Robin Hood Foundation Awards $42K Grant to Touro Law

Touro Law Center is pleased to announce that it has received a grant in the amount of $42,000 from the Robin Hood Relief Fund. The grant will provide funding for three summer fellows to expand the scope of work of the Disaster Relief Clinic and a part –time lawyer to oversee coordinating outreach and placements of law students from around the country who wish to participate in service trips to provide legal assistance to those in need.

 
Touro Law Dean Patricia Salkin stated, “We are continually grateful to the Robin Hood Foundation for their generous support of Touro Law’s efforts to assist victims of SuperStorm Sandy. Our Disaster Relief Clinic has had a critically important role in providing leadership to storm victims in need of legal services and the work is far from done.”

She continued, “We are dedicated to ensuring our program will continue to handle systemic changes in law that will have a positive impact of thousands of households affected from the storm, while also individually counseling residents and families in need. This grant provides resources for us to continue this work while involving law students from around the country who are committed to social justice work and dedicated to helping storm victims.”

Touro Law’s Disaster Relief Clinic works to promote systemic reform to aid Sandy victims throughout the region, while collaborating with nonprofits and engaging in longer-term representation for individual clients. In addition to faculty-mentored advocacy in client matters, student clinicians have engaged in several programmatic initiatives including research into Good Samaritan laws, state and federal grant programs, state oil spill laws and methods to promote remediation, and federal and state administrative and insurance law.

Founded in 1988, Robin Hood is New York’s largest poverty-fighting organization, and has focused on finding, funding and creating programs and schools that generate meaningful results for families in New York’s poorest neighborhoods. The Robin Hood Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund has granted tens of millions of dollars to organizations throughout New York’s tri-state region that help individuals and families recover from the devastating effects of the storm.

Touro Law’s clinical program teaches practice-ready skills required for effective advocacy while providing no cost legal services for the community. Students work under close faculty supervision to provide legal assistance to actual clients. Currently, Touro Law offers several clinics including; Advanced Bankruptcy Clinic, Civil Rights Litigation Clinic, Elder Law Clinic, Family Law Clinic, Mortgage Foreclosure and Bankruptcy Law Clinic, Not-for-Profit Corporation Law Clinic, and the Disaster Relief Clinic.

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