DLA Piper, in an effort to enhance the pro bono work performed as part of its signature projects as well as the delivery of legal services to low-income individuals where we live and work, has created and funded these fellowships. 

 Equal Justice Works Fellow - Lea Weems works with the Home Ownership Preservation Project at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (LAF). LAF provides free legal aid in a wide range of civil legal services to low-income residents of Cook County. Lea's project focuses on representing indigent homeowners who are victims of "foreclosure rescue fraud," a new predatory industry fueled by rising home values and increases in subprime lending and foreclosures.

A native Louisianan, Lea worked for three years after college at a nonprofit organization on Chicago's west side where she helped to develop job training programs for low-income residents. In addition to handling a wide range of housing cases during a summer internship at LAF, Lea worked on housing and foreclosure rescue fraud cases through law school clinical placements at the Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. While in law school, Lea served as Managing Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and a teaching assistant to Professor Lani Guinier. Following law school, she clerked for Chief Justice Margaret Marshall at the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.


Access to Education Fellow - Access to Education, the New York signature project, includes a DLA Piper Fellow who works both at the firm and at one of the partner legal services organizations. The Fellow serves as on-the-ground liaison between the nonprofit and education communities, the firm, and the community at large.  The firm has funded this fellowship since launching the project in 2006.

Senior Staff Attorney Judith Moldover spearheads Lawyers Alliance’s Accountability initiative, which provides legal help to not-for-profits in areas of sound board governance, fiscal transparency, and proper personnel management. Ms. Moldover is also an experienced employment lawyer. Prior to joining Lawyers Alliance, Ms. Moldover was Of Counsel at Ford & Harrison LLP, VP and Group Counsel at American Express Company, and Labor and Employment Counsel at CBS. She received her J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 1977 and a B.A. cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1973.