Center News

2011-2012 Borchard Fellow Accepted as Member of the National Academy of Social Insurance

Former fellow, Rebecca Vallas, was selected to be a member of the National Association of Social Insurance (NASI) in January, 2013. NASI announced the acceptance of 72 distinguished new members, bringing the total active membership to over 1,000. 

2010-2011 Borchard Fellow Publishes Article in the NAELA Journal

Former fellow, Paul Black, who has established his own elder law firm, serves as a national editorial board member for NAELA News and recently published an article, "Reverse Mortgages and the Current Financial Crisis," in the NAELA Journal, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2012.

Utah Law Review Guardianship Summit Issue Published

The Utah Law Review's special issue with the Third National Guardianship Summit recommendations and papers is now available. The Borchard Center on Law & Aging was a major sponsor of the summit. Center delegates included former fellow Catheryn Koss and co-director Edward S. Spurgeon, while co-director Mary Jane Ciccarello was a group facilitator. 

2012 Academic Research Grant Recipient Selected as an Atlantic Philanthropies Fellow

Maureen Henry is a 2012-2013 Residential Fellow in Washington, D.C., with The Atlantic Philanthropies Health & Aging Policy Fellows Program. 

2010-2011 Borchard Fellow Authors Massachusetts Health Reform Law Report

Rachel (Frazier) Gershon, a former Borchard fellow who is now with the Center for Health Law and Economics at the UMass Medical School, has co-authored a report examining the key components of the most recent Massachusetts health reform law as they pertain to the Massachusetts Medicaid program.

2011-2012 Borchard Fellow Authors Medicaid Guide

Evin Isaacson is a co-author of the newly released National Senior Citizens Law Center's Advocates Guide to Medicaid Long Term Services and Supports. According to NSCLC, this new guide offers advocates a primer on the law that impacts Medicaid-funded HCBS. It also explains the different programs states can use to provide HCBS and highlights key resources and tools to use when advocating to expand and preserve Medicaid coverage of LTSS services in individual states.

Edwin Boyer Named the First Borchard Distinguished Professorial Lecturer in Elder Law at Stetson Law

The Borchard Foundation Center on Law & Aging is pleased to announce the apointment of Edwin Boyer as the first Borchard Distinguished Professorial Lecturer in Elder Law at the Stetson Law School in Florida.

2011-2012 Borchard Fellow Selected as an Equal Justice Works Fellow

Caroline Manley has been working with the Center for Disability & Elder Law in Chicago during her Borchard Fellowship year to create legal clinics for seniors in suburban communities. She has been selected as an Equal Justice Works Fellow to continue her work which will be sponsored by The Chicago Bar Foundation. 

Borchard Fellows Publish Clearinghouse Review Articles

Rebecca Vallas, a 2011-2012 Borchard fellow who is a staff attorney at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, published with co-author Elaine Alfano, "Children's SSI Disability Benefits at Risk...Again." Their article appears in the Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law & Policy, May-June 2012, Volume 46, Numbers 1-2, pp. 61-69.

Rachel (Frazier) Gershon, a 2010-2011 Borchard fellow, published together with Gerald A. McIntyre, an article based on Rachel's fellowship work with the National Senior Citizens Law Center. The article is "Goldberg on Life Support at the Social Security Administration" and appears in the Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law & Policy, May-June 2012, Volume 46, Numbers 1-2, pp. 51-60. 

2010 Academic Research Grant Recipients Publish Law Review Article

Professors Kim Dayton and Israel (Issi) Doron have published the second of three articles completed as a result of their 2010 research grant. The article is entitled Municipal Elder Law: A Minnesota Perspective and appears in The Elder Law Journal, Volume 20, Number 1, 2012.

2011 Academic Research Grant Recipient to Deliver Clifford Lecture

Margot Saunders of the National Consumer Law Center received a Borchard Academic Research Grant in 2011 to write on protecting older Americans' Social Social Security benefits from illegal seizure by banks. Her paper based on this research will be published soon and Ms. Saunders has been invited to give the keynote address (known as the Clifford Lecture) at the University of North Carolina School of Law's 2012 Banking Institute on March 29, 2012.

Borchard Fellow Launches Legal Clinics for Seniors in Suburban Chicago

Caroline Manley, a 2011-12 Fellow working with the Center for Disablity and Elder Law in Chicago, launched in November 2011 four new legal clinics for seniors in suburban Chicago.  The goal is to provide better access to legal services to seniors in the communities in which they live.

Former Borchard Fellow Publishes Legal Guide for Older Utahns

Jilenne Gunther, the Utah Legal Services Developer, has published The Utah Elder Rights Resource Handbook, available in hard copy and online.

New Co-Director Named

The Borchard Foundation trustees named Mary Jane Ciccarello as co-director of the Borchard Center on Law & Aging in July 2011.  She will serve with Edward D. Spurgeon who has been the Center’s executive director since its founding in 1998.  For the past ten years, Mary Jane has been an integral part of the Center’s activities, including the fellowship and academic research grant programs and national conferences.

In addition, Mary Jane has been the Director of the Utah State Courts’ Self-Help Center since 2007. She currently serves on the Judicial Council’s Committee on Resources for Self-Represented Parties and the courts’ guardianship steering committee.

Previously, Mary Jane was an elder law attorney in private practice, the Legal Services Developer for the Utah State Division of Aging and Adult Services, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake and Utah Legal Services, and the dean of students at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law where she now teaches elder law and poverty law as an adjunct professor.  Mary Jane’s research, publications, and public presentations focus on law and aging issues and the delivery of legal services.

Three New Fellows Selected for 2011-2012

The Borchard Foundation trustees selected three fellows in law and aging for 2011-2012 who start their fellowship year in September.

Evin Isaacson joins the Oakland office of the National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC) in working to mitigate the impact of state budget shortfalls that have put at risk hundreds of Medicaid optional benefit programs essential to the health, safety and well-being of the country’s poorest, sickest seniors. Evin will work with senior advocates across the country to identify common threats to services like in-home personal care, adult daycare, hearing aids, and prescription drugs, then compile a practice-oriented tool-kit of legislative, administrative and court-based strategies to aid eldercare advocates in combating service and funding reductions.  In addition, in partnership with Disability Rights California (DRC), Evin will assist NSCLC’s and DRC’s class action suits to enjoin cuts to senior-serving benefit programs and represent individual seniors affected by newly enacted service restrictions.

Evin graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in May 2011.  Originally from Evanston, Illinois, she earned her undergraduate degree in Public Policy from Brown University in 2005. She then worked for three years as a research analyst and legislative advocate in the Long Term Care Division of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Caroline Manley graduated from the DePaul College of Law in May 2011. She attended the University of Illinois for her undergraduate studies, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and a Minor in Afro-American Studies.  Caroline has worked with the Cook County Office of the Public Guardian – Adult Division, the Seniors and Persons with Disabilities Unit of the Cook County State’s Attorney, and with AARP Foundation – Litigation.  Most recently, through the support of the Kott Gerontology Foundation, Caroline worked with the Center for Disability and Elder Law (CDEL) to provide legal services in a Chicago suburb.

During her Borchard Fellowship period, Caroline will expand on her work with CDEL, and implement four legal clinics in the Cook County?suburbs to ensure that seniors are able to access CDEL’s services. Caroline will work closely with attorneys and law students to staff ?the clinics and promote pro bono services.  Additionally, she will give presentations to the elder care community on the importance of?advanced directives, and what steps are necessary to ensure that the forms are executed properly while limiting the risk of abuse.

Rebecca Vallas will coordinate a three-part project to develop preventive strategies that minimize wrongful and needless denial, reduction, and termination of low-income seniors' rightful public benefits. Her project will include systemic advocacy at the local, state, and national levels; development of educational and training materials on elderly public benefits topics, supplemented by extensive community education and outreach to Philadelphia's seniors and senior-focused advocates; and representation of individual clients as a member of the Aging and Disabilities Unit of Community Legal Services of Philadelphia.

Rebecca Vallas joined Community Legal Services of Philadelphia in September 2009 as a Skadden Fellow, where she launched the SSI Preservation Project, providing representation to elderly and disabled individuals facing cutoffs or denials of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for reasons not connected to their disability.  At CLS, she has also represented low-income individuals and families facing food stamps, cash assistance, Medicaid, Medicare, and other public benefits-related problems.  She has also engaged in extensive advocacy with the Social Security Administration and other federal agencies, as well as legislative advocacy, around public benefits programs that provide critical support to the low-income elderly, such as SSI.

Rebecca received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was elected Order of the Coif.  She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, summa cum laude, from Emory University, where she was elected Phi Beta Kappa. 

October 2011 Third National Guardianship Summit

The Borchard Center is a co-sponsor and planning committee member for the Third National Guardianship Summit that will be convened at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in October 2011.  While the last Summit in 2001 emphasized changes needed in pre-appointment procedures and determination of capacity, the 2011 three day conference of roughly 75 invited participants will focus on guardian performance and decision making and secondarily on the development of state multidisciplinary guardianship and alternative committees that would implement standards and drive reform.  Ten working papers are being written in advance of the Summit and will serve as the basis for discussion and recommendations by the various working groups.  These papers, along with the confernce Recommendations, will be published in a Symposium issue of the Utah Law Review.  

The Borchard Center will be represented at the Summit by Co-Directors Edward D. Spurgeon and Mary Jane Ciccarello, and former fellow Catheryn Koss, who directs the Senior Law Resource Center in Oklahoma. 

Executive Director at Stetson

On September 9 to 11, 2010, Professor Edward D. Spurgeon, the Excecutive Director of the Borchard Foundation Center on Law & Aging, was in residence at the Center for Excellence in Elder Law at Stetson University College of Law headed by Professor Rebecca C. Morgan, a long serving member of the Law & Aging Center's Academic Advisory Board.  In addition to teaching a class overviewing key income and transfer tax aspects of elder law, Professor Spurgeon talked with the law school's faculty about the work of the Borchard Center, met with J.D. students in the elderlaw concentration and attended meetings of the Stetson Center for Excellence in Elder Law Advisory Board.  He also observed firsthand the impressive educational, research and service programs there.

2010-2011 Fellows Selected

Three new Fellows begin their Fellowship activities in September. The primary goal of the Fellowship is the Fellow's development as a legal professional in the field of law and aging.  Fellows are based with a non-profit organization where they engage in various activities but they also provide direct pro bono legal services to older clients. In addition, the Borchard Center's Executive Director and Assistant Director mentor the Fellows.

Paul Black will be at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and will work with the Georgia Senior Legal Hotline and the Georgia Senior Citizens Law Project.

Rachel Frazier will work at the Washington, D.C. office of the National Senior Citizen Law Center and will also provide pro bono legal services to clients of Whitman Walker Clinic Legal Services.

Stella Kang will be with Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in San Francisco.

Partnerships in Law & Aging

A retrospective of the innovative grant program aimed at increasing awareness and access to legal services for older people appeared in the March-April 2010 issue of Bifocal.  The article celebrates a decade of partnership grants in law and aging provided by the ABA Commission on Law & Aging and the Borchard Foundation Center on Law & Aging.

Research on Elder Law Education

A study of elder law education was published in the February 2010 issue of the Journal of Legal Education.  The authors of Elder Law Teaching and Scholarship: An Empirical Analysis of an Evolving Field are Professor Nina A. Kohn, Syracuse University College of Law and Professor Edward D. Spurgeon, Executive Director of the Borchard Foundation Center on Law & Aging.