Lawyering in Rural Communities: How to Thrive as a Public Interest Lawyer in Regions with Limited Resources

Join Wasserstein Fellow Angelica Salceda as she shares insights on building a public interest career in regions with great needs but limited legal resources. Angelica will discuss how to grow professionally even when you’re one of the few attorneys in the region, strategies to balance local demands while continuing to develop legal expertise, and how to leverage available resources to bridge the gap. She’ll also cover ways to navigate unique joys and challenges of place-based practice.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP below! Open to the HLS community.

Angélica Salceda is the director of the ACLU of Northern California’s Democracy and Civic Engagement Program. In her capacity, Angélica supervises and supports a team of attorneys and legal-policy assistants who work on voting rights, open government, and free speech issues. She focuses both on policy and litigation, providing strategic vision and leadership that shapes the work of the Program. In her previous role as a staff attorney at the ACLU, Angélica worked on a range of issues including immigrants’ rights, economic justice, open government, reproductive justice, and voting rights.

Prior to joining the ACLU as a staff attorney, Angélica was an Equal Justice Works Fellow during which she led a project to identify and remove educational barriers impacting pregnant and parenting students in California’s Central Valley. As a result of Angélica’s advocacy, the California Legislature passed and approved Assembly Bill 203 to ensure that lactating students in K-12 schools have access to private, secure place to breastfeed or express milk during school hours.

Angélica is a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law, where she participated in the International Human Rights Clinic and served as the student body president. She lives with her husband and three kids in a small rural town in Fresno County, California.
If you or an event participant requires disability-related accommodations, please contact HLS Accessibility Services at accessibility@law.harvard.edu two weeks in advance of the event.