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National Lawyers Guild Speakers Bureau In an effort to support law school chapters, the Guild is developing a speakers’ bureau. Below is an initial set of biographies of Guild members that are happy speak for free, and maybe even do a bit of traveling to visit your campus and speak about the Guild and their areas of expertise. Contact NLG Student Organizer michel martinez at studentorg at nlg dot org, to learn more or to be put in touch with potential speakers. Members of the Guild’s National Executive Committee, or NEC, are also available. Check back frequently, as additional speakers and information will be added in the coming weeks and months. Click here to apply to join the NLG Speakers Bureau. Dan Gregor (AK) is a 2001 graduate of Northeastern School of Law. He became a public defender in Colorado before moving on to solo practice, focusing on mass defense, criminal justice, grad jury work, and immigration--his specialties. He is often called to lead Know Your Rights and Legal Observer trainings, and is happy to discuss all of the above, alternative modes of law practice, working in public interest, living with crushing loan debt, the Guild, and radical lawyering in general. He is currently National Vice President of the NLG. Carol Sobel (CA) is a graduate of Peoples College of Law, The Guild Law School, in Los Angeles, CA. Specializing in Mass Defense/Police Abuse, First Amendment rights, Homeless Rights and Anti-Criminalization issues, Carol was with the ACLU of Southern California for 20 years and has been in private practice for 10 years. Carol was the 2007 recipient of the NLG's Ernie Goodman Award and the 2008 recipient of the California "Angel Award" for her pro bono work on behalf of the homeless, has mentored countless students, been shot by police at demonstrations, and stands up to authority every chance she gets. She is the President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Guild as well as the Co-Chair of the NLG's National Mass Defense Committee Dan Spalding (CA) is a legal worker with Midnight Special Law Collective, a group that designs and gives participatory, high-energy trainings and occasional support for mass actions. He enjoys doing Know Your Rights (KYR) trainings as well as trainings for future-trainers, and trainees usually like it, too. Each election cycle, he and the Collective help organize legal support for RNC/DNC protests. He also gives Legal Observer Trainings, and talks related to Grand Juries, Computer Security, the intersections of Radical Activism and Legal Work, non-violent direct action, and how lawyers, legal workers, students, and activists can work together. As you may have guessed, children and small animals like him. Paul Wright (VT) is the co-Jailhouse Lawyer Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild. The founder and editor of Prison Legal News, a revolutionary monthly newsletter about human rights and the prison system, Paul frequently travels and speaks about policing, prisons, parole, probation, the death penalty, and more. He is also able to help students locate speakers on additional prison-related topics. David Gespass (AL) received his JD from American University in 1970. While there, he and others started a National Lawyers Guild chapter, forced the school dean to take a three-year sabbatical and the dean of admissions to resign, and paved the way for the school to become more diverse, rigorous, better ranked, and progressive. After law school he remained committed to civil rights and liberties activism as an attorney in the South, and worked on issues as varied as protest rights, Vietnam, Military and International Law, human rights, US Foreign Policy, and criminal justice. He led the NLG's 2008 delegation to Pakistan, leads Legal Observer and Know Your Rights trainings with flair, is something of an expert on the history of the National Lawyers Guild. Curtis Cooper (MD) is a former co-chair of the NLG International Committee with a diverse practice based in Baltimore. He can speak on the illegality of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the threats against Iran, specifically within the UN framework. He is also an authority on and advocate for the need to abide by international law in addressing nuclear proliferation and climate change. Polly Halfkenny (PA) is General Counsel for a progressive, rank&file union. She went to law school later in life, graduating in 1995 from Northeastern University School of Law where there was and remains a strong NLG Chapter. She became an activist in the 1960s and never looked back. She co-chairs the NLG Labor and Employment Committee with Dean Hubbard of Sarah Lawrence College and is happy to speak to issues regarding immigrant worker rights, progressive lawyering, unions, labor law, and the history and workings of the National Lawyers Guild. Michael Steven Smith (NY) is an expert on the qualitative change in our civil rights and liberties since 9/11. He is on the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights, author/editor of six books, including two on Bill Kunstler and one co-edited with Michael Ratner on Che Guevara and the FBI. He is currently in private practice in New York city and is an excellent speaker on topics related to the politics of the 1960s, leftist movements, the National Lawyers Guild and our history, Latin American politics and radicalism. Ian Anderson (NY) is a former chair of the NYCLA Foreign & International Law Committee and is currently preparing several cases for presentation to the European Court of Justice. Ian has litigated extensively in the U.S., EU, and Africa, focusing on International Law, and foreign affairs/policy. More information is available at www.iandersonadvocate.com Roxana Orrell (TX) is a graduate of William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota, now residing in the Lone Star State. She is happy to give Legal Observer Trainings, discuss surviving and thriving in law school, working with community organizations, and being an activist attorney and long-time Guild member. She focuses on Social Security and Disability work, and is incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to computers, technology, and intellectual property. Lauren Regan (OR) is a 1996 graduate of the University of Oregon School of Law. She focuses in large part on civil liberties, the Green Scare, can give Know Your Rights and Legal Observer trainings, as well as share her experiences as a political lawyer with political clients. While she works wit the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, she successfully launched her own practice, The Law Offices of Lauren C. Regan, proving you can both do public interest work and “make it.” Peter Erlinder (MN) is a lawyer and Professor of Constitutional Law at William Mitchell in Minneapolis. He has been NLG President, is the President of the Defense Lawyers Association at the UN Tribunal for Rwanda, a prolific writer, and even the publisher of a Criminal Procedure treatise. He has been an attorney for the Cuban 5, Dr. Sami Al Arian, AIM founder Vernon Bellecourt, Peru’s Abimael Guzman, and countless other politically-targeted activists. His specialties are International Law, Civil Liberties, Criminal Procedure and Constitutional Rights, and his Guild storytelling may only matched by another NLG all-star, Ann Fagan Ginger. Dennis Blewitt (CO) is a 1964 graduate of ITT/Chicago-Kent who has worked in the field of criminal law for the past 40 years. He has been a judge and political candidate, taught criminology and delinquency in sociology dept at Colorado University, was president of a union and has been a Guild member since 1968, represented the American Indian Movement (AIM), Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a pilot for leafleting a stadium with antiwar materials, and more. , and took some of the Rocky Flats cases. Mainly, he has defended drug cases since 1967 throughout the country. He is currently working on a book with a working title of March to Martial Law and one entitled Memoirs of a Drug Warrior. Mara Verheyden-Hilliard (DC) is a Guild attorney with an impressive stack of court cases under her belt; to be clear, she's won and impressive stack of cases. Shortly after graduating from Columbia Law School in 1994, she and her husband founded the Partnership for Civil Justice where they and a small staff continue to litigate cutting-edge civil rights and liberties cases. Recent victories include the Central Park Lawn Case, the FTAA-Miami class action, and First Amendment litigation stemming from the 2005 Bush-Cheney inaugural. She is the Co-Chair of the NLG Mass Defense Committee and sits on the Guild's National Board. She is also on the steering committee of ANSWER. John Philo (MI) is a graduate of St. Louis University School of Law who also holds a Master of Law degree from McGill Universities where he studied health and safety rights, international law, and transnational liability. Now the Legal Director of the (NLG) Maurice Sugar Law Center for Social and Economic Justice, Philo continues his interest in litigating cases across country in product liability, safety, employment rights, and constitutional issues. He remains Of Counsel to the Constitutional Litigation Association and is the Former deputy director-attorney for the Detroit City Council. Karen Weill (WA) is a legal worker with the Law Offices of Larry Hildes, another Guild member with decades of experience defending demonstrators and suing the police. She is a trained investigator, domestic election monitor, and a long-time feminist activist and organizer. She would love to speak to legal workers and legal assistants, but also to lawyers and law students about the work that legal workers perform and how to build respectful, functional office relationships. She and Larry are happy to travel together is to speak about their work and experiences, as well as give Know Your Rights & LO trainings.