2022 Access to Justice Awards Ceremony!!!

Program Highlights

We have two incredible featured speakers for this year's event:

Rachel Rossi, Director of the United States Department of Justice’s Office for Access to Justice. 

President Joseph R. Biden and Attorney General B. Merrick Garland announced the appointment of Rachel Rossi as Director of the Office for Access to Justice in May 2022. Prior to her  appointment, Director Rossi served as Deputy Associate Attorney General in the Office of the Associate Attorney General, Vanita Gupta. In that role, she also served as the inaugural Anti-Hate Coordinator for the Justice Department.

Director Rossi began her career as a public defender in Los Angeles for almost a decade, where she vigorously defended hundreds of low-income clients in state and federal courts.

Director Rossi subsequently served as Counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Richard J. Durbin (Illinois), and then transitioned to the role of Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. After that, she served as the Legal Director for the REFORM Alliance, where she launched the development of a litigation program for direct representation in criminal cases and in civil litigation matters surrounding issues of probation, parole, supervised release, and community supervision.

Director Rossi received her law degree from Pepperdine University School of Law. She grew up in Los Angeles, California and is the daughter of immigrant parents born in the Dominican Republic and Greece.

Mary Gay Scanlon, Representative of Pennsylvania's 5th Congressional District

Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon has dedicated her career to serving the most vulnerable — first as a lawyer and now in Congress. She has represented Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District since 2018.

Congresswoman Scanlon’s legislative priorities include voting rights, access to justice, education, supporting economic growth for her region, common sense gun safety, and ending hunger. All of these priorities align with Congresswoman Scanlon’s main goal as an elected official: protecting and improving the lives of America’s children, families, veterans, and seniors.

As a staunch believer that everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law, Congresswoman Scanlon previously worked as national pro bono counsel at Ballard Spahr LLP, where she directed and supervised over 600 lawyers across 15 offices in providing more than 50,000 hours of pro bono legal services annually to low-income clients and nonprofit organizations. Before her election to the U.S. House of Representatives, Congresswoman Scanlon also served as an attorney at the Education Law Center, president of her local school board, and co-chair of the Voting Rights Task Force of the
Association of Pro Bono Counsel. She is a graduate of Colgate University and University of Pennsylvania Law School. The Congresswoman and her husband, Mark, reside in Swarthmore and have three adult children.

Award Recipients

We are pleased to announce that Su Ming Yeh, Executive Director at the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, is the recipient of our 2022 Philadelphia Bar Foundation Award. This award recognizes public interest attorneys who have dedicated their careers to fighting for equal access to justice. Ballard Spahr LLP and Duane Morris LLP will each receive the Bar Foundation’s 2022 Pro Bono Award, which recognizes law firms and corporate legal departments that perform outstanding volunteer efforts to provide legal services. 

During her almost twenty-year career at PILP, Su Ming Yeh has improved the lives of thousands of people, protecting the rights of incarcerated people, LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, and countless others who suffered abuse behind bars. She has litigated dozens of individual cases and class action suits challenging unconstitutional conditions for people who are incarcerated, institutionalized, ordetained. In the past two years as the Executive Director of PILP, Yeh has been committed to expanding the services of PILP, increasing diversity, and providing new staff with a strong foundation to grow their careers. Throughout her time with the organization, she has been a shoulder to lean on and someone PILP staff regularly turn to for advice and guidance, as her compassion extends to everyone with whom she interacts. She is also a dedicated member of the greater Philadelphia public interest community, and her dedication to social justice and her community extends beyond her legal career. Prior to law school, Yeh worked on social justice issues as a science teacher with the U.S. Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Tonga. Yeh also served as the Executive Director of the Asian Professional Extension, Inc. and as a community organizer with the Coalition for Asian-American Children and Families.

Ballard Spahr LLP has been an innovator in pro bono representation in Philadelphia and beyond. The firm’s Racial Justice and Equality Initiative, launched in the summer of 2020, is the epitome of the firm’s  institutional commitment to pro bono representation and the cause of ensuring equal access to justice for all. Through the initiative, attorneys work closely with public interest organizations to pursue pro bono matters that advance race equity, including by addressing economic, education, and voting rights matters. Current partners include the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Appleseed Network, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice, among others. Since its inception, the initiative has accepted 16representations, and Ballard Spahr litigators have contributed more than 6,000 pro bono hours to those matters, including many of the firm’s top litigators. Among these are prominent Philadelphia-based lawyers such as Leslie E. John, former President of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation and current Trustee and co-chair of the Foundation’s Anti-Racism Taskforce.

Duane Morris LLP has been an outstanding pro bono partner to Philadelphia’s legal aid agencies for many years. During the past 15 years, Duane Morris has donated more than 390,000 pro bono hours. In the Philadelphia office, the participation rate in pro bono activities and the number of pro bono hours donated has doubled since 2015. Unlike other firms, Duane Morris does not have a pro bono requirement for its attorneys. Their robust pro bono participation is a testament to the firm’s culture and to leadership’s commitment to serving community through pro bono. Duane Morris has performed incredible and innovative pro bono work for immigrants in the Greater Philadelphia Area, helping individuals on the pathway to citizenship as well as mobilizing over attorneys and staff across the country to help Afghan nationals seeking refuge during the Afghanistan crisis in 2021. Duane Morris also provides compassionate legal assistance to immigrants who are victims of intimate personal violence. Duane Morris also was recognized for its pro bono representation of The Food Trust (TFT), thereby furthering TFT’s mission of ensuring delicious, nutritious food for all, and likewise has been a critical partner to the Women’s Law Project (WLP) during a tumultuous time for women’s access to reproductive healthcare.