; goes to immigration detention facilities in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin to do “Know Your Rights” presentations; performs in-person intake with detained individuals; and monitors detention conditions. While at DePaul, Eleni was highly involved in public interest activities. Her first summer, she interned at the Centro de Derechos de la Mujer in Chiapas, Mexico, a legal aid center for low-income women. She participated in the year-long Asylum and Immigration Clinic while externing at Latinos Progresando, a small immigration legal aid center in Pilsen. She interned with NIJC's Detention Project during the summer after her second year and also worked in NIJC's Immigrant Legal Defense project part-time throughout her third year. Eleni was also involved with IHRLI and ILS. Wolfe-Roubatis served as president of both PILA and Amnesty International. Wolfe-Roubatis was a 2008 LRAP Recipient.