APALSA

Welcome to USC APALSA

Announcements


Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Welcome Class of 2012! (1st General Meeting + Pre Bar Review Mixer)

1st APALSA General Meeting for 2009-10
* Sep. 3 (Thu.): 12:20 - 1:30 pm, Room 103
* Free Food!!
* Learn how to get involved with APALSA and sign up for a mentor!

APALSA Pre Bar Review Mixer
* Come hang out with the APALSA board before heading to Bar Review!
* Sep. 3 (Thu.): 8:00 pm (walking distance from Bar Review location)
* Details to be announced at the General Meeting




Announcing 2009-10 Board

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

2009 Summer IP Internship

POSITION
Full-time Intellectual Property legal intern/law clerk – Summer 2009
Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office

COMPENSATION
Volunteer position with NO monetary compensation, except parking.

JOB DESCRIPTIONS
Selected candidate(s) would assist the Intellectual Property Counsel of the City of Los Angeles in the practice of intellectual property and related law.

Anticipated work assignments for the summer of 2009 include any or all of the following:
• Research cutting-edge intellectual property legal issues (e.g., primarily copyright, trademark, patent, rights of publicity and cross-disciplinary issues);
• Research and draft memoranda, client communications, and litigation-related documents;
• Support prosecution of a complex anti-trust lawsuit;
• Conduct factual investigation and evaluation;
• Support client interviews and counseling;
• Assist in trademark enforcement against infringers;
• Assist in trademark registrations (and patent applications) with the USPTO;
• Help reviewing and drafting Informational Technology contracts and copyright and trademark licenses;
• Assist in entertainment transactions and negotiations as well as rights clearance; and
• Assist on various errands as deemed fit from time to time.

If interested, please submit by April 7, 2009 one copy of your resume and a brief cover letter to:
Philip H. Lam
Intellectual Property Counsel
City of Los Angeles
Phil.Lam@LACity.org




APABA $5,000 Summer Fellowship

It has come to our attention that a number of potential applicants have not been able to apply because they are still waiting to secure a position with public interest organizations to which they have applied. To allow everyone an opportunity to apply, APABA has decided to extend the application deadline to April 17, 2009. Students who have already applied are welcome to submit additional materials or revise their application by the deadline, but they are not obligated to do so.

All applications are due by April 17, 2009, and may be emailed to Edmond Sung at secretary@apabala.org or sent to:

APABA of Los Angeles County
Attn: Edmond Sung or Derek Ishikawa
1145 Wilshire Blvd., 2nd Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90017




APALSA Elections Lunch

Tuesday, April 7, at lunch, in Room 7
Candidates for APALSA Board 2009-2010 will be making speeches and answering questions about their platform for candidacy. Come listen to those who will be running next year’s board!




APALSA End of the Year Dinner

Evening of April 10
Come celebrate the end of an awesome year with APALSA! This is a great chance for us to hang out before finals, connect with our alumni, and thank our 3Ls for their service to APALSA.
Please save the date! Time and place to be announced shortly!


Wednesday, March 25, 2009

How to Position Yourself in Today’s Job Market Event

The Asian Pacific Alumni Association is hosting an event this Thursday, March 26th at USC’s Davidson Conference Center Boardroom from 6:00pm to 8:00pm. The event is part of our Leadership Speaker Series and will feature Jack Kyser, Founding Economist at the LAEDC’s Kyser Center for Economic Research, as our keynote speaker. The topics discussed will address the current economic climate and the effects it has had on the job market. We will also feature a number of guest speakers from the career/recruitment industry who will be separated into two separate panels; one geared towards students and young alumni and another towards mid-career and professional alumni.


Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Opportunity in San Francisco - Asian Law Caucus

The Asian Law Caucus (ALC) is the nation’s oldest legal Asian American civil rights organization, founded in 1972. Our mission is to promote, advance and represent the legal and civil rights of the Asian and Pacific Islander communities. Recognizing that social, economic, political and racial inequalities continue to exist in the United States, the Asian Law Caucus is committed to the pursuit of equality and justice for all sectors of our society with a specific focus directed toward addressing the needs of low-income Asian and Pacific Islanders. We advance our mission through direct legal services, impact litigation, community organizing and education, and policy advocacy. One of the landmark cases for which we are recognized is the coram nobis decision of Fred Korematsu. Led by a team of pro bono attorneys, ALC worked to overturn the World War II-era criminal conviction of Korematsu who defied the executive orders of Japanese American internment. Currently, ALC’s main areas of practice are civil rights, housing, worker rights, immigrant rights, and juvenile justice.

ALC is seeking a fellow to assist in the development of our taxi worker legal program. Following is a case statement of the need for pro bono assistance:

CASE STATEMENT

“Van” is hospitalized with pneumonia from sleeping in his taxi, unable to afford rent on driving wages. “Inder” discovers he has driven long hours for 1 year and owes his company more than he has earned; in desperation, he ends his own life. We live in an era of the sweatshop reborn.

Most of the nearly 7000 drivers in San Francisco are immigrants who work full time and make less than 1/2 the median income of the city. In the 1970s, in a cost-saving measure, taxi cab companies unilaterally converted their drivers from employees with good pay to independent contractors who suffer from low pay and no benefits. Most drivers do not have the income to meet their families’ basic needs, much less to afford health insurance. With long hours, no benefits, high workplace hazards, and the shift to leasing, taxi driving is now an “immigrant job,” with the third highest concentration of immigrants nationwide. Drivers get no sick leave, vacation, or health insurance. While, according to OSHA, taxi driving is the most dangerous occupation in the country, few drivers seek workers’ compensation for injuries suffered on the job.

Although they cannot unionize because of their independent contractor status, drivers are treated as de facto employees by companies, and endure serious, unlawful abuses. In addition to poor pay, lack of benefits, and harassment, most cab drivers do not know what legal rights they have or how to exercise them. As immigrants, they often risk being fired or deported if they report abuses. As the economic crisis deepens and gas prices rise, drivers incomes are plummeting and their vulnerability increasing. The Asian Law Caucus has spent the last 8 months developing a taxi worker project, and we know need a legal fellow who can work from the existing base and focus specifically on impact litigation that challenges their misclassification as independent contractors.

The Morgan Lewis legal fellow would address the above stated needs of the multi-ethnic taxi driver community in the following ways:

For more information, please visit our website at www.asianlawcaucus.org, our blog at www.arcof72.com, or contact Christopher Punongbayan at chrisp@asianlawcaucus.org, +1 415 848 7723.




Opportunity in Chicago - Asian American Institute

The Asian American Institute (AAI) is a pan-Asian, non-partisan, not for profit 501(c)(3) organization located in Chicago, Illinois, whose mission is to empower the Asian American community through advocacy, by utilizing coalition building, education, and research. AAI was established in 1992 by a group of Asian American community activists, academic professionals, and business leaders in response to the need for this fast-growing population to develop consensus on a pan-Asian agenda among Chicago’s diverse Asian American communities. AAI’s programs include community organizing, leadership development, and legal advocacy. Asian Americans are one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States. In Illinois, this diverse and often over-looked community numbers over 617,000, according to the 2007 Census estimates.

AAI is seeking a fellow to assist with legal work in the areas of voting rights, redistricting, and census issues. This is an exciting time to work on such legal issues, as there will be several key elections taking place in the Chicago area in 2010 and 2011, as well as the 2010 United States Census. The fellow will also assist AAI with researching and implementing other civil rights programs, including programs that focus on race relations, language access, hate crimes, and affirmative action.

For more information, please visit http://www.aaichicago.org or contact Ami Gandhi at ami@aaichicago.org or at +1 773 271 0899.




Opportunity in Los Angeles - Asian Pacific American Legal Center

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California was founded in 1983 and is the nation’s largest legal and advocacy organization serving Asian Americans. APALC’s mission is to advocate for civil rights, provide legal services and education and build coalitions to positively influence and impact Asian Americans and to create a more equitable and harmonious society. APALC achieves its mission through direct services, impact litigation, policy advocacy and leadership development, and works on a broad range of issues spanning family law to housing, immigration to workers rights, voting rights to education equity. Based primarily in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, APALC also advocates in Sacramento through several joint legislative partnerships and in Washington DC through our national partner, Asian American Justice Center. Throughout Southern California and statewide, APALC is highly regarded for its ability to work across lines of race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, etc. and has won many accolades for its work serving the poor and creating systemic change in laws and policies. Both the current Executive Director and Litigation Director are past recipients of the MacArthur “Genius” Award and the Executive Director is also a recent recipient of the California State Bar’s Loren Miller Legal Services Award.

In the current economic crisis, APALC seeks a fellow to engage in litigation and legal services on behalf of low-income Asian Americans, especially elderly or limited or non-English speakers, who are defrauded in consumer transactions or are exploited by employers, landlords or even family members. Under the supervision of the Litigation Director and working closely with direct services attorneys, the fellow will:

For more information, please visit http://www.apalc.org or contact Karin Wang at kwang@apalc.org or at +1 213 977 7500.


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