President Barack Obama has appointed two lawyers with whom he has close personal ties to the Legal Services Corporation.
Martha Minow is the Dean of Harvard Law School, where she has taught for nearly thirty years. Her research focuses on equality, human rights, law and social change, and religion and pluralism. Minow was a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and has served on the Board of the American Bar Foundation. She earned her JD at Yale, and her Ed.M from Harvard.
Also, Minow is the daughter of Newton Minow, senior counsel at Chicago’s Sidley Austin. When Obama was at Harvard Law School, the elder Minow got Obama a summer job.
John G. Levi has been a partner in the Chicago office of Sidley Austin for over 25 years. His practice focuses on employment litigation, executive compensation matters, and labor management relations. His JD and LL.M are from Harvard.
And… It was Levi who actually hired Obama at Sidley, and another young attorney, Michelle Robinson, who was assigned to be the young Obama’s adviser. Robinson would later serve as the first African-American First Lady.
Created in 1974, The Legal Services Corporation is a private, non-profit corporation established by the United States Congress to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans, by providing civil legal assistance to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it.