Austin Baumgarten '12 and Lauren Roberts '12 Assist Native American Veterans in 'Justice Bus' Trip
Equal Justice Works Fellows Austin Baumgarten '12 and Lauren Roberts '12 worked to provide free legal advice to veteran members of the Yurok Tribe and Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California as part of "Justice Bus" Trip to Humboldt and Del Norte counties in January. The Justice Bus trip came about as the result of a collaboration between the Yurok Tribal Court, OneJustice, USF School of Law, and Swords to Plowshares.
Baumgarten provided a guest entry for the Equal Justice Works blog on the experience, in which he and Roberts trained USF law students on how to conduct the clinics and helped to provide legal services to veterans in Bay City and at a Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation.
Baumgarten works for Swords to Plowshares as an Equal Justice Works Fellow sponsored by Greenberg Traurig. His fellowship combines research and advocacy on behalf of veterans with psychiatric disabilities seeking military discharge upgrades in order to access needed benefits. Roberts works for OneJustice as an Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps Fellow. She is seeking to connect urban law students and pro bono attorneys to low-income clients in rural areas of California by setting up 1-2 day, on-site legal clinics targeted at a wide variety of legal issues. Baumgarten and Roberts are both alumni of the King Hall Humanitarian Aid Legal Organization (HALO) program, and are working to organize a Justice Bus trip for HALO students.